Lessile Newbigin has been one of my heros for some time.
“The community that confesses Jesus is Lord has been, from the beginning, a movement launched into the public life of mankind. The Greco-Roman world in which the New Testament was written was full of societies offering to those who wished to join a way of personal salvation. There were several commonly used Greek words for such societies. At no time did the church use any of these names for itself…it used with almost total consistency the name ecclesia – the ecclesia theou, the assembly called by God…The Church could have escaped persecution by the Roman Empire if it had been content to be treated as a cultus privatus.” - from The Open Secret
