Imagine it is Sunday morning, and you decide to go to church. However, you don't have a home church; it was just a wild idea that occurred to you, and now you are stuck not knowing which church to actually attend. Well, you are an adventurous, existential kind of person, so you tell yourself, “I'll just make it an adventure; I'll drive down the road until something comes over me and leads me to the place to go.”You put on some nice clothes, not over doing it — casual but nice.You start down the road and the first place you come to has an old building with a steep and high bell tower. It looks like it's been there ever since Bermuda was Bermuda, so you say to yourself, “I'll take a chance.”Inside it definitely looks religious. There is stained glass depicting Jesus, disciples, sheep — much what a person might expect. There is an altar and there is a pulpit. There are flowers. The wood is old and darkly stained. They sing hymns, and everything that is going on seems to be leading up to something. Finally, here it comes — the sermon.The Pastor of the church takes out his Bible, reads a section of scripture, and then begins to dissect and diagram its various parts. He announces that he is going to give you principles by which you can live. You listen and you can see that his reasoning and diagramming is quite careful, if not exacting. The Pastor certainly must have devoted hours to preparation. You look around, and there are a few people jotting down notes while he is speaking. It all seems quite intelligent, but you begin to wonder if you are smart enough to be a Christian. You didn't take any notes.The next week you decide to try it again. Again you put on nice clothes and you drive down the road, but this time you are looking for something different. You don't tell yourself that, but you are. So, when you see a building that could just as easily be a school or an office of some kind, and it indicates that it is a “New Testament Apostolic Prophetic and Enlightenment Center”, you pull in. However, it appears that you arrived a tad late, because something is already taking place.The room is packed out, and all the people are standing. There is loud music coming over the sound system, and there is a group of musicians and singers gathering at one end of the room. It looks like a professional sound stage has been set up. There is a pulpit at floor level. Suddenly the sound system cuts out and the musicians start to play. They are great! A worship leader encourages everyone to join in singing, and then people start clapping their hands, swaying and dancing with the rhythm, and singing out loudly. As the music continues, the people get more and more into it. Some begin shouting loudly. Some begin dancing. Dancers waving flags and banners appear, and they flow up and down the aisles and across the front of the room. The Pastor sings his way into the pulpit, but he can hardly speak. His voice is soft and constrained with emotion. He is perspiring. His eyes are closed and his face is looking up. His arms stretch outward, with his palms turned up, and he whispers, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” The room hushes. The Pastor says it again, “Jesus”. Then the people begin to whisper it back and the whole room, a couple of hundred people, begin whispering “Jesus”. Then the Pastor whispers, “Come Holy Spirit” and the room whispers “Spirit”. The people become still. They are not moving, save for the stretching forth of their arms, and the turning up of their palms. Then, people begin to cry. “Oh, Jesus”. Someone moans, “Change me, Lord”, and someone else says, “Yes, Lord. Yes!” That is the way it goes for about two hours, and you realise that if the Pastor actually gave a sermon, it seemed like it just blended into the overall experience.According to Donald Bloesch, in his book ‘Spirituality Old & New’, these are two forms of Christianity that have been evident in the church from the beginning of the church. He calls the first Biblical Christianity and the second Christian mysticism.Reading what he says about these two approaches to Christian spirituality, I began to realise that in order for me to thrive as a Christian, I need both of them.I need to stay linked to the Bible, because it seems alive to me. It speaks to me of God's truth and orients me in a way that I need in this crazy world. It's not that I need a crutch. I am not an intellectually deficient person, and I am not a timid person who is fearful in living. It's that the Bible SPEAKS to me. God addresses me with a version of reality that makes more sense to me than anything else, even though I cannot totally exhaust it or reconcile it with the relative findings in science. It still speaks to me, and there are ideas in the Bible that encourage me to live. Call them principles if you must, even though I am not given to simplistic, formula-Christianity.I also need to encounter God, to live in dynamic relationship with God, in which I have a dialogue with divinity. St Paul called it our partnership with divinity. When Moses met God on the mount it changed his countenance. When people meet God in person, that changes their perspectives, their trajectories in life. Some people think of that as “conversion”, and if so, fine. But this is not a simple affirmation of some creed or agreement with a religious construct. It is a fundamental change in being, such that, literally, before it one was blind and dying but after it one sees and starts living. The mystical in Christianity is a retreat from the world in order to meet with and be changed by God.So, Biblical Christianity? Yes. Mystical Christianity? Yes. One or the other without the other? No.