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“Piously, or
politically, we cripple ourselves
with the need to bring about God’s
righteousness on earth, failing to
hear what Jesus so vividly declares:
that we need not shoulder that
burden because the goal itself does
not need to be accomplished. The
goal is a fact, God’s fact, the fact
of grace and promise. No gap
divides what God says from what God
does; and the stories of the coming
kingdom do not offer dreams and
possibilities of what the Lord might
or could do, but speak indicatively,
and in the present tense of what is
happening, and of what the future is
becoming. The kingdom need not—and
cannot not—be worked for; it may
only be accepted and awaited. On
the other hand this waiting for
God’s indicatives cannot be
dispassionate or passive…the gospel
enslaves us again with its
imperatives, demanding everything of
us by way of repentance and
discipleship” ~ Alan Lewis,
Between Cross and Resurrection: The
Theology of Holy Saturday
“There is no shred of
evidence in Paul’s letters to
suggest that he judged the churches
by the measure of their success in
rapid numerical growth…this is
nowhere appears as either an anxiety
or an enthusiasm about the numerical
growth of the church” ~L. Newbigin,
The Open
Secret: An Introduction to the
Theology of Mission
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