As God's Old Testament people failed in history to be faithful to their call to be a light to the nations, so also the church has often failed to be salt and light as Christ declared it to be. The church often loses its vision and deserts its mission. Sometimes it allows the world to pull it off its course of holiness and obedient servanthood. Sometimes it neglects its continual need for Holy Spirit renewal and empowerment and becomes dead in faith and works. It too often loses its focus to a selfish need for survival and relinquishes its responsibility to cling to the message of the cross of Christ, the only relevant message for a perishing world.