The notion that communication best occurs through participation invites us to experience the church and to be interpreted by its meaning not as an abstract idea, but as a present reality. This approach to the church as a “metaphysical presence” is the strongest kind of apologetic to the reality of God in a postmodern world.
-Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 91.