What the Church Is and Is Not

This week's great stuff comes from Michael Horton's Christless Christianity--again. It's a great book, and I'm finally coming to the end. This seminary professor with a PhD from Oxford really knows how to communicate to the layperson, and I'd recommend this book highly. Here are a couple of excellent paragraphs on what the church is not and is:

"The church is not a club for those with similar cultural tastes, political views, ethnic backgrounds, and moral leanings. They do not meet because they share a hobby called spirituality or because they have the same vision for transforming culture. Believers gather to be regularly reconstituted as the body of Christ, receiving Christ as their living Head. They do not gather on their own but are gathered by the Spirit through his ordained means of grace.

"Unlike voluntary associations (book clubs, political parties, or fans of the opera or garage bands), the church is not made up of people I chose to be my friends. God chose them for me and me for them. They are my family because of God's election, not mine. Gathered to be redefined by the kingdom of Christ rather than the kingdoms of this age, we are then scattered into the world as salt--not huddled together in Christian societies for moral transformation and ecclesiastically sanctioned political causes, but dispersed into the world as doctors, homemakers, plumbers, lawyers, truck drivers, citizens, and neighbors."

And for something else really exciting, our recent Discovery House release, You Are the Treasure That I Seek, But There's a Lot of Cool Stuff Out There, Lord by Greg Dutcher, which I excerpted here last spring, got a great review on Challies.com