Len posted this recently. www.nextreformation.com
“God’s dream for radical newness will require discipline. Not discipline connected to punishment or shame, but discipline that roots us in Christ, deepening our connection to God and one another. This rootedness will come from having consistent, ordered ways in which we remain open to Grace, and they will be unique to each one of us. Grace constantly seeks entrance into our souls in order to effect change, but Grace will never force her way in. Discipline is the means by which we open ourselves to the sort of radical change that has always been God’s intention for us.” Gordon Cosby
From the earliest days of the church, after Gordon Cosby returned from World War II, a core assumption has been that the greatest impact on the world comes about by small, highly committed and disciplined communities of people focused on outward mission, inward transformation, and loving, accountable community. Church history, COS members point out, shows this to almost always have been true. Gordon is convinced that size actually inhibits effectiveness, that it works against a community of people being truly counter-cultural, to having depth, to breaking addictions to the culture, to truly witnessing to the gospel. “Large numbers,” he says, “tend almost inevitably toward depersonalization and institutionalism, toward a lessening of commitment. So we resist the temptation to power that comes through numbers.”
Church of the Savior, from Cutting Edge Magazine, Interviewed by Jeff Bailey.
In order for missional communities and churches to successfully form, Alan Roxburgh has noted that “leaders will need to become like novices, learning to recover practices that have become alien to current church experience…it requires waiting and listening to the Spirit’s directions…in a strange Cutting Edge Magazine. land.” -Alan Roxbury
