Don Whitney on the importance of personal disciplines and the church:
“There is much current interest in spirituality and the spiritual disciplines, but it too often manifests itself in a privatized Christianity. Spirituality is seldom considered in a context of the church body. But the personal spiritual disciplines are not intended to make us spiritually self-absorbed evangelical monks. The church is a community in which Christians are to live and experience much of their Christianity. Too many believers isolate themselves from life with the family of God, deceived by the notion that ‘me and Jesus’ are all they need in order to be all that God wants them to become and to savor all he has for them. Such individualization of the faith hurts the church. What too few see is that anything that hurts the church eventually hurts them as individual Christians.”
Donald Whitney, in R. Albert Mohler, ed., A Guide to Church Revitalization (p. 40). Kindle Edition.
I couldn’t help wondering if some of this movement towards a “Privatized spirituality”. Is the result of the high percentage of believers who expressed their dissatisfaction with the worship times that they were experiencing in their church. I remember a recent survey (perhaps from here) about this crisis in church worship. Wouldn’t a lack of that need for their worship being met naturally drive a person to look for alternate ways to meet that desire for more fellowship and communion, spiritually?