This space for rent.

Particular lines to ponder:

And in our hypertherapeutic culture, we all need to realize that sometimes being in touch with our pain and being real about our doubts and authentic about our struggles is a form of narcissism and self-absorption more than maturity. We could all use a little less complaining and a little more gratitude. It’s easy to blast the church for all its failures. It’s harder to live in it day after day, year after year, with all its ho-hum humdrum and slowly, consistently make a difference. (221)

What we need are fewer revolutionaries and a few more plodding visionaries. That’s my dream for the church—God’s redeemed people holding tenaciously to a vision of godly obedience and God’s glory, and pursuing that godliness and glory with relentless, often unnoticed, plodding consistency. (222)

Until we are content with being one of the million nameless, faceless church members and not the next globe-trotting rock star, we aren’t ready to be a part of the church. In the grand scheme of things, most of us are going to be more of an Ampliatus (Rom. 16:8) or Phlegon (16:14) than an apostle Paul. And maybe that’s why so many Christians are getting tired of the church. We haven’t learned how to be part of the crowd. We haven’t learned to live with ordinariness. (224)

- Kevin in “Epilogue: Toward a Theology of Plodding Visionaries” from Kevin DeYoung & Ted Kluck, Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion (Moody, 2009).