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| (Stained glass in Redeemer sanctuary) |
I have argued that the crisis in American Christianity is the loss of our distinctive, which is the experienced presence of God. Our distinctive is not theologizing or theorizing about God. It's not preaching or worship or coffee or stage lighting or friendliness or a building. It is... God. With us. In encounter and experience.
In this week's Christianity Today editor Mark Galli says something similar. He writes:
"Contemporary evangelicalism is in serious trouble. Actually, its crisis is the same one that afflicts all Christianity in America. At the risk of hubris, and the risk of merely adding one more item to the seemingly endless list of crises, I believe that the crisis lies at the heart of what ails large swaths of the American church. Alexander Solzhenitsyn named it in his speech upon receiving the Templeton Prize in Religion in 1968. He was talking about Western culture when he used it. I apply it to the American church, evangelical and not:
We have forgotten God."
