No minority complex

“We need in particular to repent of our pessimism. Christians have no business to be pessimists. Faith and pessimism are incompatible. To be sure, we are not starry-eyed idealists; we are down-to-earth realists. We know well that sin is ingrained in human nature and in human society. We are not expecting to build utopia. But we also know that the gospel has transforming power, and that Christ has commissioned us to be effective salt and light in the world.
So let us offer ourselves to God as agents of change. Let’s not excuse ourselves by developing a minority complex!
This is the optimism of Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909), an American Unitarian minister and writer, who lived and worked in Boston, Massachusetts, and inspired many by his story Ten Times One is Ten:

I’m only one,
but I am one.
I can’t do everything,
but I can do something.
What I can do,
I ought to do.
And what I ought to do,
by the grace of God
I will do.

And if that is true of an individual Christian, how much greater an impact should the church be able to make!”

John Stott in ‘The Living Church – Convictions of a lifelong pastor’