Last fall the phone rang in my study. It was a newspaper pollster doing a survey on church and society. His main question was, "What would your city be like without the church?"  I was tempted to be funny in my reply. Like the cartoon that shows a pack of wolves howling at the moon. A wolf on the back row is looking worried and asks another fanged friend, "Do you think we're doing any good?" Sometimes I feel like that when the church seems to be ignored or irrelevant.  Yet anytime one feels he is small and can't have much of an impact, just remember what it's like going to bed with a mosquito in the room!

Actually I told the phone researcher that a city without the church would be like life without salt. Why do I say this?  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said to his disciples, "You are…