In responding to this opportunity, churches are discovering deeper meanings in the New Testament image of the church as the body of Christ (1 Cor. (religion-online.org)
For help, see Susan B. Thistlewaithe, Metaphors for the Contemporary Church (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1983); Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (New York: Doubleday, 1974); and Paul Minear, Images of the Church in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960). (religion-online.org)
And at yet another point, we are told that, although evangelicals can not accept all of what process theists mean when they say that the world is «God's body», there is a «striking parallel» between the process concept of «God's self - embodiment in a redeemed world» and «the biblical image of the church as the «Body of Christ»» (111). (religion-online.org)