The Boar’s Head Tavern

“The Church must be free to be poor in order to minister among the poor. The Church must trust the Gospel enough to come among the poor with nothing to offer the poor except the Gospel, except the power to discern and the courage to expose the Gospel as it is already mediated in the life of the poor…When the Church has the freedom itself to be poor among the poor, it will know how to use what riches it has. When the Church has that freedom, it will know also how to minister among the rich and powerful. When the Church has that freedom, it will be a missionary people again in all the world. When the Church has the freedom to go out into the world with merely the Gospel to offer the world, then it will know how to use whatever else it has–money and talent and buildings and tapestries and power in politics–as sacraments of its gift of its own life to the world, as tokens of the ministry of Christ.” -William Stringfellow (HT to Nate Spencer)

June 30, 2002

Good link. While in Cleveland, I picked up two books on this very subject: “Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline” by Robert H. Bork and “The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America” by Philip K. Howard. (The author notes say Howard, the son of a Presbyterian minister, grew up in a small town in eastern Kentucky. Hey, he’s one of us). I’ll probably be quoting these books quite often over the next few months, so bear with me. (Or should I say beer with me :-)

Also, on your recommendation, Michael, I purchased “The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance & Assurance” by Schreiner and Caneday. Man, have I got a lot of reading to do.

Posted by: Mike Birch @ 11:03 pm | Trackback | Permalink

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On February 7th, 2002, a diverse group of Christians started a wide-ranging weblog conversation. Today, that conversation continues and you're invited to pull up a chair. Welcome to the Boar's Head Tavern.

“It is better to think of church in the ale-house than to think of the ale-house in church.” - Martin Luther

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"The things I thought were so important - because of the effort I put into them - have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered." --Thomas Merton
"Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works." --Robert Farrar Capon

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C S Lewis
Another guy who could really put it away

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June 30, 2002

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