A Quote To Pondor

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a quote with you. It is actually a few seperate passage from a book I am reading, called "Renovation of the Heart" by Dallas Willard. I think it is important as we think about the role of the church today.

"A fundamental mistake of the conservative side of the American church today, and much of the Western church, is that it takes as its basic goal to get as many people as possible ready to die and go to heaven. It aims to get people into heaven rather than to get heaven into people.....

It implodes upon itself because it creates groups of people who may be ready to die, but clearly are not ready to live. They rarely can get along with one another, much less those 'outside.'.....

As a result they actually fall short of getting as many people as possible ready to die, because the lives of the 'converted' testify against the relaity......

The way to get as amny people into heaven as you can is to get heaven into as many people as you can - that is, to follow the path of genuine spiritual transformation or full-throttle discipleship of Jesus Christ. When we are counting up results we also need to keep in mind the multitudes of people (surrounded by churches) who will not be in heaven because they have never , to their knowledge, seen the reality of Christ in a living human being." P. 238-239

I think there are some good points here. It teaches us that the church needs to focus on true spiritual development of its people. This will naturally lead to evangelism, and much more effective evangelism. It moves us a way from a focus on NUMBERS and turns us to a focus on QUALITY. This increase in QUALITY then naturally leads to more NUMBERS.

- Danny