Often times I get bogged down in my thinking about where the church and Christianity is today. I go back and forth between thinking really positive thoughts about church and Christianity and thinking about how poorly the church and believers do in theology, relationships, and reaching unbelievers. But I recently read this and it gave me a better perspective I think.

“Luther recovered the radical nature of divine grace, the centrality of faith, and the priesthood of all believers-crucial aspects of Christianity that had been lost since the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Wesley recovered the holy nature of discipleship, which had been dormant for some time. The Pentecostals  recovered the relevance of the gifts of the Spirit for today after 1700 years of almost total absence. A number of thinkers throughout this century have been rediscovering the central significance of the doctrine of the Trinity, the understanding that the church is a dynamic organism instead of an organization, and the centrality of eschatology for Christian thought and living” (Boyd, The God of the Possible, 117).

Look how far we’ve come.

(Photo: Dawn Allynn)