Sunday, October 20, 2019

The Entertainment Church, the Invisible Church, or the Discipling Church?

(Water dripping on my front porch)

Gerald Sittser writes:

"As long as Christians assume we are still living in Christendom, the church will continue to decline in the West, no matter how ferociously Christians fight to maintain power and privilege. If anything, the harder Christians fight, the more precipitous the decline will be, for cultural power and privilege will come at an increasingly high price. Christians will either accommodate until the faith becomes almost unrecognizable, or they will isolate until their faith becomes virtually invisible.
Nothing short of a change of church culture will suffice—from a culture of entertainment, politics, personality, and program to a culture of discipleship. Such a radical change will require patience, steadiness, and purposefulness."
The options are:
1) The Entertainment Church (acquiescence to culture; resulting in the unrecognizability of the Church)
2) The Isolated Church (escape from culture; the Church becomes invisible; the Benedict Option?)
3) The Culture of Discipleship Church (the Radical Church; the Biblical Church)