N.T. Wright: What would it take for the Church...

"Mark calls the church to abandon its imperialistic dreams on the one hand, and its passive noninvolvement on the other, and to become for the world what Jesus was for the world (...) What would it take for the Church (...) to embrace this vision of following Jesus? I long to see Christians in this country standing up to the government on the issues of education, of the arms industry, of this World debt. I long to see the Church standing up to the radical opposition parties on issues like abortion. I long to see the Church lovingly but firmly confronting the media barons who destroy people`s lives and reputations for the sake of a sensational story. But it must be done in the right way. We live in a world of Jameses and Johns, of projected guilt and fear and anger. There`s no point in the Church simply keeping all of that in circulation. We don`t need any more Jameses and Johns, Christians who project their own insecurities out on the world and call it preaching the gospel. We need - and it`s a scary thought - Christians who will do for the world what Jesus was doing."  ~ N.T. Wright, Following Jesus, S.49f