Are you doing a new thing?

In the forward to the new book by Brad Jersak author and Pastor Brian Zahnd writes this:

"Something is happening here

But you don’t know what it is

—Bob Dylan, “Ballad of a Thin Man”

North America has experienced two episodes of Christian revival known as Great Awakenings — the first in the eighteenth century, the second in the nineteenth century. Both produced a remarkable increase in church membership. (Whether the Jesus movement and the charismatic renewal of the late twentieth century qualify as a third Great Awakening is for others to decide.) But now, in the early twenty-first century, the church in North America is experiencing a precipitous decline — a mass exodus that Bradley Jersak has aptly dubbed “the Great Deconstruction.”

Something is definitely happening here. Mister Jones, the baffled reporter from a bygone age in Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man,” may not know what is happening, but there are others who do. American Christianity as a colonial extension of European Christendom has run its course and is no longer tenable — at least, not as the default religion and organizing center in an increasingly secular society. The phenomenon of what has been popularly labeled “deconstruction” is not a passing fad but names a genuine crisis of faith that millions of Christians, largely through no conscious decision of their own, are now facing. Once a Christianity corrupted by civil religion, consumerism, and clerical abuse is put on trial, the fate of Christian faith hangs in the balance. And, for many people, the jury is still out. It is certainly possible to deconstruct Christianity down to nothing. This has been the experience of many. But then what? What happens after the Great Deconstruction?"

I also believe something is happening, in what is termed deconstruction I see the prelude to restoration. Deconstruction is necessary to get back to the Church and faith God created. Faith before man turned it into religion. Only when the Church has undergone this process can restoration of the world take place.

Across the world, diverse people are catching onto this way of thinking and I believe it is through this that the church will not only survive but thrive in the modern world.

God has been speaking to me about this and earlier today did his thing where I know he has something to say and I'd better listen.

This is what he said:

"My spirit is moving it has always been moving and always will be moving but the Church has not been moving with it.

My beautiful Church whom I created in my image, with my DNA, to be my bride in union with my son. My church has not been moving with me it has gone on it’s own path made it’s own pet version of me. A version where I am an angry god of judgement, and rules. The Church has got stuck in the tree of good and evil.

It’s time the Church once again resonated with my Spirit. It’s time the Church once again exists to bring life to the people of a hurting world that were also all made in my image to be like me."

Isaiah 43:19 says:

"See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

and streams in the wasteland."

A new thing that is also the oldest thing. A revelation for the Church of it's original intentions.

Are you up for doing a new thing?