Third, we need an ecclesiology to match the vision of the Bible and our faith in Jesus as 'the cosmic Christ'. If we are faithful to that vision, we shall reject a sectarian kind of Church which puts the threshold for entry too high, (the tendency of some forms of evangelicalism).
We shall also reject a vision of a Church based on 'Kingdom values', (the tendency of some forms of liberalism). The Church is based on truth, not simply values.
What alternatives are there to the sectarian and woolly churches? My answer is: a Church whose heart beats strongly and which is deeply committed to being an alternative community incarnate in the world.
Such a Church will be less worried about policing the boundaries than the sectarian church tends to be. In a word, a Church which is God-centred, rather than church-centred, will therefore be immersed in the life of the world.
More is needed, of course: Archbishop Rowan Williams has written recently of how Christian faith has never had a sacred language of its own. So it is constantly being translated and interpreted. It is always adapting to change. It is always seeking new forms of expression, new ways of outreach, 'all things to all people', (1 Corinthians 9.19-22).
The Paul who expounded the Scriptures to a synagogue congregation in Antioch (Acts 13.16ff) was the Paul who argued for the faith in Athens (Acts 17.22ff) without a single reference to the scriptures.
This was not an example of Paul having an 'off day', by leaving his sermon notes in Corinth; this was Paul being 'all things to all people' in faithfulness to his own 'mission statement' (1 Corinthians 9.22 again). The conclusion to the Athens story shows that the Lord blessed his work (see verse 34).
Last, but by no means least, there is our own experience of God, since theology and experience belong together. Sometimes we are strangely silent about our faith - even with each other. There is a proper place for reticence about, say, our personal life of prayer.
But the Church now urgently needs Christians who will share with each other and support each other in the faith. If we do not talk with each other about what we most deeply believe, how shall we be able to talk about the faith in the public domain?
The British Methodist Church - of which I saw a good deal last year - has some real strengths. Its commitment to, and involvement in, social and community work are impressive.
Yet sometimes, I fear, we slide into being a church-centred Church. When we do that we cease to live with a theology as large as life, and the world then is neither challenged nor given hope by the Gospel.
A theology as large as life is the very lifeblood of the Church. That alone will keep us where we are supposed to be - at the heart of life.
A Public Faith
Last Year's President of the Methodist Church, Neil Richardson, writes of his presidential year and his thinking on the place of the Church.
The public profile of the Church is not always a pretty sight. That isn't necessarily the Church's fault; the media prefer stories about the vicar who ran off with the organist's wife, rather than the congregation which chartered three lorries to send food and clothing to Romanian orphans.
But, even with that proviso, the Churches do not always look to be in life's mainstream. The weekly reports in local newspapers of church bring and buy sales or coffee mornings - worthy though they may be - or the list of weekly activities on the church noticeboard - do not convey a picture of churches grappling with the nitty-gritty of our social and economic life. We look out of touch, and sometimes we are.
What can be done?
The root of the problem, I believe, is theology - or, rather, our lack of theology. We need a theology as large as life, or Christianity with a public face.
To achieve this, first, rediscovering the Bible will be vital. But here - to coin a modern colloquialism - we score a 'double whammy'. Either we interpret the Bible all too literally and woodenly, making the Christian faith incredible to many, (the tendency of some forms of evangelicalism), or we neglect and marginalize it (the tendency of some forms of liberalism). Or - and this is especially pertinent to this discussion- we over-spiritualize the Bible.
For example, the New Testament word for 'repentance', metanoia, means 'change of outlook'. We tend to focus on the individual, spiritual and moral dimension of this. But what of national, social and economic metanoia?
The Government and social agencies in Britain are becoming increasingly concerned about our fast dwindling 'social capital': people generally trust each other less, and spontaneous acts of kindness and generosity outside our own particular group are less common than they were. How may our country 'repent' - i.e. change in ways which help us to flourish as a truly human society?
The Old Testament is especially important if we are to re-discover a theology as large as life. How can a Church which seriously engages with the great Old Testament themes of justice, righteousness and wisdom possibly withdraw from the public domain?
Second, we need an understanding of Jesus which is as large as life. An early Church poem (Colossians 1.15-20) describes him as the very blueprint and structure of creation itself; he holds the universe together; he is its destiny.
So faith in this Jesus cannot possibly be a private affair. Think of the places where, according to the gospels, his life began and ended: a manger and a cross. Those are the places God chose to be, and the kind of places where God still chooses to be.
This does not mean an emphasis on the human Jesus at the expense of what we have traditionally called His 'divinity'. Nothing less than Christian orthodoxy will do: Jesus was fully human, and fully divine.
