Ironically, I was walking my dogs the other day when one of them had an encounter with another dog, as a result of which he has a hole in his shoulder that required 15 stitches, and there is a hole in my bank account thanks to the lack of an NHS equivalent for dogs. Even more ironically, the other dog owner was someone I know and was walking across the park to greet, in a very missional type way. His dog and mine have history and it was an accident waiting to happen. Clearly they were not feeling missional.
 
Anyway, I was reading Mark Dever’s latest book, The Church: The gospel made visible, and thought he gives a very good illustration for how Christians should understand their cultural role:

The Bible calls individual Christians to live lives of justice and generosity toward others. Organically, Christian disciples scatter and represent Christ powerfully and in ways the Bible does not call the institutional church to act. An analogy might be helpful here. A married man goes to work as a married man and goes to the store as a married man, and the fact that he’s married affects how he interacts with others at work and the store, but neither his work nor shopping are an intrinsic part of being married. In the same way, a member of a church follows Christ in all sorts of ways that are not tied to the work that God entrusts to the local church in any institutional fashion. But the individual’s membership should affect how he does everything outside the gathered church.

 
As I say, that is a good illustration. Practically, it means that as a dog owner I am responsible to get my dog to the vet when he is injured – being a Christian and church member does not have any bearing on that. As a Christian I have a responsibility to not hold any bitterness against the owner of the dog who damaged mine. As a member of the church I have a responsibility to do what the church is called to do and proclaim the good news of the gospel whenever and wherever I can; which isn’t always so easy, especially if the dogs are fighting.
 
What it most certainly does not mean is that the church should assume ownership of all the dogs in the park.