Categories
Church: World

The Point of the Church

The church’s foundation and continued existence are not to provide refuge for lonely souls, or even less to be a plank of salvation on a tempestuous sea that threatens damnation. The point of the church is rather to point beyond itself, to be a community that preaches, serves and witnesses to the reign of God. In doing this the church shares in and continues, through the power of God’s Spirit, the work of its Lord, Jesus Christ.  So completely does the church live for God’s eign that, when it finally is fully established, the church will be subsumed into its all-encompassing reality.

From Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (American Society of Missiology) (p.7)