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Ten years ago, 15 years ago, I think the church would have been asleep at the switch. This level of activism and engagement with the needs of society by local churches I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime.

It is evident that the Church is always abandoning more the old traditional structures of European life and, therefore, is changing its appearance and living new forms in itself. It's clear most of all that the de-Christianization of Europe is progressing, that the Christian element is always vanishing more from the fabric of society.

The church wasn't an organization in the first century. They weren't writing checks or buying property. The church has matured and developed over the years. But for some reason, the last thing to change is the structure of leadership.

I'm grateful for the evangelical resurgence we've seen across the world in the last half-century or so. It truly has been God's doing.

The evangelical movement has become just a bit victimized by a success-oriented culture, wanting the church - like the corporation - to be successful.

Anybody who had come up with a new concept would have been under suspicion for being out of step with the tradition or out of step with the teachings of the church.

No one can fail to see that the power of the Church among large numbers in many communities is today diminishing, or has already ceased.

Over the years, I have studied church history as well as the contemporary church, and I noticed how rare it is for a God-glorifying transition of leadership to take place in a local church.

If organized religion has become less relevant, it's not because churches have held fast to their creedal beliefs - it's because they've held fast to their conventional structures, programs, roles and routines.

While the older generation is content to sit around and critique culture, that culture is moving beyond them. At some point the traditional church and all of the expressions of that church will become essentially irrelevant.