quotes

Having a day to read today, working through 'The Shaping of things to come' by Hirsch & Frost. Some selections:

“The kind of thinking that will solve the worlds problems will be of a different order to the kind of thinking that created those problems in the first place.” (Einstein)

“Jesus said go into all the world. He didn’t say sit in your church and wait for people to come to you.”

“Christology determines missiology, and missiology determines ecclesiology. It is absolutely vital that the church gets the order right.” (i.e. the form of the church is a result of our understanding of mission, and the form of mission is a result of our understanding of Jesus, because Jesus is the way we understand and encounter God)

“If you are digging a hole in one place, and you realise you need to dig it elsewhere, you don’t get there by digging gin the same place, only deeper. And yet churches, whden they realise that the old 'attractional' mode isn’t working, seem to believe that if they just do attractional church better, it will work. And… many of the church growth seminars and conferences are simply repackaging the traditional mode and promoting it to struggling churches as the only way to grow.” ('attractional' = church meeting in a set time and building, mission consists in recruiting people out of the surrounding community to 'come to church')

“Any church that cannot get by without buildings, finances and paid experts is not fully being church.”

“If we could start church all over again from scratch, would we do it the way it’s currently being done?”

"When we speak of our virtues, we are competitors. When we confess our sins, we become brothers" (Karl Barth)