“Oh, please, approve of me”–the usual message of modern Christian churches–makes a feeble substitute for “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” The trouble with Christianity is not flamboyance of conviction. The trouble is paucity of conviction, flaccidity, the turned cheek replaced by a “Kick Me” sign. it is, at the lowest level, failure to believe all–or to believe at all. (206)So how can the sinking ship float once more? This is the question Murchison goes on to ask. He also offers the beginnings of an answer.
What might all our churches of the Christian mainline–what might my Episcopal Church–do at this moment for their own sakes, for the sake of the many who look to them for the words of salvation? They might start once more to believe with all their heart, the way they once did believe. Believe what? The words their followers and servants took centuries ago to forests and fields and cabins, for their own part believing such words, such promises, to bear the stamp of God, to be the very words of life spoken to His faithful people. (208)Murchison is right. If the mainline Presbyterians really believed Westminster and the Reformed really believed the Three Forms of Unity and the Lutherans really believed Augsburg and the Methodists really believed their hymns and the Episcopalians really believed their liturgy, we would see widespread renewal in the mainline churches. But not before.
The first task of the mainline is to repent. The second is to remember.
Kevin DeYoung
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