A church that imagines it stands beyond history, beyond conformity to culture, beyond sin, and beyond tragic misunderstandings and miscalculations--such a church has little to offer the world. But a church that owns up to its blunders and its compromises--its humanness--is a church that can both receive and reflect the love and grace of God to the world around it. In so doing, such a church contributes mightily to the restoration of the gospel of Christ.
Leonard Allen and Richard Hughes, Discovering Our Roots, p. 9.
Frank, this has me thinking. I think this statement is true about church and about our individual lives, too. We long for confessional communities, but we are afraid to own up to our brokenness. And not only that, we are afraid for others to admit their brokenness. It's messy and we don't always know how to see people as broken and holy at the same time.
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