from the shelf

I'm in the midst of preparing and delivering a six-part series of messages on the nature and role of the Christian church in the city.  Here are some thoughts from this weeks prep.  

“Flight into the invisible is a denial of the call.  A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him.”  - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

“God intends us to penetrate the world.  Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars; our place is to be rubbed into the secular community, as salt is rubbed into meat, to stop it going bad.  And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves?....  Too often evangelical Christians have interpreted their social responsibility in terms only of helping the casualties of a sick society, and have done nothing to change the structures which cause the casualties.” – John Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount

“If the gospel is to challenge the public life of our society… It will only be by movements that begin with the local congregation in which the reality of the new creation is present, known, and experienced, and from which men and women will go into every sector of public life to claim it for Christ, to unmask illusions which have remained hidden and to expose all areas of public life to the illumination of the gospel.  But that will only happen as and when local congregations renounce an introverted concern for their own life, and recognize that they exist for the sake of those who are not members, as sign, instrument, and foretaste of God’s redeeming grace for the whole life of society.” – Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society