There can be no Word of God without the people of God.
The Church is nothing but a section of humanity in which Christ has really taken form.
We must say bluntly that when the church ceases to be a mission, then she ceases to have any right to the titles by which she is adorned in the New Testament.
St. Augustine, somewhere, has a phrase about the church of his day, as, like a frost bound tree, seeming dead, but waiting for the summer.
The Church exists by mission, just as a fire exists by burning.
