Have the times really changed? Is the Church actually dying? Are we truly in danger of being subsumed beneath a new, ominous culture of evil? Or is the only real difference a matter of our perspective? Is the only real change the fact that we have convinced ourselves that times have changed?
It is no secret that Christianity has been ceding ground to secular worldliness and exotic spiritualities for years. The front lines of the battle waged against the present darkness have experienced retreat after retreat, each time wagging heads saying, "If only we can rethink our strategies for mission, we can turn this tide and win the lost for Jesus."
But for all our "rethinking," we haven't "rethought" nearly so much as it might seem. Perhaps, the real out-of-the-box thinking we need is not out-of-the-box at all, but inside it.
In Without Flesh, author Jonathan Fisk proposes that it isn't that we need something new, but something we lost, something very, very old. Like . . .the most important words Jesus ever said.
Fisk's solution is simpler than we may think. Maybe the only problem is that we just don't want to believe that it's true.
"Do this," He said.