As part of my study of Felicity Dale's book, Getting Started (A Practical Guide to House Church Planting), the "Cool Quotes" that I am sharing this week all have to do with how we identify or define the church.
Here are the quotes for today:
God has given us a plan for His church. It is found in the New Testament. It is a plan that is very simple, very natural, and very reproducible.
God’s plan is so simple, that we often don’t see it. I wonder if the devil has not blinded us from seeing it. It is a plan that will work under any circumstance: it will work inany culture; it will work in any geographical area; it will work in any political climate; it will work both in urban and rural areas; it will work under any economic condition; it will work anywhere!
~ Nate Krupp, God’s Simple Plan for His Church
Thus, St. Paul seems to have left his newly-founded churches with a simple system of Gospel teaching, two sacraments, a tradition of the main facts of the death and resurrection, and the Old Testament. There was apparently no form of service, except, of course, the form of the sacraments. Nor was there any form of prayer, unless indeed he taught the Lord’s Prayer. To us, this seems remarkably little. We can hardly believe that a church could be founded on so slight a basis. And yet, it is possible that it was precisely the simplicity and brevity of the teaching which constituted its strength . . . By teaching the simplest elements in the simplest form to the many, and by giving them the means by which they could for themselves gain further knowledge, by leaving them to meditate upon these few fundamental truths, and to teach one another what they could discover, St. Paul ensured that his converts should really master the most important things.
~ Roland Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?
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