The whole meaning of this present age between Christ’s coming and His coming again is that in it the powers of the age to come are at work now to draw all men into one in Christ. When the Church ceases to be one, or ceases to be missionary, it contradicts its own nature.

— Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church, Kerr Lectures (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 25–26.