Disappearing Church Quotes

“The reality of Christian mission in today’s churches is a story of thousands of quiet kindnesses. In many of our most disadvantaged communities it is the churches that provide warmth, food, friendship, and support for individuals who have fallen on the worst of times.”1”
― Mark Sayers, Disappearing Church: From Cultural Relevance to Gospel Resilience

“The danger for Christian second cultures communicating the gospel to pre-Christian cultures is that they may inadvertently colonize them. The danger when Christian second cultures communicate the gospel to post-Christian third cultures is that they themselves may be colonized—for the third culture is just as evangelistic as the second culture. With its great mission to prohibit anyone from prohibiting, it seeks to propagate its dogma that there should be no dogma.”
― Mark Sayers, Disappearing Church: From Cultural Relevance to Gospel Resilience

“Maybe the limitations of church, the discipline of regular attendance, the commitment it requires, also teach us to be Christlike. Maybe we need to reimagine church in our minds as a spiritual discipline, which teaches us the value of delayed gratification, of personally investing in change, of becoming more like Jesus.”
― Mark Sayers, Disappearing Church: From Cultural Relevance to Gospel Resilience

“The post-Christian revolution, by removing God from the throne in preference of the self, cannot look to a transcendent Almighty for a definition of righteousness, morality, and justice. The self must determine what the good is.”
― Mark Sayers, Disappearing Church: From Cultural Relevance to Gospel Resilience

“Post-Christianity is not pre-Christianity; rather post-Christianity attempts to move beyond Christianity, whilst simultaneously feasting upon its fruit.”
― Mark Sayers, Disappearing Church: From Cultural Relevance to Gospel Resilience

“The disappearance of a mode of church engagement characterized by commitment, resilience, and sacrifice among many Western believers. In its place a new mode of disengaged Christian faith and church interaction is emerging. This new mode is characterized by sporadic engagement, passivity, commitment phobia, and a consumerist framework.”
― Mark Sayers, Disappearing Church: From Cultural Relevance to Gospel Resilience

“Grace is covenantal. It creates a unique kind of authority structure in which the receiver of grace is indebted to the giver of grace. That is why often people who receive an unmerited gift protest, “I simply can’t take this gift,” because we intuitively understand that we are indebted.”
― Mark Sayers, Disappearing Church: From Cultural Relevance to Gospel Resilience