the church is captive to the idol of "self"

Soong-Chan Rah in his 2009 IVP book The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity

the individual is primary ...
yet most of Bible books are written to communities (p.33)
so what's with the 'individual' reading/interpretation of Scripture? (p.35)

love this quote (p.35) "worship in the white captivity of the church is oftentimes a collection of individuals who happen to be in the same room." ... we can do better than this can't we?

and this one (p. 36) "Our overreliance on therepeutic culture is a reflection of excessive individualism - the desire to have one's personal needs met with the focus of an entire hour being upon the individual"

and with this, any remnant of community dies quickly