God has supernaturally guided his church for two thousand years. He has overcome every obstacle as if it were nothing, raised up courageous believers to accomplish tasks others thought impossible, and protected his church and Word from every means of attack. Nothing in history has surprised him or come close to overwhelming his power to uphold us.
Church
Bill Hybel
If you create a loving community, first-time seekers will sniff it and say “I want in”
Frederick Brotherton ( F. B. ) Meyer
Would it not be the height of folly if Tasmania were to resolve to cut the supply of power from that mountain lake and to substitute handpower? Would not the factories soon close down, and the incipient harvest of prosperity suddenly wither? Yet it often seems as though the modern Church were in danger of making a similar mistake. In scores of cases she [the Church] is disconnecting herself from the dynamic of Pentecost, and is endeavouring to find compensation for her loss of spiritual power in brilliance of intellect in the pulpit, in highly organized and expensive machinery, and by calling to her aid incidental accessories, which are borrowed from the world; and which, even where they may be comparatively innocent, are totally unfit to secure the great ends for which she was called into being, according to the purpose and plan of her great Architect.
Ed Silvoso
There is no place for the contemporary Church to resemble a POW camp behind enemy lines. Even if in a weak and feeble condition… the Church today can and must walk in the authority emanating from this newly found truth, straight into the enemy’s domain, and declare, “Our Commander in Chief has defeated your commander in chief.”
Ed Silvoso
Jesus did not confine the gathering of His followers to buildings or subject them to a rigid schedule of centralized meetings. Instead, it was people who constituted His Ekklesia (wherever and whenever as few as two or three gathered, with His manifest presence in their midst). And because Jesus’ Ekklesia was not meant to be a sterile, sanitized holding tank into which His disciples were to store in isolation converts fished out of a turbulent and doomed sea, to await the arrival of a refrigerator ship for transfer to a heavenly port for final processing.
Mike Stachura
The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity.
Bill Johnson
A jeweler often places a diamond on a piece of black velvet. The brilliance of the gem is clearer against that background. So it is with the Church. The dark condition of the world’s circumstances becomes the backdrop upon which He displays His glorious Church! “Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Rom. 5:20).
Jim Cymbala
Only turning God’s house into a house of fervent prayer will reverse the power of evil so evident in the world today.
Katherine Walden
When a church is full of humble hearts who desire to outdo each other in love, honour and sacrifice, that church experiences unity.
Philip Yancey
Christians should work harder toward establishing colonies of the kingdom that point to our true home. All too often the church holds up a mirror reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a different way. If the world despises a notorious sinner, the church will love her. If the world cuts off aid to the poor and the suffering, the church will offer food and healing. If the world oppresses, the church will raise up the oppressed. If the world shames a social outcast, the church will proclaim God’s reconciling love. If the world seeks profit and self-fulfillment, the church seeks sacrifice and service. If the world demands retribution, the church dispenses grace. If the world splinters into factions, the church joins together in unity. If the world destroys its enemies, the church loves them.
That, at least, is the vision of the church in the New Testament: a colony of heaven in a hostile world.