George Barna describes a revolution like this; repudiating tepid systems and practices of the Christian faith and introducing a wholesale shift in how faith is understood, integrated, and influencing the world. (From the front flap of the book cover.)
His book Revolution describes people that have left the institutional church and are celebrating their faith in new and more creative ways. He takes great pains to create a new term for those people who have left the institutional church, revolutionaries. However it just does not work. I also have doubts about his numbers. If I remember correctly he says that there are something like 20 million so called revolutionaries in the U.S.A.
I know some of these people, and they just do not fit the neat seven point list Barna creates for them. (His book is actually jam packed with lists.) Personally I think it is great that people are abandoning man made institutions and realizing that Jesus brought about the end of our need for religion altogether.
I certainly do not fit his list, and I have given up on religion. I also do not appreciate the aggressive language he uses. Nothing but war this, soldier that, and on and on about fighting.
There are places in the book where you see that George Barna was actually touched by these people who are learning that God does not reside in buildings made by man. Instead he lives in us.
However his vision of the future seems to me to just be more of the same. Institutions, leaders who tell us what God says instead of us listening for ourselves, denominations arising to cater to this group of people, and on and on. I hope the future is that we finally put the last nail in the coffin of religion, and get on with living.
Johnny Brooks
Missionary to Nakuru, Kenya. Co-founder of A Future and a Hope, a home for girls.
