Men and fires are a combination made in heaven. So when Helen said yesterday that she had four bin bags of Post Office rubbish to destroy I could not resist putting down Moltmann and going with her to make a fire. I had only just begun reading The Church in the Power of the Spirit (London, English translation 1977) when she called. But I still have a couple of quotes for you today!

In referring to the crisis that was (and still is) facing the church in Western Europe due the advancement of secularism, the German theologian says the church must see the opportunity this brings to think again about what the church is for. He says:

Anyone who only talks about ‘crisis’ without recognising this opportunity is talking because he is afraid and without hope (page xiii).

He was writing in the mid 1970s but could easily have been writing about our own period today. Many people in the church in the UK are feeling this fear as they see the church loose its influence and privilege in our country. Their response, however, is not to ask the bigger theological questions but to complain and protest, insisting that the church does not need to change in the face of its current challenges. Regular readers of this blog will know that I am with Moltmann on this one and that I believe that it is incumbent upon us as Christians to rise to the challenge of re-defining our role as missionary church in the present context of being church on the margins. We must put this fear aside and engage with society rather than rail against it.

It is on this issue of mission that I take my second quote from the book. It

is not that the church has a ‘mission’, but the very reverse: that the mission of Christ creates its own church (10).

The mission is God’s and its end goal is the restoration of the whole of creation and it is our privilege to be called to partner with God in this endeavour. As Christendom disintegrates all around us it is essential that we understand not whether but how we involve ourselves in this mission of God’s.

More from Jürgen Moltmann some other day. Now go and enjoy this one and ask how God would like you to partner with him today.

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