Pardon me for going to the archives, but some 48 years ago, Life Magazine(May 14, 1971) reported on the "new" Christianity that was spreading among teenagers in Rye, New York.   Quote: 

The sociology professor is bewildered, and the businessman, and the Sunday school teacher, and the banker and the editor, and the travel agency lady, and a number of others. . .because their children have become Christians.   This Christianity that obsesses them has little to do with nativity pageants, bake sales or the stained-glass embodiment of remote virtue.  They feel Christ as an immediate presence, and see the Bible as the irrefutably accurate word of God.  

“It’s so neat! It’s out of sight!  It’s a gas! It frees you from fear!  It’s super-edifying!” they say, and who can say it any better than enthused teenagers?  One mother, a travel agent who was getting her master’s in library science said, “Sometimes I almost wish they would go back to something simple like smoking a little grass. Drugs I can try to understand, but this?  This is creepy.” (continued from page 1)

What happened to these righteous teens who managed to creep out their parents by becoming devout Christians?  Simple:  they’ve been creeping out the mainline churches ever since, and praise God for it. 

The same generation that left drugs and self-indulgence for the Jesus Movement has since done more to grow the Church than all the mainline denominations combined.  The independent church movement of the past half-century has eclipsed denominationalism, gathering people by the thousands and hundred-thousands and sending them back into the world to love their neighbors and spread the good news of Jesus Christ.  We “mainliners” have been put to shame, evangelism-wise.  

Usually, we like look down our noses, glibly critical of the “McDonald’s churches” and their low-church, consumer-appeal. “We know how to do church!” we think, “we’ve been doing it —decently and in order—for hundreds of years! These newfangled, wannabe churches won’t last! They’ll go the way of every fad before them—sprouting up like weeds, maybe, but they’ll die like weeds as well!”  But we were wrong. 

The work of the Church is not now, nor can it ever be, a matter of waving the denominational flag.  Club loyalty is a strike against the gospel. The true gospel is a mission on the move. It is in motion and we are either with it, supporting and bolstering its new life, or we are out of it and otherwise enjoying our pews, organs, and casseroles. 

Our work is now—as always—to do exactly what the teenagers of Rye, New York did in 1971; namely, to energetically seek God’s presence through prayer and Scripture, and to lead and train others to do likewise.  The task is bigger than any denomination, and the denomination that forgets this is probably not worth preserving.  

Knowing Christ, growing in Him, and making Him known—that is discipleship. The forms follow the function. The shape of our particular ministries follow our core purposes: our mission, vision, and values. We must be willing to allow our mission to shape and reshape us in every year. If we don’t, we become relics—a boutique industry like a typewriter store. If we do, we get a place at the front lines where the Spirit of God is wildly active and spurring people on to new risks and adventures in every year. That is the real life of walking with the Spirit. That is where all the juice and energy is. It is where we experience the power and presence of God challenging us beyond our comforts and empowering us in all that He is doing here and now.  Do you know what else it is?   “It’s so neat! It’s out of sight!  It’s a gas! It frees you from fear!  It’s super-edifying!” †