I try to keep a book by the bed so that before I go to sleep, I just meditate on something worthwhile.
I was reading David Wells ..." The Courage to be Protestant" and came across these statements:
" Today, prodigious amounts of energy are being poured into this effort ( of re thinking the church). Everything, it seems, must be rethought ! We must rethink how it becomes successful ! We must rethink it all because this is what businesses have to do. Their products are all the time dying as new niches and needs arise. So it is in the church. Rethink or die !
The church is not our creation. It is not our business. We are not called upon to manage it. It is not there for us to advance our careers in it. It is not there for our own success. It is not a business. The church was never our idea in the first place. No, it is not the church we need to rethink. Rather it is our thoughts about the church that need to be rethought. It is the church's faithfulness that needs to be reexamined. It is its faithfulness to who it is in Christ, its faithfulness in living out its life in the world, that should be occupying us. "
( page 222-223)
Later he mentions the idea of impacting the culture and I like this:
" Churches that want to influence their culture are so often tempted to think that to be effective they must hide their otherworldliness and become slickly this-worldly.
Churches that actually do influence the culture --- here is the paradox --- distance themselves from it in their internal life. They do not offer what can already be had on secular terms in the culture. They stand outside of its life. "
He continues:
" The temptation the church always experiences is to be like the world. It is the temptation to enjoy the comfort of a majority, to be at home, to be at peace, to have no enemies. However, if the church is to be truly successful, it must be unlike anything else we find in life. As a result, it will undoubtedly make enemies."
( page 224)
