This mornings email

This morning in my personal email there was a letter from a brother in Christ, Brennan Basler, asking the question "How desparate are we?" in the church in America. He effectively pointed out how the church in America has become unholy, ineffective, and unrepentant. He points out some very disturbing statistics of the current spiritual state of the average church-goer in America. He ended his letter with this:

Brothers and sisters, as Asaph once admitted: “WE ARE IN DESPERATE NEED!” (Psa. 79:8). For the sake of ourselves, our families, our churches, our communities, our nation, our world, and most of all, our SAVIOR, let’s TURN from our sin, and RETURN to the Lord together. He both deserves it and desires it!
If not US, who? If not NOW, when? If not HERE, where?

Also this morning in my work email a newsletter from InformationWeek Daily included the following:

Quote of the day:

Bill Murray: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dan Aykroyd: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff.
Murray: Exactly.
Aykroyd: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling.
Harold Ramis: Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Ernie Hudson: The dead rising from the grave.
Murray: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together--mass hysteria.
-- Ghostbusters

The quote is humorous, but in the context of Brennan's letter, I've got to ask, are we experiencing a spiritual disaster of "biblical" proportions? What will it take to turn the church in America around, to wake it up, to bring it to its knees in repentance?

I would say it has to start with fervent prayer. Individual prayer. Corporate prayer. Long and hard on-your-knees prayer. Then we need to boldly search out the good soil, as Neil Cole puts it so plainly in his new book, Organic Church. The Body of Christ planting the seed of the Word of God in the good soil will certainly cause an awakening in America.