Yet through the years, though this wonderful church formed me in the joy of the Lord that was my strength, I felt like we were missing something. As a stalwart outpost of the kingdom in a threatening world, our faith seemed somehow precarious. We stood, as we faced the world, on a foundation made from the words of our favorite Bible passages--our "canon within the Canon"--and the sermons of of our pastors and a roster of approved visiting evangelists. There was utterly no sense of the mystical massiveness of a church that had stood firmly for 2,000 years. No sense that our foundations stretched down through time. I didn't have a clue who John Wesley, Martin Luther, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Ignatius of Antioch were. I just knew that I felt like we were a part of a church that was in some ways powerful, but in other ways shallow and insecure in a threatening world that did not share our faith.

I now see that my early sense of the church's insecurity stemmed from what J. I. Packer has called evangelicalism's "stunted ecclesiology," rooted in our alienation from our past. Without a healthy engagement with our past, including historical definitions of "church," we are being true neither to Scripture nor to our theological identity as the church. Though Packer doesn't put it this way, it is easy to see ways in which their stunted ecclesiology has led evangelicals to allow the world to shape the church.

The recent growth of this trend, especially among the young, suggests that evangelicals are still struggling with an identity crisis. Many 20- and 30- something evangelicals are uneasy and alienated in mall-like church environments; high energy, entertainment-oriented worship; and boomer-era ministry strategies and structures modeled on the business world. Increasingly they are asking just how these culturally camouflaged churches can help them rise above the values of the consumerist world around them.