The Great Dechurching

The more we enter exile, the greater the need in the church for true discipleship.

Exile, however, has a way of stripping us of anything else that we might cling to as our chief identity.

Discipleship requires humility as we build the kingdom by building people. It forces us to listen to and learn from voices we might not otherwise have heard.

not given me the bruising of the blessing of that wheelchair.”1

exile reminds us where our true hope is.

You were right when you said that in this world we would have trouble, because that thing was a lot of trouble. But the weaker I was in that thing, the harder I leaned on you. And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be. It never would have happened had you

The margins of power may not be attractive or comfortable, but we take heart in the fact that God used Christians mightily in the early church in that context, and he is still doing that today in the global East and South. We can be the city on the hill without being on Capitol Hill.

And if this is generally true, and we believe it is, then we can logically say that not living in exile over the past few hundred years, having comfort and power in society as Christians, has hindered gospel progress.

This is one parallel between the type of exile we see in Acts and the more extreme exile described in the Old Testament. Exile for both the early church and Israel did not destroy their faith but created a type of necessary creative stimulus for the faith to flourish in a new, albeit challenging, context.