Recently, I read a book that, from my experience in church culture, is the best assessment of the current plight and future hope of the American church.  It's called The Mystic Way of Evangelism by Elaine Heath, Professor of Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology.  Here's a couple of passages from the book.  Let me know what you think.

"Many Christians view the decline of Western Christendom with alarm, as if God had fallen from heaven.  Enormous effort is put forth to launch church growth programs to shore up membership, increase giving, and keep denominational ships afloat.  But the history of God's people is a history of life cycles, a history of clarity about call and identity, followed by complacence, followed by collusion with the powers, followed by catastrophic loss.  Contrary to being a disaster, the exilic experiences of loss and marginalization are what are needed to restore the church to its evangelistic place.  On the margins of society the church will once again find its God-given voice to speak to the dominant culture in subversive ways, resisting the powers and principalities, standing against the seduction of the status quo.  The church will once again become a prophetic, evangelistic, alternative community, offering to the world a model of life that is radically "other," life-giving, loving, healing, liberating.  This is kind of community is not possible for the church of Christendom.  Christendom opposes prophetic community with its upside-down power and its exposure of golden calves."

She continues with a hopeful vision of the future.  "The dark night of the soul is precisely that - a divinely initiated process of loss - so that the accretions of the world, the flesh, and the devil may be recognized and released.  It is a process of detachment from disordered affections, a process of purgation and de-selfing.  Though the dark night is perilous, with no guarantee of a good outcome, it holds the possibility of new beginnings. Out of the night the church could emerge into a dawn of freedom and fidelity."

What do you think?