Where is the charismatic church and where should it be going?
No Substitutes I believe the church in America is in a moment of transition and also in a moment of emerging hunger, and the current season of my life has caused me to share in this hunger. I have been exposed to radically different expressions of what church is supposed to be, and while each has elements which I cherish, none is really satisfying. A new paradigm must emerge which leverages the best of existing paradigms and perhaps other features which have not yet been introduced to the church. The first question that any vision of church must answer is “What is Church?” Why does it exist? What does God want it to be like? The Church exists as the manifestation of Christ on Earth, as the vehicle of his ever-increasing reign, as a healing family, and as a mission to a lost and dying world. The church does not exist to fulfill our personal dreams, but we exist to fulfill the dreams of God. Looking back over centuries of Protestant history we see that God is progressively deformalizing
