Healing Spiritual Amnesia

Churches stagnate, decline, and die for a number of reasons, but principally because they have forgotten that we worship, not to feel comfortable and safe, but to come into the presence of a God who leads us out into the world. They have forgotten the "cloud of witnesses" who have gone before them in the Christian faith, providing models for how they can proclaim the message of the gospel in ways that new generations can hear it. Paul Nixon calls this failure of memory "spiritual amnesia." Concerned with institutional survival and personal comfort, congregations have forgotten what previous generations of Christians have learned time and again: that the church's great challenge is to make the gospel available in new and compelling ways to those who need to hear it. In a series of sweeping insights into congregational life and contemporary culture, Nixon maps a course that will help churches remember who they are and for whom they exist.