Ecclesiometry

From The Living Church-

Innumerable printer cartridges have been used up and billions of electrons inconvenienced in the effort to explicate what is arguably a monumental shift in the relationship between Christianity and Western culture. This has been taking place over the last several decades, at least, but seems more recently to be gaining momentum at an exponential rate. The privileged position that Christianity had enjoyed, first in Europe and then in the Europe-influenced societies of the Americas, has been effectively lost in all but a few scattered pockets. The Constantinian synthesis has run its course. Quite possibly, the primary challenge facing the Church in the coming years, dwarfing all other challenges, will be how to navigate this new and unfamiliar territory, how to exist — and, indeed, thrive, one hopes — in a post-Christian environment, one without an assumed hand-in-glove relationship with secular society.

The problem is, it’s been so long since we’ve had to do this that we’ve forgotten how. There is very little by way of received wisdom or “best practices.” We can get a few ideas by examining evidentiary fragments of catechumenal praxis that might be traceable to the third century, but, in the larger context, that’s pretty meager fare. For most practical purposes, the task before us is more akin to discovering fire or inventing the wheel. That prospect is, to say the very least, daunting. It will require us to cast aside the mental maps that are so familiar and comfortable. They are obsolete, no longer corresponding accurately to the territory they purport to represent.

More here-

http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2014/10/07/ecclesiometry/