Dear Keepers of the Faith:

Where there is anxiety innovation reeks of invasion and tradition smells like home.

In the mid-1970s, the church of my youth was in crisis. Founded as a church plant grown from tent meeting revivals, there was a growing dissonance between their image and their origin. In the half century since its birth, the Omaha Gospel Tabernacle had shaken them loose from their fiery salvationist roots as the current generation was striving for mainstream respectability.

The term tabernacle was not just a metaphor; it was also architectural.