David E. Fitch > Quotes

“God is at work in all the places we already inhabit. He is bigger than the arena of our own immediate church programs and ideas about evangelism. He is a prodigal God recklessly working in people and situations of all types. If we truly believe God is at work in the world, we must take the time to pay attention, listen, and discern what God is doing in the lives of those around us.”
― David E. Fitch, Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts into the Missional Frontier

“These days, when our companies are spinning their wheels and all the street lights are out, when our familiar routes are blocked and our maps are torn, this first signpost of post-Christendom directs us towards a prodigal Christianity that does not stand still in order to attract, does not sit in the seat of authority, and does not walk in the ways of the universal, but instead delights in the paths of the prodigal God”
― David E Fitch, Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts Into the Missional Frontier

“Poverty is not primarily about money. It is about having no idea what to do and/or having no one with whom to do it. The former I called imagination and the latter I called community. To the extent that our neighborhood had imagination and community, we were not poor. But without imagination and community, no money could help us. . . . The role of the local church is to be a community of imagination [for the kingdom].12”
― David E. Fitch, Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape the Church for Mission

“The gospel is the announcement that God has fulfilled the promise of Scriptures to make the world right in Jesus Christ (1 Cor 15:1-11). Christ has died for our sins. By his death and resurrection (and ascension), he has defeated the effects of our sins, including death itself. He now sits at the right hand of the Father ruling over the world. In Christ the new creation has begun. Old things are passing away. Behold, the new has begun (2 Cor 5:17). All who respond to this good news repent of the old ways, and make Jesus their Lord and Savior, enter in and become part of what God is doing to reconcile the whole world to himself (2 Cor 5:18-19), and receive power to become the children of God (Jn 1:12). This in one paragraph is the gospel.”
― David E. Fitch

“The political rally, in contrast, depends on the making of an enemy to stir the crowd. The ones who gather gain their identity by being against something. If you took away that enemy, the crowd would fritter away because there would be nothing left for them to gather around. Their life would be empty at the core. This politic shapes us as an angry, coercive, and defensive people.”
― David E Fitch, The Church of Us vs. Them: Freedom from a Faith That Feeds on Making Enemies

“The difference between the church and the world therefore is not spatial, that is, between where God is and where he is not. There is no in here and out there when it comes to the church (see appendix 3). Instead, the church in essence experiences God’s presence visibly now, ahead of the time when God shall visibly reign among the whole world. The difference between the church and the world then is just a matter of timing. The church experiences the kingdom ahead of time. The rest of the world is heading there; they just don’t know it yet (“for he shall reign until all things have been made subject” [1 Cor 15:25, my translation]).”
― David E. Fitch, Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape the Church for Mission

“proclaiming the gospel goes beyond something personal. The gospel is a cosmic reality that supersedes being about me. If it’s merely personal, the gospel would stop with me. I might share it with someone as something nice that really benefitted me and maybe the other person might like to give it a try too. But if it is cosmic, it is presented as a matter of fact that has reality regardless of whether I (or anyone else for that matter) have chosen to live by its news. Proclaiming the gospel therefore is the art of announcing to our neighbors that this new world has begun in Christ.”
― David E. Fitch, Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape the Church for Mission

“As we live together in Scripture as “Our One True Story of God for the Whole World,” we come to know its authority in and through Jesus Christ.22 Anything less reduces Scripture to a collection of facts or feelings.”
― David E. Fitch, Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts into the Missional Frontier