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“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)

April 30, 2008

re: presence

Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place
I can feel His mighty power and His grace
I can hear the brush of angels wings
I see glory on each face
Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place

...song from when I was a child in a pentecostal church.

I was taught that this was one of the aims of Christianty, to ‘usher’ in the presence of the Lord. It fits quite nicely with pre-millenialist, dispy view that we are helping to usher in the second coming. I really have no starting point to work from on a discussion of ‘Real Presence’ as most of you understand it. In my home church, there was never any discussion in Jesus being present in the Eucharist…its just something that we did on the first Sunday of every month. It was a solemn time, but the elements were merely symbolic of Jesus work, not his person. To really be in the ‘real presence’, you had to have some authentic charismatic experience: anointed preaching, speaking in tongues, prophecy, or some such.

Posted by: Mark Nikirk @ 10:03 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.

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April 30, 2008

re: presence

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