Church: Why Bother?

I think I found that book I was looking for on metaphors for the Kingdom of God, only it was not what I thought it was. This is a great book but the metaphors I was looking for are metaphors for church, not God Kingdom, although, I think the two are similar and I will still share this with my senior pastor, after all, I stole the book off his shelf.

In any case, I'll leave you with some of Yancey's thoughts:

My favorite definition of the church comes from Karl Barth, who said, "[The Church] exists . . . to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to [the world's] own manner and which contradicts it in a way which is full of promise." . . . For this reason, church is worth the bother. p. 40, 41.

He later talks about a bunch of church metaphors but concludes with the image of the church being the "body" from 1 Corinthians chapters 12 - 14 saying: "To me, the most important lesson from the body is this: we - you and I - form the primary representation of God's presence in the world. p. 68. "