Book Review - Revolution by George Barna

Let me begin this review of George Barna's book Revolution with a few apologies.  The first is that this post is so absurdly long that it hardly deserves to be called a blog post.  If anyone makes it to the end of this post they deserve a medal.  It is just that this book touched on a lot of issues for me, so this post is my personal way of working through a number of things. 

Secondly, I apologize for the overuse of personal pronouns here.  Since George Barna wrote the book I spend a lot of time saying "he said," or "Barna says" or "he thinks" and things like that.  As such, because I disagree with so much in the book it may come off as a personal attack.  Please allow me to nip that in the bud by apologizing up front. I think of Mr. Barna as a brother and a man who has devoted his life to the cause of Christ.  Though I have never met him, from reading books and interviews regarding him I know that he is an honorable man of integrity, and is a brother whom I respect.  Yes, this book got under my skin and so I'm pretty negative about it.  But if the opportunity  were ever to arise I would welcome the chance to fellowship with and learn from Mr. Barna.

Thirdly, I'll give my usual caveat when criticizing.  I am absolutely, 100% sure I am right in my critique of Barna's book.  And I am also absolutely, 100% sure I could be wrong.  Though I state my case pretty strongly here, let me say up front that I am sure there are many ways that I am just not currently aware of where I have misunderstood Mr. Barna and the Scriptures.  Let it be said that, though it may not come across in the post, I offer this critique and enter any debate that may ensue as the chief of sinners.

As one who believes that the church is always in need of reforming I have no trouble agreeing with Barna that these and many other things show the need for reform in the church today.  But, as I have intimated, there is much here with which I disagree.

For now I'll mention in passing that I have some real problems with the whole idea of revolutionary thinking.  George Grant has spoken of the "revolutionary faith" as an ideology in and of itself which has some characteristics of a faith system.  I have written about it here, and Greg Wilbur speaks of some of the philosophical foundations underlying the revolutionary faith here. I'd love to spend a good deal of time talking about the concept of revolution, but for now I'll just quote George Grant from his 3/14/04 post:

The way of revolution practically guarantees health, wealth, and wow. The way of reformation only bears witness to faith, hope, and love. Revolution demands the hard and unrelenting science of charts and graphs, programs and policies. Reformation is content with the gentle persuasions of doctrine and liturgy, covenant and sacrament. Revolution has big plans, amalgamating fervor, and gargantuan purposes. Reformation has but diligence and steadfastness in the face of daily responsibilities. Revolution is undeterred by the facts; reformation is undeterred by the obstacles. Revolution, like the passing pleasures of sin, never fails to disappoint; reformation, like love, never fails. Alas, the contrast between the two, revolution and reformation, is as stark within the church as without.

Indeed, the revolutionary mind is as prevalent in the church as it is anywhere else in the world.

So I can't deny that I think the whole idea behind the book is flawed from the beginning in calling for a revolution.  But this is not a philosophical book and I don't expect philosophical objections to be persuasive to it's advocates.  Instead I want to point out two fundamental practical/theological flaws that I believe render the good stuff in the book unusable at best and harmful at worst.

Barna's thesis is most succinctly summarized on the back cover of the book where he says:

Millions of believers have moved beyond the established church . . . and chosen to be the church instead.

That is probably as good a short statement of what he means by "revolution" as you will find in the book.  The book itself justifies this as a good and even desirable thing. 

And my two main objections in regard to the two fundamental flaws are: 

1. The cure is worse than the disease.  In fact, upon closer inspection it may be that the cure is the cause of the disease.
2. The revolution is a Christianized Maslowian revolution that is antithetical to the biblical communitarian worldview.

While I have my doubts, I do not doubt that God can use these self-proclaimed revolutionaries to speak to His church.  Though I may question the motives and methods of the revolutionaries, like Paul in Philippians 1:15-18 I will be happy to rejoice that Christ is preached wherever He is preached.  But I do hope my criticisms find some resonance and offer some helpful cautions.

