Storm the barricades! According to researcher George Barna, we’re in the midst of a “spiritual revolution that is reshaping Christianity, personal faith, corporate religious experience, and the moral contours of the nation.”
Who’s leading the coup d’état? Some 20 million people, dubbed Revolutionaries, who live “a first-century lifestyle based on faith, goodness, love, generosity, kindness, and simplicity” and who “zealously pursue an intimate relationship with God.”
If true, this is amazing news, the best for American Christians in generations.
But before we break out the party poppers, we should note that, like every revolution, this one has a loser: the local church.
Introduction to Kevin Miller’s review and critque of George Barna’s Revolution. Here’s the rest of the article: No Church? No Problem.
4 Comments
This book was such a letdown. It’s sad to see Barna tossing out and diminishing the need for local church.
This is only bad news if two things are happening here.
1) The people leaving the ‘churches’ are continuing with the non-gospel they learnt whilst they were there.
2) The local ‘churches’ do not learn their lesson and repent of their churchianity and teach the Gospel.
y2f
Hey Steve,
The extent of the Revolution is still being debated. This could end if some hard data would emerge.
The slogan “no church – no problem” hinges upon what’s meant by church. Just as children need families so do children of God, churches. Could all the “one anothering” of the NT occur under the concept of “church alone?”
The loser is the local church in its institutional, traditional form. That’s that major deficiency with the book …how Barna defines the local church.
While his diagnostics are great, the wheels come off when he fails to recognize that many of these multiple new expressions of Christianity are legitimately “church” and worthy of the biblical connotation.