Stefan Moll
Stefan Moll says can understand that many can no longer identify with the church. He's the pastor of a United Methodist congregation in Baden, Switzerland. (Photo by Alex Spichale courtesy of UM & Global)
The Aargauer Zeitung (the newspaper from Aargau, Switzerland) recently ran a profile of Stefan Moll, a United Methodist pastor who serves a church in Baden as well as leading the Swiss UMC's TV and radio outreach. For those who can read German or want to run the article through an online translation service, it's an interesting recounting of a distinctive pastoral career from Switzerland.
But one particular comment by Moll stands out. The article says:
"Moll] maintains the claim that the church must offer believers a feeling of home is wrong: "Church should be a place where the foreign can be found." Faith always means crossing borders."
This comment in the article follows a discussion of migrants in the Swiss church and the political implications of the faith. But Moll's testimony gets to an important theological point about the church: Being the church involves being in mission, and mission is not always comfortable. But, as Moll makes clear, the willingness to be uncomfortable is how the church remains focus outward, offering the gospel to new people in new times.