Burned-out believers and spiritual secularists have given up any hope that an engaging and meaningful spirituality can be found in a single Christian denomination. So rather than attending worship at a local church, they attend to their spiritual needs elsewhere. While these disaffected believers have not rejected the existence of God, they have strongly rejected whatever it is they think the church today has to offer.

To counter this trend, churches across America are constantly updating their culture to accord with the culture outside the church. But is this the best framework for recovering authentic Christian spirituality?

Authentic Christianity offers another idea-that the Lutheran tradition embodies a framework of Christianity that uniquely addresses the postmodern condition. It does so not by being "emergent" or by making up a new approach to church or to the Christian life. Rather, it does so in an unexpected way: by being confessional, sacramental, and vocational.