I don’t know what cosmic conjunction God’s has planed for today, but the Bob’s are on to something. First, Bob has a great post about how the Church is called to live. Then, click over and find Bob launching forth a couple of good quotes about who we (the Church) are… and one more, just for good measure. Read ‘em and think people, read ‘em and think.

Scot McKnight begins what looks to be another edifying series.

From the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what your promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever

Amen.

My language has changed over the past few years. I am not sure if it was intentional or is just the result of who has been feeding my thinking. I suspect a little of both. Wherever the change has come from, as soon as I start talking about the Church your going to notice it.

The idea of the community of God has captivated and shaped my language, my thinking, and my heart.

This is is the environment where I discover the scope and power of our salvation, where we experience love given and received, and the context in which we learn to live the-fear-of-Yahweh. In short, community is the plan of God for the place and way his people are to live in this world.

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“Sectarianism is to the community what heresy is to theology, a willful removal of a part from the whole. The part is, of course, good- a work of God. But apart from the whole it is out of context and therefore diminished, disengaged from what it needs from the whole and from what’s left of the whole needs from it. We wouldn’t tolerate someone marketing a Bible with some famous preacher’s five favorite books selected from the complete sixty-sixty and bound in fine leather. We wouldn’t put up with an art dealer cutting up a large Rembrandt canvas into two-inch squares and selling them off nicely framed. So why do we so often positively delight and celebrate the dividing up of the Jesus community into contentious and competitive groups? And why does Paul’s rhetorical question, ‘Has Christ been divided?’ (1 Cor. 1:13), continue to be ignored century after century after century?”

-Eugene H. Peterson
Christ Playes in Ten Thousand Paces (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) pg 240

From the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty and everlasting God, in Christ you have revealed your glory among the nations: Preserve the works of mercy, that your Church throught the world may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Hold Spirit, on God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

American preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps, than those faced by us under South Africa’s apartheid, or Christians under Communism. We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white and blue myth. You have to expose, and confront, the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion and caring of most American people, and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them. This is not easy among people who really believe that their country does nothing but good, but it is necessary, not only for their future, but for us all.

Peter Storey, former president of the Methodist Church of South Africa

(HT: Jason Blair at the BHT)