In regards to my first objection I believe that Barna has accurately diagnosed disease in the church, but I do not believe the cure will cure it.  In fact, upon closer inspection I fear that the proposed cure may be found to be the cause of the disease.  I'll offer two lines of thought on this.  The first is that Barna hasn't clearly established cause and effect in his diagnosis of the spiritual maladies of the church.  The second is that the the things Barna is recommending as a way forward for the future of the church have been present in the church for several decades.

When I say that Barna hasn't clearly established a cause and effect I mean to say that there are many variables that could account for the maladies he cites.  In saying that these things are characteristic of the church, this fails to account for the fact that there are many different kinds of churches.  Our nation (and our world) are made up of churches that are conservative, liberal, mainline, traditional, seeker-sensitive, emergent, liturgical, free, and many others.  Even today I came across an article  in the Lincoln Journal Star touting the news that conservative churches are growing while moderate/liberal churches are not. According to this, there is a vibrancy of faith in conservative churches that is not present in moderate/liberal churches.  And while I don't want to put too much weight on this, it illustrates that, within Christendom, there are many varieties of churches and thus many different variables which could explain the maladies Barna lists. 

What would have been helpful would have been to see some kind of correlation between the kinds of churches that people came out of and the maladies themselves. For instance, are a lack of giving, evangelism, serving and biblical literacy characteristic of churches that place a high emphasis on giving, evangelism, serving and biblical literacy?  My guess is they aren't.  But Barna overgeneralizes when he says that these things are characteristic of the church, in general.

There is another matter that is not addressed in the book and that is that we live in the era of the sociologically driven church.  What I mean is that we live in the post-McGavran era, an era where the church takes its direction from sociology rather than theology.  As a missionary in India McGavran gained some insights into how churches grow from simply studying the sociological patters through which the gospel spread through relational networks.  These were helpful insights, but the "helpful insights" grew into a "movement," a "school of thought" known as the church growth movement.  When the helpful became a movement it began to dominate evangelical thinking and the way we do church and this is when it became most unhelpful.

I remember reading something from McGavran's foremost disciple, C. Peter Wagner, who described the church growth movement as one of sociology, not theology, and as one which focused on the "is" not the "ought."  In other words, church growth aficionados began to observe sociological patterns of mass conversion and church growth and began to dictate to the church from there.  They described what "is" and said the church "ought" to do things accordingly.  This has most famously happened in churches like Willow Creek which took its marching orders Unchurched Harry and Saddleback Church which developed its ministries to reach Saddleback Sam.  Of course Willow and Saddleback deny this and say that they are taking a biblical approach to reaching Harry and Sam but I contend that Harry and Sam have, in large measure shaped their approach to the Bible.  For one thing they let Harry and Sam define themselves rather than letting the Bible define them.  Then, they went back and used the Bible as a resource to address the self-descibed needs of Harry and Sam. 

I understand that those who follow the disciples of McGavran have heard this before and just checked out on me because this sounds like another anti-church growth screed.  But I would beg your indulgence for a moment. In describing the maladies mentioned above Barna is describing conditions that have arisen in recent years.  I think it is worth considering that during the last few decades this sociological approach to the church has become dominant and it is during this time frame that the maladies Barna cites have arisen.  Might there be a connection?

It should be obvious that I see Barna as one of the heirs of McGavran as he is offering us one more book in the tradition of sociologically driven churchmanship.  He tells us that we need to read the Bible through revolutionary eyes.  And how do we know what revolutionary eyes are?  We know it from the self-descriptions of the revolutionaries.  It is hard for me to escape the notion that Barna is giving us an example of theology that is shaped by sociology.

Of course none of us come to any study as a blank slate, we all have presuppositions derived from somewhere.  I just didn't see Barna interacting critically from a Biblical perspective with the revolutionaries he interviewed.

In asserting these things I realize I haven't proved that sociologically driven ministry is the cause of the current state of the church.  But I think it could at least be a cause of these problems and I am saying that Barna paints with too broad a brush here and doesn't list particular factors that may have contributed to the problems he identifies. 

But taking this a step further there may be some other underlying causes of these maladies and these causes look suspiciously like the revolution Barna is proposing.  To address this let me offer a few representative thoughts from the book.

Barna believes that the problems he has identified are a reflection of the church's failure to equip believers to be what Christ has called them to be. So, we are in a situation where believers cannot rely on the church to equip them to be what Jesus has called them to be and they need to be open to other avenues of doing this.  This may or may not involve the local church.  The revolution means that we seek to be the church by cultivating seven passions of a revolutionary.  In this regard, the revolutionary will create his own personalized faith experience and personalized church.  In the chapter "A New Way of Doing Church" he suggests new models for the church.

In speaking of why there is a shift away from the congregational church, on page 62 Barna says:

Perhaps the major reasons are people's insistence on choices and their desire to have customized experiences.  The issue of choice is remaking many facets of modern experience.

On page 64:

Now its virtually impossible to craft a "typical" spiritual pattern, especially among people under the age of 40.  Growing numbers of young adults, teenagers, and even adolescents are piecing together spiritual elements they deem worthwhile, constituting millions of personalized "church" models.

On page 66 Barna says:

Ultimately, we expect to see believers choosing from a proliferation of options, weaving together a set of favored alternatives into a unique tapestry that constitutes the personal "church" of the individual.

Barna offers the personalized, indvidualistic church as an alternative to the congregational church.  It is this cure that I think is worse than the disease and may in fact be the cause of the disease.

Lest I misrepresent Mr. Barna, I want to point out that his focus is on cultivating certain "passions" of a revolutionary.  Thus, I am framing this in terms of the difference between the traditional congregational church (which is diseased) and the personalized church (which is the cure for the disease).  He would probably not frame it so.  I think he would say that the spiritual illness or deadness is the disease and passion for Christ is the cure.  He would say that it is a matter of indifference whether or not you are in a congregational or a personalized church as long as the passions are cultivated.

Nevertheless the greater issue is the individualism that underlies his views on cultivating passion, and I'll address that in the next part of this review.

It is a mistake for Barna to propose this individualized, personalized church as a way forward out of the current morass.  This is more a cause of the morass than the cure and the reason I believe this is that we are now at least two, maybe three or four decade into the era of the individualized, personalized church.

In 1985 Robert Bellah and a team of researchers wrote their book Habits of the Heart.  What they found then was that the individualized, personalized church was in full bloom.  This notion that we create our own individualistic, personalized religious and church experiences sounds almost exactly like the "Sheilaism" that Bellah spoke of:

Sheila Larson is a young nurse who has received a good deal of therapy and describes her faith as "Sheilaism." This suggests the logical possibility of more than 235 million American religions, one for each of us. "I believe in God," Sheila says. "I am not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice."

In a followup lecture in 1986 Bellah elaborates:

But the case of Sheila is not confined to people who haven’t been to church in a long time. On the basis of our interviews, and a great deal of other data, I think we can say that many people sitting in the pews of Protestant and even Catholic churches are Sheilaists who feel that religion is essentially a private matter and that there is no particular constraint on them placed by the historic church, or even by the Bible and the tradition. We quote in Habits of the Heart a recent Gallup poll, which indicated that 80 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that "an individual should arrive at his or her own religious beliefs independent of any churches or synagogues." Now, again, that isn’t the way it really happens. But just the notion that religious belief ought to be a purely internal thing, and then you go to the church or synagogue of your choice, shows how deeply ingrained a kind of religious privatism is, which turns the church into something like the Kiwanis Club or some other kind of voluntary association that you go to or not if you feel comfortable with it—but which has no organic claim upon you.

It's hard to ignore the similarities between Sheilaism and the proposed revolution.  Note that, even in the mid 80's Bellah estimated that 80% of those in the church were Sheilaists whose operating assumptions were much like the revolutionaries Barna writes about.  And while Bellah's study was published in 1985 it is important to recognize that 80% of the church didn't wake up one day in 1985 and decide to be Sheilaists.  By this time, the indvidualism and personalization of religious and church experience was well embedded in the American culture.  Thus, the things Barna advocates are "habits of the heart" that have prevalent in the culture and the church for quite some time.

We ought to give serious attention to the idea that the "habits of the heart" that Barna advocates are at least one cause of the spiritual maladies he addresses.  Barna links spiritual decline and ineffectiveness to the practices of tradtional, institutional congregational churches.  I am sure there is some truth in that.  But if the dominant mood or "habit of the heart" in the church over the last three or four decades has been that we are to fashion our own religious and church experiences, should we not pin a good deal of the blame for the loss of spiritual vitality on this?  If that's the case then Barna is calling the disease the cure.

And this brings me to the next part of my critique which is that:

The revolution is a Christianized Maslowian revolution that is antithetical to the biblical communitarian worldview.

One of my biggest disconnects with Barna is in making the individual self the center of the Christian life, not the covenantal community.  I agree with D. G. Hart, as he is quoted by David Koyzis from his book Recovering Mother Kirk:

[P]remodern society supported the idea that God deals with his people primarily in groups or communities, not as individuals. The church, accordingly, constitutes a people or a community, not a collection of autonomous selves.... Individuals in community do not choose who they are; rather, their identities arise from being born into and being members of the community (pp. 130-131).

Tim Keller says it this way:

The context for a gospel-centered life is never merely individual. The gospel creates a new community, a unique community. "One of the immediate changes that the gospel makes is grammatical: we instead of I; our instead of my; us instead of me." (Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder). This kind of new community is not an optional thing, an "extra" for the Christian; instead it's part of the overall purpose of God's kingdom.

A new community is both the end of the gospel and also the means of spreading the gospel. God's promise in salvation is to create his "holy nation", a people that dwell with him forever. I will be your God and you will be my people." (Lev. 26:12, Jer. 30:22). So Christians, who are eternally united to Christ, are therefore eternally united to one another.

Now, there are a host of debates we could get into about what constitutes true community and a true church here, and these are debates I hope to deflect for the moment.  What I am most concerned about is whether I was created for community or whether community is created for me.

In one sense we don't have to turn this into an either/or because the two do not have to be in conflict.  At the same time I think Peterson, as quoted by Keller here, is right - we haven't begun to understand the Christian life until we have removed the first person singular pronoun from the dominant position in our thinking and living. 

This book is full of a spiritualized form of narcissism that borders on solipsism.  It's all about me.  The revolutionary is one who puts his own passions for Christ ahead of everything else.

I use the terms narcissism and solipsism for effect here.  I do not believe that Barna or the revolutionaries are self-absorbed louts.  In fact I know that their greatest desires are to love God and others.  I chose these potentially inflammatory terms to call attention to the self as the starting point and reference point for the revolution.  This is a largely unconscious thing, it's just a part of the air we breathe in our society.  We live in the age of Abraham Maslow, whose hierarchy of needs posits that the deepest need, highest goal and greatest good in life is self-actualization, the reaching of our full potential.  In such a world love for God and others is certainly of utmost importance but this is filtered through the lens of the self-fulfillment.  I reach my full spiritual potential by loving God and others.  It's all about "I," "me," and "my," the self is the reference point.

Of course on one hand its hard to fault Barna or the revolutionaries in particular.  This self-orientation is so deeply ingrained in our world that it is hard to escape it.  If anything, this is a blind spot.  But I think it is this unseen enemy that is one of the greatest problems we face.  Here are several examples of the self-orientation of the book. On page 8 Barna says:

The The United States is home to an increasing number of revolutionaries. These people are devout followers of Jesus Christ, who are serious about their faith, who are constantly worshipping and interacting with God, and whose lives are centered on their belief in Christ. Some of them are aligned with a congregational church, but many of them are not. The key to understanding revolutionaries is not what church they attend, or even if they attend. Instead, its their complete dedication to being thoroughly Christian by viewing every moment of life through a spiritual lens and making every decision in light of biblical principles. These are individuals who are determined to glorify God every day, through every thought, word and deed in their lives.

On page 39 he says:

Whether you become a Revolutionary immersed in, minimally involved in, or completely disassociated from a local church is irrelevant to me (and, within boundaries, to God). What matters is not whom you associate with (i.e. a local church), but who you are.

On page 26 Barna gives the following counsel to revolutionaries:

Does something get in the way of your living like Jesus? Then figure out how to eliminate that obstruction.

I assume that means that Christian brothers and sisters in Christ could become obstructions to be eliminated.  Again on page 26 we find this:

To survive and thrive in the midst of the spiritual battle in which you live, seek a faith context and experience that will enhance your ability to be Christlike.

Again, notice the self-centeredness of this.  You are to seek a context a "faith context" that will enhance your ability to be Christlike.  It's all about the first person singular here.

On pages 26-27 he says

This mission demands single-minded commitment and a disregard for the criticisms of those who lack the same dedication to the cause of Christ. You answer to only one Commander in Chief, and only you will give an explanation for your choices. Do whatever you have to do to prove that you fear God, you love Him, and you serve Him – yes, that you live only for Him. 

Again, the self-orientation predominates.  If you judge someone to lack the same dedication to Christ as you, you are to disregard their criticisms.  You may in fact eliminate them if they obstruct your pursuit of Christ. These sentiments go directly against the meaning of I Corinthians 12:14-26:

¹⁴ Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. ¹⁵ If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. ¹⁶ And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. ¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸ But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. ¹⁹ If they were all one part, where would the body be? ²⁰ As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

²¹ The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” ²² On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³ and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, ²⁴ while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, ²⁵ so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. ²⁶ If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

The Holy Bible  : New International Version. 1996, c1984 . Zondervan: Grand Rapids

Barna's words sound too much to me like he is advocating that if a hand is bringing a foot down it is ok for the foot to say it doesn't need to be a part of the body and revolutionaries are not required to have an equal concern for the spiritual health of those they judge less revolutionary than themselves.

I would also caution that the sentiments Barna is expressing here betray a worldly way of reasoning that has been baptized into Christianity. This rationale that what matters most is who you are, that you are to eliminate obstacles, seek contexts and experiences that enhance your goals, and disregard the criticisms of those who are not as dedicated toward a goal as you are sounds like the same rationale that gave us the divorce revolution.   If your husband or wife is bringing you down and preventing you from being all that you can be, then ditch them.  And the same goes for your brothers and sisters in Christ.

There is a kind of spiritualized, Christianized self-actualization process going on here that is antithetical to Biblical Christianity.

We need to read Barna's comments in light of Philippians 2:3-4:

³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. ⁴ Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

The Holy Bible  : New International Version. 1996, c1984 . Zondervan: Grand Rapids

How can we consider others better than ourselves and yet evaluate them to be less dedicated to the cause of Christ than ourselves.  How can we look to the spiritual interests of others and consider them to be an obstruction in following Christ?

Revolutionaries also need to consider the Romans 7 experience.  One of the main problems of the revolutionaries is that they locate the source of their spiritual difficulties outside of themselves.  Paul, on the other hand, recognized that the greatest obstacle to following Christ was within, not without.

Paul could consider others better than himself because he considered himself the chief of sinners, not someone else.  I can't see Paul looking at others and judging them to be less dedicated than himself.

I realize that neither Barna nor the revolutionaries would say that they consider themselves to be better than others, but comments like these insinuate as much.  On several occasions Barna admits that even revolutionaries struggle with sin.  But I wish they would struggle with sin in the church the way they struggle with sin in their own lives. 

Revolutionaries don't give up the battle against sin in their own hearts, they commit themselves to fighting it till the day they die. They don't give up on themselves because of the presence of indwelling sin.  Why do they give up on the church because of the presence of indwelling sin?

The apostle Paul presented an interesting counterpoint to this kind of message.  He didn't seem to have these categories of thought that placed his own personal experiential relationship with Christ at the center of his existence in such a way that he viewed others who obstructed that relationship as obstacles to be eliminated.  In Romans 9:1-4 he speaks of his fellow Israelites:

I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit— ² I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. ³ For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, ⁴ the people of Israel.

The Holy Bible  : New International Version. 1996, c1984 . Zondervan: Grand Rapids

Notice what is happening here.  There is no way that the Israelites of whom Paul speaks were as dedicated to Jesus as he was and I am certain that they sought to get in the way of his becoming like Jesus. After all, in Acts 14:19 it was Jews who tried to stone him to death. That sounds like an obstacle to me. 

But look at his passion here in Romans 9 - For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers.  Do you see what he is willing to sacrifice here?  It is not something physical or material. He is willing to sacrifice his own spiritual good for that of another.

Even if we grant, rightly, that such a thing was impossible; and if we grant, rightly, that Paul was speaking hyperbolically; and if we grant, rightly, that Paul was speaking hypothetically; this is still instructive.  Remember that revolutionaries identify themselves by their passions (something I have serious problems with but don't have time here to address), and notice the direction of Paul's passion.  This was a hyperbolic, hypothetical statement, but it shows the passion of Paul's heart.  For Paul, "my spiritual good," was not his highest good.  Paul's highest good was "your spiritual good," or "their spiritual good."  I can't see Paul looking at others as obstructions to be eliminated because they hinder one's own spiritual progress.

Of course the revolutionary might counter that Paul is speaking of evangelism here, not dead and dying churches.  I would counter that counter by asking why we would sacrifice more for unbelievers than our brothers and sisters in Christ in light of Galatians 6:10:

¹⁰ Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

The Holy Bible  : New International Version. 1996, c1984 . Zondervan: Grand Rapids

My friend and fellow pastor Wayne Larson recently recommended the book Theology After Wittgenstein by Fergus Kerr to me, and it says some things that apply here. It is a difficult book that I am working through slowly and it begins with a discussion of our descent into our present baptized solipsism.  Speaking of the modern Christian he says:

But this lonely agent of ultimate choice is plainly the alter ego of the epistemological subject who can view everything from a standpoint outside history and community.  The solitary individual with the God's eye view turns out, unsurprisingly to be the creator of his own moral universe.  The person at the centre of modern theology has acquired the attributes of the God of classical theology . . . The worldless ego is remarkably like a substitute for the deity in the game of creation.

I realize this was a mouthful and has taken the discussion in a painfully theoretical and philosophical direction, but the point is important.  It is saying that we tend to view ourselves as those who can know truth and experience our faith without reliance on history (the work of those who have gone before us) or community (those in our present Christian community).  As created beings we exist within history and community, only God exists outside of them.  We are accountable to history and community and to suppose that we can create our own reality independent of them is to assume God's prerogative.

To accept our identities as creatures is to accept the fact that community is something that God places us in, not something we create for ourselves, thus assuming the role of deity.

Kerr offers some other words that are helpful here in some interaction with Catholic theologian Karl Rahner.  He says:

We are conditioned and limited by sense experience - 'all too much', as Rahner expresses it.  But where should we be if we were not so conditioned and limited?  What if our relation to our physical and social setting is a matter for gratitude and celebration, rather than resentment and frustration?

What if we substituted a couple of words here to say "we are conditioned and limited by our church experiences."  And then suppose we changed the third sentence to read "What if our relation to our church setting is a matter for gratitude and celebration, rather than resentment and frustration?"  In other words, what if we considered our fellow believers and churches to be blessings rather than obstacles to be eliminated?

Turning back to Tim Keller, he once pointed out that the church, the Christian community, is described as a family.  And, one of the most fundamental elements of being a family is that you don't get to pick your relatives.

None of this means that an individual Christian can never leave a particular church.  Sometimes we have Paul and Barnabas type divisions where members of the church need to go different directions for the spread of the gospel.  Yet such a division should always be seen as regrettable, not desirable as Barna portrays.  And it certainly should not be done purely out of self-interest, even spiritualized self-interest.

Further, in the Bible, dissasociation from a local church was considered to be a punishment.   In fact it was the ultimate punishment inflicted on an unrepentant sinner.  Disassociation from the church was a punishment in biblical times and here we are making it an indifferent thing at best and at worst a desirable thing, even a mark of maturity.

As I bring this to a close you will note that I have not offered a defense of any particular kind of traditional or institutional church, and this was intentional. Although I have my own affinities and traditions that I love I do understand that the church has taken many forms through the ages and so there are alot of things that I do and love that may pass away.

I fundamentally agree with Barna that there is a whole lot in the church that needs changing.  But I disagree with him about what needs to be changed and how to go about it.  So please don't see this review as a defense of the status quo.

I also wouldn't be surprised if some of Barna's most dire predictions come true in regards to great numbers of people leaving the traditional church. In a few years he may declare victory over his critics based on his numbers and surveys.  I hope he is proven wrong, but even if this comes true it will only show that an aberration has triumphed in the culture, not a true biblical form of Christianity or the church.

Ultimately I think that Barna and his revolutionaries have some good desires.  Even though I have come down hard against the ideas in this book I am not coming down hard against the people who hold the ideas and am not advocating that anyone be blackballed. But the revolutionaries need to be as critical of themselves as they are of the traditional congregational church. They need to be more aware of their own history and of the fact that they aren't creating something new for the future, they are following in the footsteps of many who have gone before them.  This revolution has been going on for decades, in fact for centuries.  I invite you to consider John Calvin's words to the Barnian revolutionaries of his own day.

The revolution has been going on for decades, nay, centuries.  As such the revolutionaries ought to consider the effects this revolution has had on the church throughout history.  And, I think the revolutionaries would be wise to heed these wise words from Greg Wilbur and avoid the follies of the progressives of which he speaks:

While analyzing G.K. Chesterton’s comments on this very issue in The Christian Imagination, Thomas C. Peters writes that “the progressive always assumes that change is for the better. This doctrine is an essentially self-congratulatory one, in that whatever we happen to be doing at the present time is deemed superior to everything that was done in the past.

Let me close by giving a few shoutouts to others who are talking about this book.

Carla Rolfe hopes that Barna's clout in evangelical circles doesn't translate into wide influence for this book.

Michael Kruse recommends the book.

Gary Gilley isn't thrilled (HT - Tim Challies). It looks like Gary and I are tracking as he suggests that with this book Barna is issuing a recall on the market driven church he helped create.

Wayne Jacobsen finds many things he likes and a few he doesn't like.

Andrew Jones at TallSkinny Kiwi gives it a thumbs up.

Conclusion: The book is tight, concise and offers a realistic future scenario that leaders need to read. But it is very small (think of one man behind a desk talking to himself), it avoids the global conversation that could inform and reinforce it, and unless it gets beefed up before the final edit, it lacks a decent bibliography - which is why i have recommended some books at the end of this post.

I would recommend it as a first base book for those wondering what the emerging church is all about, and for those trying to explain these new forms of church to their superiors and are looking for someone recognizable and authoritative to quote. Those looking to get to second base in these new emerging forms will need to go much further.

Those comments interest me.  Andrew is one of the leading lights of the emergent folks and this surprises me a bit as I wouldn't think that Barna is especially friendly to the emergent movement.  I should say that they are in agreement in their calls for change but Barna doesn't see emergent as revolutionary, they are another manifestation of the congregational church.

The Rev'd Doctor Peter Toon says:

Overall, my judgment tends to be that Dr Barna has gone much too far in his claim that there really is a Revolution, and in his predictions of what this Revolution will soon become and achieve. Let us remember that there have always been those, whom we may call the remnant, within the existing churches or synagogues who have longed for a deeper, richer and more substantial expression of Christian faith within themselves as persons and within the larger structure of the churches. He has discerned such within the American evangelical churches and appears to have made too much of his discovery because of what is his own personal desire for Christian growth in the USA.

I also found Jason Clark's review interesting.  He writes from an emergent standpoint and I'm not sure whether to label him for or against.  But, among several good points, he asks a question that I think needs to be considered:

3. The idea of 'revolutionaries' a group of people taking church seriously and to do so doing it outside the traditional church, is this a huge pressure to put on people? By that I mean when most people struggle to get to work, and pay the bills, is the 'revolutionary' lifestyle Barna's promotes the only valid one? Is Barna over promising, like every new 'move of God' has seemed be in the habit of doing in the past?

That's a good point and it makes me wonder what the revolutionaries think of the kind of spiritual ambition that Paul calls his readers to have in I Thessalonians 4:11-12:

¹¹ Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, ¹² so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

The Holy Bible  : New International Version. 1996, c1984 . Zondervan: Grand Rapids

Well, I'll stop now, if you have read this far you have been more than kind and patient.