by George Barna
This shifting of responsibility will affect all dimensions of spirituality. Besides personal growth, believers will bear the obligation for performing acts of community service, promoting the gospel, growing their family in faith maturity, worshiping God regularly, developing intimacy with God, understanding and applying the content of the Scriptures, representing the Kingdom in all walks of life, investing every resource they manage for holy outcomes, and being connected to a community of God-loving people. No more waiting for others to do the job; every Revolutionary must handle the duty to be the Church with dedication and excellence.
This transition also means that believers will have a much wider base of options to choose from. The field of possibilities will no longer be restricted to what a congregation proposes, or what their denomination’s agencies suggest. A global infrastructure of Revolutionary activities and alternatives will emerge, making plentiful choices accessible. Because the Revolution will naturally encourage people gifted in specific areas to produce ministry that exploits those gifts, the range and quality of options will expand the influence of the Church and each believer.
Expect children to be taken more seriously as spiritual beings. Revolutionaries have the duty to raise their family to be the Church of God. Instead of passing off their children to others in the hope that someone will do something that bears some fruit, Revolutionaries will accept God’s challenge to raise each young one to become a spiritual champion. The breadth of the Revolution will make ample assistance available to satisfy that obligation without allowing these parents to abdicate their duty.
In the end, the Revolution transforms believers so that they can transform the world. Their perception of faith becomes more real and personal. Their relationship with God becomes more natural and intimate. The Bible becomes a true book of life-giving wisdom, indispensable for right and holy living. The very life of the believer becomes a means of worship and outreach. Tentmaking—the practice of working at a nonreligious job as a means of paying the bills while facilitating one’s desire to be a genuine representative of Christ in the world—moves from a quirky, first-century idea to a defining, personal lifestyle.
Impact on the Christian Community
The Revolution will permanently alter the contours of the body of Christ in America. Of course, when a massive number of its constituency is transformed, the body itself is reshaped, by definition. But how the community sees itself, and how it performs its functions as a community, will change.
New leaders will gain recognition and authority among believers. Their role will not be building new institutions to replace the old. Rather, it will be providing guidance in the construction of new hearts and minds that produce a thriving Church community. Weaving together the spectrum of ideas, talents, and resources of believers into a richer ministry tapestry will be their challenge. Power, authority, and resources will be defined, awarded, recognized, and utilized in different ways as the Revolution matures.
The systems and structures that fostered the old Church will give way to new realities in the Revolution. New ministry organizations will emerge. Different educational methods and training systems will prosper. Technology will become more important in the networking and restructuring of the Church in its mission.
Whereas “Christian community” has generally been limited to the relationships facilitated within a congregation, the Revolution is bursting open the walls of the worldwide Church to birth a truly international network of relationships. The synergies resulting from this expanded horizon will be impossible to quantify—or contain.
Christians’ broader view of the Church and of their own responsibilities will also bring forth a renaissance in global missions.
Impact on Local Churches
Existing churches have a historic decision to make: to ignore the Revolution and continue business as usual, to invest energy in fighting the Revolution as an unbiblical advance, or to look for ways of retaining their identity while cooperating with the Revolution as a mark of unity and genuine ministry. My current research suggests the latter approach will be the least common.
For those congregations whose leaders choose either to ignore or fight the Revolution, the consequences are predictable. A percentage of them will be seriously impaired by the exodus of individuals—even though it may be just a few people leaving an already tiny congregation. Other churches will continue as if nothing new were happening in the faith world. However, every church, regardless of its public response to the Revolution, will feel increasing internal and external pressure to get more serious about ministry and to lock onto a vision from God for the congregation’s existence.
The United States will see a reduction in the number of churches, as presently configured (i.e., congregational-formatted ministries). Church service attendance will decline as Christians devote their time to a wider array of spiritual events. Donations to churches will drop because millions of believers will invest their money in other ministry ventures. Churches’ already limited political and cultural influence will diminish even further at the same time that Christians will exert greater influence through more disparate mechanisms. Fewer church programs will be sustained in favor of more communal experiences among Christians.
A declining number of professional clergy will receive a livable salary from their churches. Denominations will go through cutbacks, and executives will be relieved of their duties as their boards attempt to understand and halt the hemorrhaging.
To some, this will sound like the Great Fall of the Church. To Revolutionaries, it will be the Great Reawakening of the Church. New scenarios do not mean mayhem and dissipation. In this case, they represent a new day in which the Church can truly be the Church—different from what we know today, but more responsive to and reflective of God.
Impact on American Culture
Culture is the accumulation of behaviors and beliefs that characterize a group of people. It is comprised of the attitudes, symbols, language, rewards, expectations, customs, and values that define the experience and context of those people.
How will the Revolution affect American culture? No less dramatically than it will rehabilitate the Church. The most important change will be the heightened visibility of Christian activity by the ever-present Revolutionaries who are intent upon being the Church. They will affect the ways legislation is discussed and passed. They will model a moral lifestyle—and encourage others to follow suit. They will inject religious themes and ideas into conversations. They will restore dignity to the family as the cornerstone of a free, democratic, and healthy society.
