“The church is to be otherworldly in the world” by David F. Wells

“The church is utterly unlike any other organization in the world. In the church are those who belong to another world. At least that is supposed to be the case. Why is this? Because when it gathers, it is hearing a summons to stand before the God of all eternity, to worship in awe before [...]

“The temptation the church always faces” by David F. Wells

“The temptation the church always experiences is to be like the world. It is the temptation to enjoy the comfort of a majority, to be at home, to be at peace, to have no enemies. Is it not true that we all yearn for such an experience? However, if the church is to be truly [...]

“Rethink your thoughts about the church” by David F. Wells

“The church is not our creation. It is not our business. We are not called upon to manage it. It is not there for us to advance our careers in it. It is not there for our own success. It is not a business. The church, in fact, was never our idea in the first [...]

“Worldliness” by David F. Wells

“Worldliness is that system of values, in any given age, which has at its center our fallen human perspective, which displaces God and His truth from the world, and which makes sin look normal and righteousness seem strange. It thus gives great plausibility to what is morally wrong and, for that reason, makes what is [...]

“Keep yourselves from idols” by Herbert Schlossberg

“In a society in which idolatry runs rampant, a church that is not iconoclastic is a travesty. If it is not against the idols it is with them.”
–Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture (Wheaton: Crossway, 1993), 254.

“Scalpel!” by Herbert Schlossberg

“Civil religion eases tensions, where biblical religion creates them. Civil religion papers over the cracks of evil, and biblical religion strips away the covering, exposing the nasty places. Civil religion prescribes aspirin for cancer, and biblical religion insists on the knife.”
–Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture (Wheaton: Crossway, 1993), 252.

“The common consent of fools” by Charles H. Spurgeon

“The great guide of the world is fashion, and its god is respectability—two phantoms, at which brave men laugh. How many of you look around on society to know what to do. You watch the general current, and then float upon it. You study the popular breeze and shift your sails to suit it. True [...]

“Otherworldly in the world” by Peter Brown

“The City of God, far from being a book about flight from the world, is a book whose recurrent theme is ‘our business within this common mortal life’; it is a book about being otherworldly in the world.”
–Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967/2000), 324.

“Truth and culture” by D.A. Carson

“No truth which human beings may articulate can ever be articulated in a culture-transcending way– but that does not mean that the truth thus articulated does not transcend culture.”
–D.A. Carson, “Maintaining Scientific and Christian Truths in a Postmodern World,” Science & Christian Belief, vol. 14, no. 2 (October 2002): 107-122, http://www.scienceandchristianbelief.org/articles/carson.pdf.

“The central problem of our age” by Francis Schaeffer

“Christians must humble themselves to know the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. To the extent that we do not humble ourselves, there will be no power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The Lord’s work in the Lord’s way is the Lord’s work in the power of the Holy Spirit and not in [...]

“A cut flower civilization” by Christopher Dawson

“We have entered on a new phase of culture—we may call it the Age of the Cinema—in which the most amazing perfection of scientific technique is being devoted to purely ephemeral objects, without any consideration of their ultimate justification.
It seems as though a new society was arising which will acknowledge no hierarchy of values, no [...]

“Not a moment too soon” by C.S. Lewis

“We see unmistakable the sort of universe in which we have all along been living, and must come to terms with it. If we had foolish un-Christian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the [...]

“The only hermeneutic of the gospel” by Lesslie Newbigin

“I have come to feel that the primary reality of which we have to take account in seeking for a Christian impact on public life is the Christian congregation. How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human [...]

“Christians tend to dismiss abstract art” by Philip Graham Ryken

“Some Christians continue to think that certain forms of art are more godly than others. They make a sharp distinction between the sacred and the secular, not recognizing that so-called secular art is an exploration of the world that God has made, and therefore has its place in deepening our understanding of God’s person and [...]

“The form greatly modifies the content” by David F. Wells

“Here was a newly invented and freshly minted church world. It was a church world completely reconfigured around the sales pitch. Here was the gospel product as sleekly fashioned and as artfully sold as anything in the mall or on television. Here also were churches smelling of coffee and reverberating with edgy music. There were [...]