Building Up and Fortifying the Church

A selection from a letter by Rev. William Still to his congregation, Gilcomston South Church of Scotland, Aberdeen, November, 1960:

The Church’s first task, it seems to me, is to keep being herself in a changing world, and thus to build herself up and fortify herself against the growing onslaughts of evil, as prophesied in history and in each successive generation. This she can only do by being, not evangelically minded, devotionally or convention minded, socially minded, ecumenically minded, or politically minded; but by taking the whole Word of God as her diet, and feeding and building herself up on that. Thus she preserves her strength for every heroic task, including all these, and makes impact, often painful impact, upon all the life of her day.

The Letters of William Still, The Banner of Truth, 1984, pp. 75-76.