ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the virtuous character of the church can be a tool in its mission and ministry. One of the problems people face when examining virtuous character is the danger of interpreting it as a form of neo-Pelagianism. If the church is to be faithful to the character of Christ, then it will embark on this task of listening and interpretation in a particularly Christological way and central to this will be a theology of kenosis. One of the ways in which the church uses itself for the sake of society and the world is in terms of modelling for the world what a rightly ordered society might look like. A conception of the church as micro-polis has implicit in it a commitment to vicariousness. The virtuous church will attempt to hold for society that which society cannot hold for itself, namely the vision of the kingdom.
