“Neither our experience of God nor our experience of church seems to have adequately prepared us for creative engagement with the world. Not only has the comfortability of the church mediated our experience of God, it has also blunted our participation in the world. The church tends to make God predictable and the world enjoyable. This has much to do with the church’s social location. In the First World, the church is the product of the suburbs where men and women live anesthetized lives. God can therefore be seen as Comforter rather than Liberator, and the good things of the world can be enjoyed while we avoid its problems and pain. Consequently, our experience of God is mediocre and our involvement in the world is for personal benefit not social transformation. As a result, we are not at the forefront of anything. Because we don’t have an adequate vision for God, we can hardly have a great concern for the world. Because God is deeply concerned about our world, our worship of Him should always lead us back into the ideas of our time.”

Jacques Ellul

“The renewal of the Church will be in progress when it is seen as a fellowship of consciously inadequate persons who gather because they are weak, and scatter to serve because their unity with one another and with Christ has made them bold.”

“According to our common proverb, a chain is not stronger than its weakest link. The aphorism may be true, when applied strictly to the realm of the mechanical, but it is absurdly untrue when applied to a social organism such as the Church of Jesus Christ. All the links were weak, yet the chain survived! Ignorant men and women, united in Christ, produced a kind of wisdom. This is clearly miraculous, but it ought not to be rejected for that reason, since miracle is intrinsic to the Gospel.”

Elton Trueblood
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