status quo? nuance, part 1

Well, I’m not sure how to lead the way here. But I’ll start back at your comment, and toss out some stream of consciousness and see what we can imagine midst the cyber wisps.
What are we talking about when we say, “the Christian Status Quo?”
Are we talking about spiritual complacency? Notre Dame iugis immaturitas? People-centered, self-help, application based, consumerism, insular subculture? Or METHODOLOGY? Well, I seem to have jumped the gun. I’ve already begun to evaluate rather than just ask what areas are we evaluating to determine the status quo.
I’ll try again: Are we evaluating effectiveness in discipleship, spiritual growth, service, ministry, evangelism, etc.? Or are we simply noting the boring way they are currently being done? Again, I realize the subtlety of these differences. But though the line may be thin, it seems inordinately deep. On the one hand, we can see ineffectiveness and conclude that methods aren’t working. Here, methodology needs to be evaluated. On the other hand, we can see methods that don’t appeal to us, and react to them without regard to their purpose or effectiveness. The latter runs the risk of resulting in fresh ineffective methods and procedures because the method becomes the purpose. Doing it differently is why we are doing it. This is empty. The procedure IS the objectivity. I think this is what Charles Swindol meant when he said, “tradition is the living faith of dead Christians and traditionalism is the dead faith of living Christians”.
I fear that because we seem most perplexed by the modern evangelical’s inability to separate methodology from theology, modernism from Christianity, that is one of the areas where we seem to focus our reaction. Therefore, we, in our fresh methodology can get hung up on our methodology just as those to whom we’ve reacted. We focus on how we are doing it differently than they are. We are pleased. Meanwhile, we have the same spiritual weaknesses, the same atrophied limbs of the body as was caused by the old ways.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Obviously (to us) the methods are drying up and are often based on shallow theology. How can we be different in how we understand it, rather than just how we do it? Can it be clear that how we do it, is based on our desire to know, understand and seek more deeply?
What the heck am I trying to say?