Is Your Church Cumbering the Ground?

There is . . . no place today for a Church that is not aflame with the Spirit who is the Lord and Giver of life, nor any value in a theology; which is not passionately missionary. If there throbs through the Church the vitality of a living union with Christ—and apart from this the Church has no claim to exist, no right to preach, it is merely cumbering the ground—if the Church can indeed say "It is not I who live, it is Christ who lives in me," then the dark demonic forces of the age have met their match, and the thrust of life is stronger than the drift of death. A Church that knows its Lord and is possessed by its Gospel cannot but propagate creatively the life that is has found. A Christian who is taking his faith seriously cannot but evangelize.

("A Faith to Proclaim”, James S. Stewart, p. 11,12 Regent College Publishing , 2002)