Debate -protestant theologian - Stanley Hauerwas

Beautiful Singers
of the Gospel

Father Giusanni is certainly right that the Church has failed mankind just as much as mankind has failed the Church. John Howard Yoder pointed out the Gospel is not the Gospel until it's been received.
Too often Christians have embodied Christ in a manner that the joy that is at the heart of Gospel makes it clear we have not received Christ.
Because we have not received Christ joyfully, humankind has been robbed of the witness necessary to be able to receive the God we will soon again find in a manger.
It used to be said that it was the task of the church to adapt the Gospel to the world. That unfortunate way of putting the matter surrendered exactly what the Gospel has to give to the world. It is not our task to adapt the Gospel to the world but rather to adapt the world to the Gospel. How else would the world know what it needs than by the Spirit's invigoration of the Church? Thus Father Giusanni as usual is right that the world has been robbed of the Gospel just to the extent we have failed to be the beauty God has endowed the Church with through the Spirit. So let us learn to be beautiful singers of the Gospel.

(*Professor of Theological Ethics, University Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina)