Never count the Spirit out
Don’t play the Christian coroner and judge a church “dead.” Remember Ezekiel, in the valley of dry bones? Slowly – very slowly – brittle bones clatter and clank, sinews form, flesh grows, and bones pulse with life (Ezekiel 37). So never, ever, count the Holy Spirit out. Levison writes in Fresh Air: “It is important, I think, never to resign ourselves to the belief that deadened communities are beyond the pale of the Spirit’s influence. Ezekiel’s community was reduced to very many, very dry bones bleached by the unrelenting desert sun. And it was there, precisely there, that the Spirit worked a dramatic work: the resurrection of a whole community.”
