by George Barna
The same mind-set is affecting the ministry context. There is more enthusiasm for creating personal dialogue with non-Christian friends than for bringing them to a big evangelistic event. The popularity of small groups has grown consistently as people experience the benefits of a shared experience in which their contribution matters. Short-term missions activity has exploded as growing numbers of Christians want to be part of a ministry solution rather than merely fund it. Watch how the next few years will usher in innovative expressions of this hands-on approach to being a Christian in a non-Christian world.
Trend #7: Finding True Meaning
Every generation wades through the murky waters of life’s meaning. The discovery process is never easy, and the answers are often a long time coming. The eternal struggle to find meaning in life—which cannot occur without recognizing how God has designed us and how to apply that design to the context in which we live—is in full force today. Despite all the advances in technology and communications, our society’s complexity and fragmentation have only served to heighten the struggle to make sense of our place in the world.
One of the most startling signs of growth, though, is Americans’ accelerated openness to understanding themselves through two components that have been largely ignored for many decades: sacrifice and surrender. Granted, this commitment or pattern is not widespread at this moment, but we are seeing growing numbers of people who are considering sacrifice and surrender as the possible missing links to their maturation and fulfillment.
The New Spiritual Landscape
Whether or not you currently understand the implications of these trends, two things are true. First, you don’t have to like the outcomes of things you cannot change, but you do have to deal with them. Second, the more you can anticipate some of the transitions resulting from these trends, the greater will be your ability to help shape the world in ways that are likely to honor God and advance your spiritual maturity. This will impact your own life and the lives of others with whom you interact.
What outcomes are likely in the spiritual landscape of the country as a result of these seven trends?
Perhaps the most significant relates to how increasing numbers of people will be most likely to experience and express their faith in the coming years. A radical transformation is in progress related to the means through which people’s faith is made real.
As we entered the twenty-first century, the local church was the focus of most people’s spiritual lives. About 70 percent of all Americans relied upon some local congregation to be their dominant source of spiritual input and output. A few individuals—roughly 5 percent of the population—were engaged in a faith journey that revolved around some alternative type of faith community. (We’ll look at these in more detail later in the book.) A similarly small percentage of people identified their family as their primary faith pod. A larger, but still minority, group of Americans (an estimated 20 percent) turned to various cultural sources—the media, the arts, or other institutions—as the outlets designated to satisfy their faith needs.
The seven cultural trends described earlier, however, have unleashed a massive shift in emphasis. As I have tracked people’s inclinations through our national research studies, I have concluded that by the year 2025, the spiritual profile of the nation will be dramatically different. Specifically, I expect that only about one-third of the population will rely upon a local congregation as the primary or exclusive means for experiencing and expressing their faith; one-third will do so through alternative forms of a faith-based community; and one-third will realize their faith through the media, the arts, and other cultural institutions. Unfortunately, as far as we can determine, the family will remain a mere blip on the radar screen when it comes to serving as the conduit for faith experience and expression, remaining central to perhaps 5 percent of the population.
How Americans Experience and Express Their Faith
Primary means of spiritual experience and expression
2000 2025
Local Church 70% 30-35%
Alternate Faith-Based Community 5% 30-35%
Family 5% 5%
Media, Arts, Culture 20% 30-35%
You may read this and feel a sense of loss or dread—or you may celebrate the development of new ways people can grow to full maturity in their faith. The relatively compromised and complacent state of faith in the nation today suggests that any new means through which people—especially younger people—can make their faith come alive and become more center stage in their lives, without conflicting with scriptural imperatives, will represent a welcome breath of fresh air in the stagnant spiritual landscape of our country.
And do not forget the first of the two admonitions provided at the start of this section: You don’t have to like this transition, but you must deal with it. You can approach it with a defensive, negative attitude, or you can deal with it in the hope of learning and experiencing great breakthroughs in your life. That choice is yours.
Chapter Six
God Is Active Today
CULTURAL ICONS are often remembered for a single moment or product that defined their career. The renowned German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is one of those one-note examples. He is widely known today for popularizing the notion that “God is dead.”
I’d hate to have Nietzsche’s legacy. Why? Because he is wrong. How do I know? Because of the numerous individuals we have interviewed and studied in the course of our research whose lives have been radically transformed by a real and lasting encounter with the living God. There is nothing more affirming than knowing that God is active in the lives of those who seek His touch, and nothing more exciting than seeing the passion and enthusiasm of those people for the God who has revealed Himself in such personal and restorative ways.
