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’

No gurus, only pastors

“There are to be no gurus in the Christian community – only pastors (shepherds). But shepherds do not feed their sheep. Instead they lead them to good, green pasture where the sheep feed themselves. Thus all preaching should lead people into the Scriptures and encourage them to browse there for themselves.”

“It is not easy to combine prophetic witness and pastoral care, firmness and gentleness, discipline and compassion. I think it was Chad Walsh, an American Episcopal layman, who first defined preaching as ‘disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed’.”

John Stott in his latest book 'The Living Church'

A living church is a caring church

“According to UN statistics, the number of destitute people (who survive on less than 1 US dollar a day) is about 1,000 million, while the average number who die every day of hunger and hunger-related causes, is said to be about 24,000. How can we live with these statistics? Many of the poor are our brothers and sisters. The Holy Spirit gives his people a tender social conscience. So those of us who live in affluent circumstances must simplify our economic lifestyle – not because we imagine this will solve the world’s macro-economic problems, but out of solidarity with the poor.
So then a living church is a caring church. Generosity has always been a characteristic of the people of God. Our God is a generous God; his church must be generous too.”
John Stott in his 50th book: The Living Church – Convictions of a lifelong pastor