“It must be a community that knows life and death, a community that seeks to be real in light of the unreal. It must be a community that proclaims that in its life, in its actions of being with and for one another, it participates in the fullness of God’s love for the world. It must be a community that is not constituted in functions, but like the family is based in persons, and has the goal of loving and being with one another. It must be a community that. . . asserts and witnesses in its life that it “knows a power that runs even deeper than a mother’s love.””

“The church, though, is not just a hospital, but a field hospital. Unlike a stationary institution that occupies a certain territory and defends it against encroachment, a field hospital is mobile, an event more than an institution. A field hospital is unconcerned about defending its own prerogatives, and instead goes outside of itself to respond to an emergency. As a body, it is visible, but it does not claim its own territory; its event-like character creates a space of healing. It neither withdraws from the world, sect-like, nor resigns itself to the world as it is. It is not confined to working within the given political and economic structures of the world, nor is it concerned primarily with gaining influence among the powerful in order to change the world from above. The approach is from below.”

“I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting, and dirty because it has been out on the streets rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and clinging to its own security. I do not want a church concerned with being at the center and which ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures.”