A Word about Transformation
One of my pet peeves is that we sometimes use a word so indiscriminately that it ceases to have any true meaning. For example, in the 2004 presidential election, everyone who attended a theologically conservative church was deemed an “evangelical.” More generally, everyone who attends a Protestant or Catholic church is labeled a “Christian.” Everyone participating in a cell group or small group is said to have spiritual “accountability.”
You might have a different understanding of the term transformation than I do. It’s crucial to our discussion, since the Revolution is so centered on the idea that each of us is called to be continually transformed through the renewing and reshaping power of the Holy Spirit. Let me explain the intended meaning of the term.
Spiritual transformation is any significant and lasting transition in your life wherein you switch from one substantial perspective or practice to something wholly different that genuinely alters you at a very basic level.
Switching from a Methodist church to a Presbyterian church is not transformational; determining to live in accordance with a biblical worldview is.
Attending a Sunday school class after years of absence is not transformation; identifying one’s giftedness, grasping the call to use those gifts for Kingdom outcomes, and initiating a lifestyle of service to others is.
Agreeing to lead a small group every week is a wonderful choice, but it is usually not transformational. Seeing the beauty of the lake you drive by on the way to work every day; the inherent preciousness of the children hanging out at the playground; and the blessing of having a warm, dry, comfortable house in which to live, as examples of the infinite reasons to constantly worship God every hour of every day—and then doing so—is truly transformational.
Transformation, as I am using it, is a significant spiritual breakthrough in which you seize a new perspective or practice related to the seven passions; consequently, you are never the same again. The transformation redefines who you are at a fundamental spiritual level, and your lifestyle is realigned according to that part of your being that was finally awakened to the things of God.
Our research revealed that God is, indeed, busy transforming people’s liv
es. But it also uncovered some shocking truths about how God is bringing about such transformation in our society.
Understanding the Journey
Six years of additional research, conducted after the original edition of Revolution was released, has brought to light some helpful insights regarding how God transforms people’s lives. While a more detailed explanation of the findings of that research is provided in the book Maximum Faith, the essence of the argument is that we all make our way along a ten-stop pathway that leads us through some relatively predictable but incredibly significant episodes of education and renewal. We travel only as far as we are willing to go on that road to wholeness; we are free agents, able to stop at whatever point we choose.
The Maximum Faith results indicate that a majority of American adults never get beyond the first three stops on the journey—which leaves them aware of their sinful behavior but short of undertaking any remedy. About one-third of Americans attempt to solve that dilemma by occupying the next couple of stops, in which they ask Jesus Christ to forgive and save them, and then become more involved in religious activities.
However, it is the second half of the journey that provides the real substance of a transformed life. It is on those stops that people move through spiritual discontent, personal brokenness, wholehearted submission, and total surrender—life transitions that enable them to truly love God and other people. Sadly, nine out of ten Americans, by their own volition, never experience those life-altering places on the journey. God never pushes us farther than we are willing to go. Consequently, many people settle for less—much less—than God designed for us.
People who have made it to the final stops on the journey have done so because of their willingness to cooperate with God and to incorporate help from dedicated believers He sends into their lives. You might be surprised to learn where you are most likely to encounter such fellow sojourners.
Discovering Spiritual Mini-Movements
My original assumption as we set out to profile the hallmarks of contemporary spiritual transformation was that most of the life change we found would be related to the ministry of the local church. We spent several years searching for evidence that God was at work changing lives through churches and discovering how that process worked. While we certainly found some wonderful examples, I was stunned—and deeply disappointed—at how relatively rare such instances were.
But our conversations with churchgoing people and congregational leaders led us to the primary source of such transformation: ministries operating outside of the local church. These were not all “parachurch” ministries, per se, but they were God-centered endeavors taking place outside of a congregational connection. As I began encountering more and more of these situations, I realized that God is very much alive and well, busy transforming lives through what we have been calling “spiritual mini-movements.”
As time went on, it became clear that God is affecting lives through many of these mini-movements, reaching literally millions of people. You are probably connected to some of them, or to people involved in them, without realizing their significance. Some of these mini-movements include homeschooling, “simple church” fellowships (i.e., house churches), biblical worldview groups, various marketplace ministries, several spiritual disciplines networks, the Christian creative arts guilds, and others.
Most of the religious analysts I confer with are only vaguely aware of these groups—and completely unaware of their spiritual significance within the Church today. There are three major reasons why the mini-movements have flown below the radar screen. First, their numbers are relatively small. Most of the dozen mini-movements that we have studied most closely have fewer than three million adherents. In a nation of about 300 million people, that is too miniscule to be perceived as significant and too dispersed to draw attention.
