I have had a deep conviction for many years that practical holiness and self-consecration to God are not sufficiently attended to by modern Christians. The subject of personal godliness has fallen sadly into the background. The standard of living has become painfully low in many quarters.
     It costs something to be a real Christian, according to the standard of the Bible. There are enemies to be overcome, battles to be fought, sacrifices to be made, an Egypt to be forsaken, a wilderness to be passed through, a cross to be carried, a race to be run. Conversion is not putting a person in an arm-chair and taking them easily to heaven. It is the beginning of a mighty conflict, in which it costs much to win the victory.
(J.C. Ryle, d.1900)

     Decades ago, many of mainline denominations chose to accommodate themselves to theological and moral progressivism. In the end, these churches had nothing to offer that could not be heard daily on NPR, and they lost their own reason for being. Why get up on Sunday morning to go to church if you could stay home and hear the same thing without the sermon?
     The more conservative denominations have not succumbed to the theological liberalism that captivated the mainlines decades earlier and, given the track record, it would not be wise to do so now. Nor is it wise, as some within the more conservative denominations seem tempted to do, to downplay, compromise or water down the moral claims of historic, Orthodox Christianity. The church’s strategy should neither be to accommodate to the culture nor to the individual. By not bending with the social breeze, more rigorous churches were not tied to the trends that trended away.
(John Stonestreet and Timothy Padgett, The Colson Center)