good question from the rev.

• Interview:John Dale, on behalf of the Congregational Resource Guide, interviewed Doug Bailey from Boston.

CRG: What do you wish people in congregations knew about your work and ministry?

Doug: The American Church desperately needs a conversion experience—to undergo "metanoia"—a Greek word for "radical, major turn around or change, to go in a different direction." Our churches today have been largely co-opted by an American folk Christianity, based on a nationalistic, prosperity theology. There is hardly a distinction any longer between the church and popular culture. The slide into a consumer church mentality versus the servant/prophetic church has been steep in the recent decades. It's all about church shopping—what meets our individual, personal needs and convenience.
Today's churches need to be biblically challenged by authentic Christianity. We need to be challenged and disturbed by the Jesus of the Gospels. One of my favorite prayers (attributed to Sir Francis Drake, 16th century) contains these petitions, "Disturb us Lord, when we are too pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have become true because we dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore." Our churches need to be disturbed to become more faithful.
After my forty-three years of Episcopal priesthood, I am convinced that we prefer to "believe" in Jesus rather than "follow" Jesus, primarily because "belief" is easier and more comfortable. If
we are disturbed by the authentic Gospel, we will always be counter-culture to the prevailing comfortable cultural current. We will be "magnificent misfits."
To be a "misfit" in today's dominant culture of success, power and control always demands a heavy risk and cost and extraordinary courage. Jesus is a misfit! Is the Church prepared to be also?