Tom Wright on the Church

A couple of extracts from Tom Wright's address to the Fulcrum Conference Islington 2008

“… the church, in its very life as well as in what it says to communities and individuals, [is] … indeed the missionary body of Christ, the community at which the principalities and powers look and realise, perhaps with an angry shock, that Jesus is Lord and they are not; the community at which ordinary people look and realise, perhaps with an eager start, that there is after all a different way to be human and that they want to find out what makes it tick.

Let the Bible shape your eschatology; let that biblical eschatology shape your mission; and then let that eschatologically-shaped mission shape your view of the church; and you'll find that, instead of the shrill functional pragmatism of today's muddled left, insisting on breaking old rules because they're outdated, and the equally shrill and functional pragmatism of today's muddled right, insisting on keeping old rules because they're the old rules even at the cost of unity, you will have a robust, biblical, Christ-centred, Spirit-led, costly ecclesiology that will be in good shape to take forward God's mission into the next generation…

…The late, great Lesslie Newbigin was once asked whether, when he looked at the church, he was an optimist or a pessimist. I make his reply my own. I am neither an optimist, nor a pessimist: Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!”