many large congregations are like piles of iron filings which have been accumulated by the magnetism of a preaching ministry. There is no real life and virtue in such heaps of disconnected Christians. Vitality in the church of Christ gathers around centered groups of Christians who are interacting with one another and with other groups like cells or organs in a body. The most natural microcommunity in the church is the Christian home, and pastors should work to build up this unit into the functional strength it enjoyed in Puritanism (or in the patriarchal household in the Bible, which was the
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