Culture of Peace

"When Jesus talks about the Church, he says nothing about structure, governances, or style of worship. But he does talk about a community that is reconciling and reconciled. For Jesus, the Church is communities of his disciples who are being disciplined into communities of peace" ("A Culture of Peace", Alan Kreider, Eleanor Kreider, and Paulus Widjaja, Good Books, 2005, p. 68) We are so good at trying to define Church by all sorts of methodologies, most of which limit it needelessly. We need to learn that all that is needed by way of definition is that which is far more fundamnental, namely peace and reconciliation. The Church is not, fundamentally, about particular ways of doing things - but it is about making a real difference in the very essence of how life happens. "The Church is called to be a culture shaped by God whom we worship and by the story that we hear and tell .... we have an exciting destiny - to become not a moral majority .. but a prophetic minority" (ibid. p. 58).