How should the church relate to culture (see previous posts 1, 2)? How should we teach our children to engage society (see previous posts 1, 2)?
G. K. Chesterton is often quoted as say,
“We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.”
Can the church move the world? What would it take? How could we, how should we seek to move the world? Which direction do we want to move it?
Can we do this from within the walls of a church building? Can we do it without engaging, living in and among the culture, within our communities?
But the G. K. Chesterton quotes is longer,
“We do not want, as the newspapers say, a Church that will move with the world. We want a Church that will move the world . . . It is by that test that history will really judge, of any Church, whether it is the real Church or no.”
Two more quotes, these from Chesterton’s autobiography
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
“Take away the supernatural, and what remains is the unnatural.”
When combining these thoughts, I’m struck that the way the church begins to move the world is not by removing the obstacles of the truth–the stumbling blocks of the gospel or of Jesus Christ. The supernatural must remain or we are simply suggesting something that is unnatural. And if we want to make it “easy” we remove the reality that the road is narrow. That is not the message of the real church.
But where “we,” the church are the obstacles, we must change or we will never move the world–toward Him.
Christianity is so entangled with the world that millions never guess how radically they have missed the New Testament pattern. Compromise is everywhere. The world is whitewashed just enough to pass inspection by blind men posing as believers. A.W. Tozer
The devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them . . . providing amusement for the people is nowhere spoken of in the Scriptures as a function of the church . . . the need is for Biblical doctrine, so understood and felt that it sets men aflame. Charles H. Spurgeon
(For more great quotes, see http://reformationnation.wordpress.com/category/quotes)
