In the selection below,  from my favorite author of all time,  a very good description of one important role/description for the church: “a small, disciplined, self-critical groups whose reflection will issue in purposeful action”

 

We do not have to sit around immobilized, waiting for help to come. We can learn to care for our society, which in large part means learning to care for our cities. If our streets are to be redeemed we will have to commit our own human and financial resources to that goal. We will have to recover our gifts of faith and hope and endurance, evoke the gifts of other persons, and thus develop leaders and facilitators for the building of a global network of small, disciplined, self-critical groups whose reflection will issue in purposeful action. This is a way to join in the liberation movement that is going on in all the poor countries of the world. We are not the initiators of this movement. Even the suffering ones of the earth are not the initiators, though they are the genuine leaders. The movement is God’s.

By Elizabeth O’Connor

Source: Servant Leaders, Servant Structures

from inward/outward