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Church in Society

Courtesy of the Hultink Family Foundation, the Cántaro Institute is now the new home for the Reformational Digital Library (formerly known as the Reformational Publishing Project). All rights reserved.

Document: J. C. Vander Stelt, Church in Society (n.d.).

Excerpt: Becoming completely engrossed in the practicalities and immediacies of everyday life seems to be the unwritten law of this Now Generation. Time for a realistic appraisal or a relaxed and communally christian reflection on the direction in which our twentieth century is going is not available anymore, especially not when modern man has lost the biblical point of orientation and the true horizon of faith, and is subsequently swept along by the swift currents of daily events, movements and developments of ideas.

The spiritual restlessness of our Go Age has affected also the churches and their leaders. Together with many other members of the church, ministers particularly face the perennial danger of becoming so involved in the many-faceted duties of the church that they tend to become ecclesiastical introverts, people who are no longer keenly aware of the kind of world or society they live in and who are therefore unable to see aright the nature, place and task of the church in human life, society and history.

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Church in Society – J.C. Vander Stelt.pdf