We don’t really need more technology, better educational systems, or more promising politicians. Do you know what the world really needs? Christians!
We need people who are called to a radical simplicity of lifestyle, to remind the rest of us that we don’t need what we think we need.
We need people committed to celibacy, to tell us that sex is neither a necessity nor a god.
We need people who are lavish in prayer and spiritual disciplines, in order to remind those of us with harder spirits of where our real help comes from.
We need communities of Christians willing to commit themselves to support each other in risky, venturesome ways, to goad the rest of us out of our autonomy.
We need Christians willing to resist the many ways in which the dominant in our world crush the weak.
We need Christians who find a thousand joyful ways to take the screwed-up values of this world and turn them upside-down.
“The greatest need for our time is for the Church to become what it has seldom been: the body of Christ with its face to the world, loving others regardless of religion or culture, pouring itself out in a life of service, offering hope to a frightened world, and presenting itself as a real alternative to the existing arrangement.”
(Excerpts from Van Gelder, Confident Witness, 139, and Brennan Manning, The Signature of Jesus)