Monday 26 November 2012

THE CHURCH

'The Holy Spirit...makes the church both an organism and an organization - a cauldron of spontaneously generated spiritual life and ministry, as well as an ordered, structured community with rules and authority. If God only gave gifts to all believers and did not call anyone into a place of authority, the church would only be an organic, spontaneous movement with virtually no institutional structure. If he only gave gifts to "special officers" - ordained ministers - then the church would be exclusively a top-down, command-and-conmtrol institution. But God's Spirit creates both the general and special office - and so we speak of the ardour of the Spirit (creating the movement) and the order of the Spirit (creating the institution). This dynamic balance of the Spirit's work is what makes the church (in human terms) sustainable.'
Timothy Keller, Center Church, p.347.