Dr. Craig Ott digs into the relationship between the church and the transformation of the world.
1. “God has created the church and commissioned the church for his purposes. That calling is spelled out for us in the Scriptures, and our role as his people is to clearly discern that calling. Time and again we must recalibrate our understanding of the church, examine the investment of our energies, and purify our motives so as to maintain alignment with that mission, God’s own mission” (Page 2).
2. “Transformation always has to do with change from something to something else, whereby the change is substantive and affecting the very essence or nature of the object” (Page 5).
3. “A transformational church is a church that becomes God’s instrument of such personal transformation through evangelism and discipleship” (Page 13).
4. “If transformation is the dynamic of our mission, and God’s glory is both the source and goal of our mission, then the church in the power of the Spirit is God’s primary instrument of mission in this age. The church is the only institution on earth entrusted with the message of transformation—the gospel—and the only community that is a living demonstration of that transformation” (Page 19).
5. “Without the gospel there is no forgiveness, no new creation, no church, no transformation” (Page 23).
6. “The church is a kingdom community. The kingdom of God is not only a future hope, but also has broken into history as a present reality in seed form, expressed in and through the life and influence of the church” (Page 31).
7. “A missional ecclesiology emphasizes that the church does not merely send missionaries (as important as that is), but the church itself is God’s missionary, sent into the …
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