This post from Pastor John Wright talks about the glaring lack of ecclesiology in the American evangelical church. This quote describes as well as one sentence could the “drug” which church has become; a “drug” to help us “cope” in a world where our ultimate purpose is far from the minds of millions.
Worship becomes a means of therapeutic personal experience to help cope with the psychological struggles of the week that comes from competing in a capitalistic market of conflicting personal interests.
and so the conclusion is this:
(with all kinds of “must read” in between, as Pastor John describes the way in which Benedict XVI’s doctrine of the church encourages him)
If we would anchor the life of a congregation in the life and sayings of Jesus, in devotion to the Triune God by faith in the participation in the Eucharist, one understands that “personal relationship with Jesus” language just does not approach the profound beauty of salvation in Christ by which we participate in the very life of God in faith, hope, and love. It also prevents the cooptation of the life of the church by powers, while calling us personally and cooperately into the sufferings of a fallen world in the name of its Creator, who desires to call it beyond these sufferings in a celebration of the Life that God is.
