
The church throughout history has unfolded in many cultures and therefore no one expression of the church stands alone as the true visible body of Christ. This means that we must affirm the church in its different paradigms. . . . A goal . . . is to accept diversity as a historical reality, but to seek unity in the midst of it.
-Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 85.