Christianity Rediscovered

In [evangelizing], do not try to call them back to where they were, and do not try to call them to where you are, as beautiful as that place might seem to you. You must have the courage to go with them to a place that neither you nor they have ever been before – a beautiful description of the unpredictable process of evangelization, a process leading to that new place where none of us has ever been before. When the gospel reaches a people where they are, their response to that gospel is the church in a new place, and the song they will sing is that new, unsung song, that unwritten melody that haunts all of us. I believe the unwritten melody, the new song waiting to be sung in the place of the hymn of salvation, is simply the song of creation. To move away from the theology of salvation to the theology of creation may be the task of our time. ~ Vincent Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered.

An inward-turned Christianity is a dangerous counterfeit, an alluring masquerade. It is no Christianity at all. The salvation of one’s own soul, or self-sanctification, or self-perfection, or self-fulfillment may well be the goal of Buddhism or Greek philosophy or modern psychology. But it is not the goal of Christianity. For someone to embrace Christianity for the purpose of self-fulfillment or self-salvation is, I think, to betray or to misunderstand Christianity at its deepest level. Christianity must be a force that moves outward, and a Christian community is basically in existence for others. A Christian community which spends all its resources on a building campaign for its own needs has long ago left Christianity high and dry on the banks. ~ Vincent Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered