“The revelation of God is the cross. This is the image in which we are to be transformed and this can only take place in the context of relationships.” – Alec Brooks

“The local body of believers is God’s kingdom work. We don’t do that work; we are that work! God is building a kingdom, Jesus is the cornerstone, and his people are the building.” – John C. Nugent, Endangered Gospel

“[T]he way Christians eat together, keep time, celebrate, forgive debts, express thanks, show hospitality, demonstrate compassion, live simply, and share their material resources with one another is an actual participation in the life of the triune God through whose Spirit we have been incorporated into a body whose head is Christ.” Bryan P. Stone, Evangelism after Christendom: […]

“Church involvement in the New Testament sense means the development of intimate, heathy, long-lasting relationships with one’s brothers and sisters in Christ.” – Joseph Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family

“The evidence is conclusive, and the voices are unanimous. For Jesus, Paul, and early church leaders throughout the Roman Empire, the preeminent social model that defined the Christian church was the strong-group Mediterranean family.” Joseph H. Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family

“…the most evangelistic thing the church can do today is to be the church – to be formed imaginatively by the Holy Spirit  through core practices such as worship, forgiveness, hospitality, and economic sharing into a distinctive people in the world, a new social option, the body of Christ.” Bryan P. Stone, Evangelism after Christendom: The Theology […]

Cruciform love takes it cue from the cross; Christ’s death was the ultimate act of selflessness that focused not only on others as individuals (“Christ died for me”) but on others as corporate bodies, as communities in need of reconciliation and harmony (“God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”). Cruciform loves resists the […]

“The maxim of illusory religion runs: ‘Fear not; trust in God and He will see that none of the things you fear will happen to you’; that of real religion, on the contrary, is ‘Fear not; the things that you are afraid of are quite likely to happen to you, but they are nothing to […]

“If God is a community of love then He can only be revealed through a people who love each other.” Alec Brooks

“Concretely, we intend to live in the kingdom of God by intending to obey the precise example and teachings of Jesus.” Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard