Some Theses on the Church in North America Today (1)




1.    The church as we have known it is dying/dead because it has lost its identity which has obscured or hindered it from appropriating its DNA.

a.    The judgment Dietrich Bonhoeffer passed on his assimilated and accommodated German church during Nazism applies just as well to our similarly assimilated and accommodated American church: "Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world."[1]

b.    I contend that that DNA is to be what I call a “subversive counter-revolutionary movement.”[2]

c.    Once we tap into that DNA we can experiment with forms and structures that faithfully witness to Christ. Form follows life. “The medium is the message” (Marshall McLuhan).


[1] DBWE 8: Kindle location 10996
[2] Lee Wyatt, “God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary Movement,” marginalchristianity.blogspot.com 3/31/15.

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