City on a Hill

After a very busy week that kept me away from the blog, I'm back...

I really appreciated Philip Graham Ryken's book City on a Hill when I read it several years ago. Here's a portion that relates to the text I used during Sunday evening's congregational meeting:

Wherever Christians have joined together to establish teaching, worshiping, and caring communities, they have been able to meet the unique challenges they faced from the surrounding culture.

We see this throughout church history. During the Roman Empire when Caesar was throwing Christians to the lions, during the Middle Ages when spiritual darkness descended on Europe, during the twentieth century when Communism tried to stamp out any mention of God—at all times and in all places—Christians have "devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer"(Acts 2:42).

Today a Christian can go anywhere in the world and meet brothers and sisters who are doing the same thing Whether they meet in public or in secret, whether they gather in great cathedrals or small house churches, they are teaching, worshiping, caring... and growing.

What God has given us in the church will last as long as life on this earth. For Jesus said, "I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it" (Matt. 16:18). Here in America, as we enter our first post-Christian century, some churches will continue to do the simple things that churches have always done. And as they do so, they will discover that what God has given in the church is exactly what a post-Christian culture needs.

To summarize, what God wants the church to be and to do turns out to be exactly what the world needs. Admittedly, the world may not want to hear it, since in post-Christian times the church becomes a kind of countercultural community. To a relativistic culture, skeptical of meaning, the church preaches the truth of God's eternal Word. To a narcissistic culture, alienated by sin, the church issues an invitation to worship and fellowship. And this is precisely what a post-Christian culture needs: a church that stand out as truly Christian.

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