Healing Spiritual Amnesia

✍ Scribed by Paul Nixon, Tony Campolo

• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 97
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

There is no end to clichés and easy assumptions about congregational health and vitality. It's much easier to start a new church than turn around an old one; nondenominational churches are growing, while denominational churches are dying; small-membership churches are concerned only with survival; suburban churches care only about endless programming and "spiritual entertainment"; downtown churches are doomed to decay. Whatever kernel of truth such analyses might contain, they miss the actual point. Churches stagnate, decline, and die for a number of reasons, but principally because they have forgotten who they are. They have forgotten their mission to reach out to those who do not know God in Christ. They have forgotten that we worship--not to feel comfortable and safe--but to come into the presence of a God who leads us out into the world. They have forgotten the "cloud of witnesses" who have gone before us in the Christian faith, providing models for how we can proclaim the message of the gospel in ways that new generations can hear it. Paul Nixon calls this failure of memory "spiritual amnesia." Concerned with institutional survival and personal comfort, congregations have forgotten what previous generations of Christians have learned time and again: that the church's great challenge is to make the gospel available in new and compelling ways to those who need most to hear it. In a series of sweeping insights into congregational life and contemporary culture, Nixon maps a course that will help churches remember who they are and for whom they exist.

✦ Table of Contents

Healing Spiritual Amnesia......Page 2
Preface......Page 3
Everywhere I Turn......Page 8
Memory Is Precious!......Page 10
What Is Amnesia?......Page 11
Change Is Traumatic......Page 12
Baseball and Community Memory......Page 13
From Baseball to Spiritual Community......Page 15
Spiritual Amnesia Did Not End in the Pre-Christian Era......Page 16
If God Has Not Yet Given Up on Established Churches, Who Are We to Give Up?......Page 18
Study Questions......Page 19
A Tale of Divergent Choices......Page 21
Looking Deeper......Page 22
So Where's the Trauma?......Page 23
Healing from the Assault of Rationalism......Page 26
The Reasons That Reason Doesn't Know......Page 27
Misguided Zeal......Page 29
An Alternative to Holy War......Page 30
Trinity Church Meets Jesus Again......Page 31
The Gift of God Doesn't Come by Formula......Page 32
I Am the Way......Page 33
Study Questions......Page 34
Same Place, Another Time......Page 36
A Church Full of Strangers in Beards and Bonnets......Page 37
David Meets David......Page 38
The Strangest Journey of All......Page 39
What on Earth Has Happened to Bethany?......Page 40
Casualness of Heart......Page 41
Amnesia?......Page 42
If We Could Turn Back Time......Page 44
In This Case, Healing Is Going to Take Time!......Page 46
How Often We Become What We Measure......Page 47
But What If We Measured Time Rather Than Warm Bodies?......Page 49
It Isn't Easy, but So What?......Page 50
Do You Want to Plant a New Church?......Page 52
Back to Bethany......Page 53
Study Questions......Page 54
A Page from Jesus' Playbook......Page 55
And the Question . . .......Page 56
How Did We Forget the People Next Door?......Page 57
Take a Walk with a Ten-Year-Old......Page 59
This Type of Amnesia Is No Respecter of Theology......Page 60
What About Social Justice?......Page 61
Meet the Neighbors......Page 62
Indigenous Music......Page 64
Loving Our Neighbors' Children......Page 65
Good Food......Page 67
The Pot of Gold at the Foot of the Rainbow......Page 68
Study Questions......Page 70
The Story of Big Creek......Page 71
How Do We Forget Technology?......Page 73
It Takes More Than Moses......Page 75
Neither Does the Healing Begin at Saddleback......Page 76
The Teaching Congregation......Page 77
The Learning Congregation......Page 79
The Boutique Down the Street from Walmart Supercenter......Page 81
Healed of Amnesia, New Harmony Can Be Lots of Fun!......Page 82
Study Questions......Page 83
Reviewing the Characters......Page 85
Healing Is, by Definition, a God-thing......Page 86
Tending to Old Wounds......Page 87
The First Group to Read This Book......Page 89
Opening Up to God's Future......Page 92
A Closing Admonition......Page 94
Notes......Page 96
HEALING SPIRITUAL AMNESIA......Page 97