Since a number of people — people we know and people all over, really — have been reading material such as Pagan Christianity, The Shack, Blue Like Jazz and others like them, the following quote from A.W. Tozer’s Paths To Power has come to mind and stayed with me for a while.  It’s really powerful stuff — ’cause it’s “point blank” and fairly insightful, essentially; it’s just difficult to hear ’cause it makes us a little uncomfortable, shattering our present “categories” and frames of reference… :-)

Anyway, here it is:

The (Early) Church was not an organization merely, not a movement, but a walking incarnation of spiritual energy.  The Church began in power, moved in power and moved just as long as she had power.  When she no longer had power she dug in for safety and sought to conserve her gains.  But her blessings were like the manna: when they tried to keep it overnight it bred worms and stank.  So we have had monasticism, scholasticism, institutionalism; and they have all been indicative of the same thing: absence of spiritual power.  In Church history every return to New Testament power has marked a new advance somewhere, and every diminution of power has seen the rise of some new mechanism for conservation and defence.  If this analysis is reasonably correct, then we are today in a state of very low spiritual energy. Continue Reading »