Second, in most cases, the mini-movements themselves are disorganized and even disunited. While God is at work affecting the lives of the individuals involved, the group with which the transformed individual is associated tends to be poorly structured, inadequately led, and lacking in any larger, strategic framework or purpose. In fact, this is one of the more powerful arguments that the life changes occurring are God-driven and not man-made: the mini-movements themselves are struggling to achieve health!
Third, there is a pervasive mind-set among many journalists, scholars, and religious leaders that all legitimate spiritual activity must flow through a local church. Even large parachurch ministries that communicate with tens of millions of people, raise hundreds of millions of dollars, and impact lives all over the world are cast as second fiddle to the local church. It is almost as if their ministry efforts are deemed subpar simply because they did not originate from a congregational context.
Nevertheless, the emergence of these mini-movements reminded me that God is no respecter of persons—or the false boundaries they create to control their environment. Whether religious leaders deem it appropriate or not, God is facilitating incredible transformation in the minds and hearts of millions of people involved with the mini-movements. Why? Perhaps because these people have made the faith orientation of the mini-movement the pivot point of their existence. They want more of God in their lives, so they invest themselves in the workings of the mini-movement, focusing on the distinctive emphasis of the group, whether it is all-out worship, heartfelt prayer, developing a Christian mind, or whatever the driving motivation of the group may be. It is that single-mindedness of intent and the intensity of their focus on God that enables the Lord to build them into Revolutionaries.
The Local Church Responds
A disturbing discovery from our research, though, was the reaction of local churches to how God was touching the lives of people in the mini-movements. More often than not, impacted individuals would return to their local churches and share their faith adventure with a church leader. Usually, their desire was to work with their leaders to find ways to incorporate the magnificent work of God that they had personally experienced into the ministry of the church. Even though God had changed them through mechanisms based outside the efforts of the local churches, most of these people demonstrated loyalty to their congregations, seeking to integrate their experience into the overall ministry of their church.
However, in the majority of cases, the leaders of the local church suggested that the transformed believers simply continue to do whatever it was they were doing, and not try to introduce foreign elements into the church’s agenda. In other words, let the church carry out its existing slate of events and programs without attempting to alter a stable and well-planned ministry simply because one or several congregants had discovered distinctive ways of connecting with and being shaped by God.
To their credit, most of the transformed people we have interviewed reflected the attitude of Peter and John, who said to the leaders who rebuked them, “We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). Deeply moved by the experiences brought about through their involvement in the mini-movement, they continued to seek growth opportunities through it while staying connected to other ministries, fellow believers, and their church.
The result has been the gradual expansion of the reach and impact of those mini-movements. Every year, millions of people are being radically affected by the presence and power of God that is manifested through those low-profile ministries. While no particular ministry or mini-movement has emerged to become the focal point of spiritual growth in the United States, the impact of these groups is massive, albeit virtually invisible. The cumulative effect is nothing short of the redefinition of the nature and face of ministry in our world.
The Secret of Transformation
How is it that these mini-movements have fostered impressive life changes when many local churches have failed to produce similar outcomes—often with the same people? My research among these transformed individuals indicates at least five common conditions within these streams of ministry that produce such spectacular change.
First, the mini-movements are generally working with people who are predisposed to focusing on their faith in God. In other words, these people are Revolutionaries because they have made a decision to prioritize their faith. Once they have made that decision, it simply becomes a matter of which connections will most readily foster transformation.
Second, the mini-movement emerges as a prime candidate for engendering such growth because it becomes an individual’s primary source of relationships. The conversations and experiences shared by the people in the movement become a kind of closed circle that energizes itself to the point of multiplied returns on the investment. The level of accountability and the heightened focus on spiritual development generate very positive outcomes.
Third, the intimacy experienced within the mini-movement facilitates a sense of exhilaration over the transformation. That emanates from a fourth characteristic of the mini-movements: clear group goals. Since these entities exist to encourage positive spiritual growth, their planned activities center on such results. When those results are evident, word travels fast, and there is a general feeling of joy.
A fifth observation is that each of the mini-movements establishes its place in a person’s life through a very narrow focus—prayer, worship, worldview, musical expression, or whatever. However, that focus typically serves primarily as an entryway into the mind and heart of the individual. Often, once the person becomes immersed in the activity of the mini-movement, he or she is presented with a variety of spiritual challenges and opportunities that get blended into transformational activities.
Again, one artifact of the mini-movement phenomenon has been that millions of people who are growing as Christians and passionate about their faith have come to recognize that the local church is not—and need not be—the epicenter of their spiritual adventure. This is a mind-boggling realization for many since it conflicts with the teaching they have received, sometimes since their infancy. But many report that it has been a freeing insight. It has enabled them to mature in unique ways that may not have happened had they closed themselves off to the possibility of God meeting them in other ways or places.
