David F. WellsWhat is to be gained if we are so intent in reaching out to the unchurched that we then unchurch the reached?
About This Quote
When we go to church to preach the word of God and worship God, we must not forget the unchurched. The very fact that we are reaching out to people who are lost should not make us unchurch ourselves. One of the reasons the “church growth” movement became so popular is because many churches forgot about their own people. If they did not let their people slip away, they would not need to reach out to outsiders.
Source: The Courage To Be Protestant: Truthlovers, Marketers, And Emergents In The Postmodern World
Some Similar Quotes
- Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to...
- Church was doing what he often did when dropped - lying on his back with all four legs in the air, pretending to be dead in order to induce guilt in his owners.
- It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a...
- If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
- The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: “You have...
More Quotes By David F. Wells
- What is to be gained if we are so intent in reaching out to the unchurched that we then unchurch the reached?
- In fact, when we listen to the church today, at least in the West, we are often left with impression that Christianity actually has very little to do with truth. Christianity is only about feeling better about ourselves, about leaping over our difficulties, about being...
- Evangelicals now stand among those who are on easiest terms with the world, for they have lost their capacity for dissent.
- In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.
- Humility has nothing to do with depreciating ourselves and our gifts in ways we know to be untrue. Even "humble" attitudes can be masks of pride. Humility is that freedom from our self which enables us to be in positions in which we have neither...