Outcroppings of Heaven

How often do you think of this when you gather with the saints for worship on Sundays?

[E]ach church is the full manifestation in time and space of the one, true, heavenly, eschatological, new covenant church.  Local churches should see themselves as outcroppings of heaven, analogies of "the Jerusalem that is above," indeed colonies of the new Jerusalem, providing on earth a corporate and visible expression of "the glorious freedom of the children of God."

--D. A. Carson, "Evangelicals, Ecumenism, and the Church."  Quoted in Stephen Wellum, "Baptism and the Relationship Between the Covenants," Believer's Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ, ed. Thomas Schreiner and Shawn Wright (Broadman & Holman, 2006), p. 148.