a humble and honest read of today’s church must conclude that we study the history but we don’t expect the experience. We’ve been swimming in the Dead Sea far too long, so our hope for life—the kind Ezekiel dreamed of, the kind Jesus promised, the kind rumored of in the church’s first thirty years—has been filtered through years of big theory and underwhelming experience. It’s not that we don’t believe God could do it. It’s not even that we don’t believe God wants to do it. It’s that it takes an experience to awaken hope in those who have only ever swum in chaos.
