Western Christianity has allowed itself to be too shaped by the Enlightenment with its great emphasis on the individual. As such, we have made being a Christian nothing more than responding to some propositional plan of salvation with a recited prayer; we have made baptism the testimony of that. Baptism in the NT was the initiation into the body of believers, the sign and seal of the ancient covenant of Israel replacing circumcision. It mean you were now a part of the church, the very body of Christ in the world. It is not all about you; it is about you being a part of a body, made up of different members, of which you were only one (1 Corinthians 12). We are fast losing the corporate nature of faith, maturing together with the body; the church is thus in decline. That part we cannot blame on secularism. The church is desperately needed to Christianize Christianity.
“I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18 NIV).
