What I'm Reading...

Here is one of the clearest and most accurate definitions of the church that I have read. It comes from Eugene Peterson's, THE JESUS WAY, pages 5-6:

"A Christian congregation is a company of praying men and women who gather, usually on Sundays, for worship, who then go into the world as salt and light. God’s Holy Spirit calls and forms this people. God means to do something with us, and he means to do it in community. We are in on what God is doing, and we are in on it together.

"And here is how we are in on it: we become present to what God intends to do with and for us through worship, become present to God who is present to us. The operating biblical metaphor regarding worship is sacrifice—we bring ourselves to the altar and let God do with us what he will. We bring ourselves to the eucharistic table and enter into that grand fourfold shape of the liturgy that shapes us: taking, blessing, breaking, and giving—the life of Jesus taken and blessed, broken and distributed. That eucharistic life now shapes our lives as we give ourselves, Christ in us, to be taken, blessed, broken and distributed in lives of witness and service, justice and healing."