Jim Petersen > Quotes

“Jesus never said or did anything to indicate that structure and organization could serve to protect God’s people. Shepherds and servants, yes, they would be needed, but he never talked about structure.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“But in reality, with all these innovations, we have really only managed to hold onto what is already ours. The rest of this society is not reading our ads. We have not really mobilized ourselves to take the initiative and go to the world.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“It does not insist that everyone and everything around it adopt the changes. It thus leaves what is already in existence intact.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“What are these weapons? Prayer, God’s Word, and a Christlike life.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“When we try to account for the increase in the numbers of Christians in those days, despite official hostility, we must give due consideration to the impression that behavior of this kind would make on the pagan population.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“They were called upon to sort out Jesus from Judaism in order to become a people for all nations”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“Barnabas, Apollos, Silas, Timothy, and Epaphroditus are all referred to as apostles in the New Testament.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“But this fascination has cost us our access to a very significant part of the true history of the church. That part passed ignored and unrecorded even as it happened, because no one deemed it to be newsworthy.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“It was that set of laws that justified his execution. How fitting that his death rendered all traditionalism, for all time, null and void.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“We need to choose, every day, whether we will live by faith, available as servants to God, or in self-oriented pursuits.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“Thus, in the areas of our concern, nothing really changed. The clergy retained ownership of the ministry, and the “unbelieving world” was enrolled in the church. The Anabaptists were at the other extreme; as separatists, they avoided the unbelieving society.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“It appears that when a nation crosses a threshold of injustice, immorality, and idolatry, God’s judgment results.22”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“is disturbingly rare to find people who seek to interpret the times and the role of God’s people in our times from the context of biblical truth. We can do that—we have the people, the freedom, and the resources. And it is not really that difficult.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“Another neglected aspect in the definitions is the sending dimension of the people of God. Since the reformers defined the church, with a few exceptions, as being a place where certain activities occurred among certain people, the traveling expressions of the people of God, such as the apostolic team, were omitted. The ministry of every believer in the world was also left out. Thus another piece of our Bible was placed beyond the reach of practice. Theological”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“On no occasion did any of the writers of the epistles tell believers to go back to the synagogue and shake it up one more time. Nor were they told to preach in the town square. They were not told to go door to door. Not that these things would have been wrong. It’s that they would not have proven fruitful. The combine had just passed through the city, reaping those who were prepared. To run the combine over the same field a second time would not be productive.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“Since the traveling expressions of the church have largely fallen into disuse, we have little contemporary experience to go on. The recovery of this function will require creative experimentation, trial and error, and perseverance. It will not be easy.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“We are called upon to sort out Jesus from our religious traditions in order to make him available to our nation.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“Truth,” said Tson, “must be observed.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“He never would have gotten us if he hadn’t gotten sick. We watched him and saw he was unafraid to die. He was in pain for eight months, but he overrode it through his faith and love for God. Not that he became angelic or anything. He was still the same crusty old friend we had always known. But the man knew where he was going. Those eight months were for us.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“In essence, what we have just said is that those among us who feel their function in the body is best accomplished “off campus” should be encouraged and enabled to do just that. But to think in these terms will require a paradigm change for some of us. It will mean a reordering of our thinking—away from being centered around sanctuaries, pulpits, pews, and clergy and to focusing on offices, living rooms, laypeople, and our neighbors. These can be unsettling ideas. They”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“Unity depends upon the ability to affirm and actively support diversity. There must be room for diversity in the way the body finds its expression, because the world to which we are sent is diverse.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“Here’s an example we can profit from. Those believers understood that they were in the world as witnesses to the unbelieving world. They also understood that the basic means of getting to that world was in their living out the gospel as a community in a lost society”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“The history of the church, from God’s perspective, is a history of the Holy Spirit using little people. It consists of a mustard seed here and there, some yeast hidden in dough, or a seed in the ground. Not many wise or influential people are included. Rather, it has been built on the lowly, the little people. Most of these have lived and died unnoticed, probably feeling in their own hearts that they had never really accomplished much for God with their lives. This history we have lost, but not forever. We will no doubt hear it told us as we stand together before God’s throne. Around”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“This frightens me. Sincerity and zeal do not serve as guarantees against error. It is probably true that anything that has human fingerprints on it is seriously marred and will eventually need replacing by God, the Lord of his people. Even our best ideas, in time, result in unintended consequences.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“Two primary functions need to be recovered at this time. We will call them the apostolic team and the local expansion of the gospel.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“In chapter 4 we saw how, even for that first generation, accomplishing those ideals was a delicate matter requiring voluntary, mutual submission between the apostles and elders who led the people of God.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“In confession the breakthrough to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him. . . . In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls: Moving Beyond Traditional Boundaries

“The journey to Christ is a process, not just an event. One of our most common mistakes is to try to do it all at once. We wait for an opportunity to share our faith with a friend or acquaintance, and when it comes we unload the whole message and end up calling for a decision. Few people are ready for that, and far more often than not the attempt results in polarization, rather than in faith. Non-believers vow to never let themselves get caught in such a situation again, and would-be messengers realize they have distanced a friend, and often give up for good on attempting to share their faith. It does not have to be that way.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“This worked to their advantage within the Roman Empire, since the Jews enjoyed a unique exemption from the state religion, which included the obligation of emperor worship. For a time the Roman state treated believers in Christ as one more sect under the umbrella of Judaism, extending to them the same exemption. Michael Green deals with these developments in his book, Evangelism in the Early Church, from which I have drawn heavily in this section.2”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls

“David Bosch, speaking of this shift in the church, said, “Its white-hot convictions, poured into the hearts of the first adherents, cooled down and became crystallized codes, solidified institutions and petrified dogmas. The prophet became a priest of the establishment, charisma became office, and love became routine. The horizon was no longer the world but the boundaries of the local parish.”
― Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls