Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Barna's 'Revolution'

I recently read this book (Revolution by George Barna) for myself and am struggling with why some of my peers are saying that Barna, the writer, calls for all church members to abandon the contemporary church, period. I didn't get that from the book. I did get a feeling that Barna, like myself, senses both by intiuition and statistics, that disciples are not necessarily being made in our current 'church' culture. In fact, the church, as a whole, is losing membership at an alarming rate - partly due to the fact that our culture has shifted in many different ways such as postmodernism, globalization, isolation, etc. As our culture has shifted, the church has not made appropriate changes. Barna talks about broadening our picture of what church should be by including valuable movements like home churches, smaller churches and other non-traditional discipleship methods. I personally liked his approach - the church in the New Testament did meet in larger groups, but, more often, they met in homes and focused on loving God and loving each other - it wasn't a big show each meeting with a 30-40 minute sermon by a designated 'preacher' with everyone staring at a stage as if it were a theater - passive onlookers, etc. Somehow we've got a church 'culture' that is all about the show, and thus, as Dallas Willard calls it, we've got a bunch of consumer Christians who shop for the best show. It's about becoming disciples of Christ who can make disciples...nice work Barna.

1 comment:

RC said...

i agree with your thoughts after just finishing this book, Barna certainly is not saying abandon the church.

--RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com