Tod Bolsinger

From Divine Communion to Our Church Communities

“The community is therefore, not only the receiver of the Word of revelation; it is itself revelation...The community is the body of Christ. Body here is not just a metaphor. The community is the body of Christ; it does not represent the Body of Christ.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, 60

 
The Church is God's incarnation today.  The Church is Jesus' body on earth.  The Church is the temple of the Spirit. The Church is not a helpful thing for my individual spiritual journey. The Church is the journey.  The Church is not a collection of “soul-winners” all seeking to tell unbelievers “the Way” to God. The Church is the Way. To be part of the Church is to be part of God—to be part of God’s Communion and to be part of God’s ministry. To belong to the people of God is to enjoy relationship with God and live out the purposes of God. The Church is God’s present day word and witness to an unbelieving world. And, most importantly, the Church is the only true means to be transformed into the likeness of God.

Tod Bolsinger, It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian

Living the Trinity

The fellowship of Christians is just as much an end in itself as is their fellowship with Christ. This quite unique meeting of the horizontal and the vertical is the consequence and the type of that communion which the father has with the Son “before the world was;” (John 17:5, 24) in the supernatural life of the Christian communion is completed the revelation of the Triune God...the very being of God is agape--that love which the Son brings to mankind from the Father, and it is just this love which is the essence of the fellowship of those who belong to the Ecclesia.

Emil Brunner, The Misunderstanding of the Church (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953), 12-13