New types of organizations will replace the inert stalwarts. Seminaries will be challenged to become relevant or move over. Christian colleges, secondary schools, and elementary schools will be challenged to be more overtly and pragmatically Christian in their endeavors. A more diverse continuum of service entities will blossom as believers seek ways to use their skills, money, and time in an effective and life-changing manner.
The Christian Church has effectively served as the scapegoat or whipping boy for the mass media for several decades. That will change as the Revolution makes it more difficult to target a Church that is so dispersed and so obsessed with holiness. The standard criticisms will ring hollow; the typical caricatures of Christian people will vanish as the skeptics and critics recognize a wave of change through which true love for others has replaced hypocrisy and infighting.
Even the economy will be impacted. Revolutionaries will move their peers with their commitment to hard work and excellence. The renowned Protestant work ethic, which has been replaced in recent years by a more lackadaisical, postmodern lifestyle ethic, will return with a third-millennium flavor. The consumer choices of Revolutionaries will instigate a new sector of the marketplace geared toward meeting their needs; existing entities that produce garbage antithetical to God’s principles will face a serious fight for survival amidst the example and multidimensional attacks of the growing Revolutionary population.
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br /> This Is Not Utopia
All of this might come off sounding as if all evil will be whisked away and only gentility, civility, love, and goodness will remain. Nothing could be further from the truth. Life will remain a war zone. Until Jesus Christ returns, the battle will rage on.
Revolutionaries will have an impact, but they will not dominate the culture—at least not in the foreseeable future. After all, they are sinners. They are and will always be imperfect creatures. They will fall prey to greed, lust, selfishness, and all the other vices and lures that Satan uses to undermine God’s ways and His people. Conditions will get better, but this is not a return to the Garden of Eden.
Spiritual maturity is a process. En route to maturity, you can count on a lot of false starts and stumbling. Revolutions are famous for being messy: things rarely go as planned and are notoriously inefficient. I see no reason to expect this budding revolution of faith to be any different.
But that does not erase the phenomenal significance of this historic quest for more of God in American life. The world will never be the same.
Chapter Thirteen
What the Critics Will Say
CHURCH HISTORIANS AND REVIVALISTS look back at the Great Awakening with envy. They admire the passion and perseverance of those who dedicated themselves to the spread of Christianity during the Colonial years. But they also remind us that a multitude of critics attacked the revival—especially from within the Church. George Whitefield, John Wesley, and other standard-bearers of the revival withstood harsh attacks from established churches who complained bitterly that the itinerants used unorthodox means of reaching people, disrupted the status and flow of existing ministries, threatened the stability of society, and undermined the security and authority of pastors and denominational executives. Today, however, we praise God that Whitefield and his colleagues persisted in thinking outside the box and enduring the unwarranted abuse from their spiritual kinfolk.
In fact, energetic resistance by the established church has accompanied every significant episode of growth in the Kingdom since the time of Christ. Jesus and His followers were slandered, ridiculed, physically abused, and murdered. The Protestant Reformation produced heated debate and violent resistance. The Second Great Awakening drew strenuous opposition from the ecclesiastical community. Even the more recent and less extensive movements of faith, such as the Jesus Movement of the 1960s, were dismissed or attacked by religious leaders who were aghast at the different types of people, strategies, behaviors, and outcomes that characterized the freewheeling, hippie-friendly Jesus People.
The Revolution of faith that is emerging today is no different. If you mention that millions of deeply devout Christians whose lives are centered on knowing, loving, and serving God live independently of a local church, you can count on criticism from the church establishment. Being Kingdom-minded and seeking innovative ways of reaching the world and honoring God suddenly get redefined to mean that such efforts must be approved and controlled by the presiding rulers of the institutional authorities. Some of the same people who profess love to be their hallmark ruthlessly attack anything that threatens their interpretations or turf.
As you consider the heartbeat and role of the Revolution, here is what you may hear from mainstream religious leaders. Let me suggest a nonhysterical response.
Critics Argue That You Must Go to Church
The major concern about the Revolution is that millions of its adherents are not affiliated with a local church. As described in earlier chapters, Revolutionaries’ distancing themselves from formal congregations does not reflect a willingness to ignore God as much as a passion to deepen their connection to Him. In my experience, Revolutionaries do not try to draw other people away from the local church. Theirs is a personal choice based on a genuine desire to be holy and obedient, but finding that need better served outside the framework of congregational structures.
The Bible Says . . .
Mainstream leaders seem to be voicing three dimensions of concern about believers making a conscious decision to separate from the local church. The first is an appeal to their interpretation of Scripture. “To call yourself a believer but leave the local church is unbiblical,” explained one angry pastor. “The Bible clearly teaches that we are not to forsake the assembling of believers to worship God. Scripture also commands us to be accountable to the church and to be under the headship of His anointed leaders. Jesus Christ established the local church. Abandoning it is displeasing to God.”
That conversation—and several others like it—pushed me to return to the Bible to find out what God actually says about the Church. I discovered some interesting things. For instance, when the word church appears in the Bible, it refers to people who are “called out” from society to be the full expression of Jesus Christ on earth. That reminds me of what being a Revolutionary is all about: rejecting the norm and paying the cost to stand apart from the crowd to honor God.
In fact, when the Bible admonishes us to gather together, it does not imply that that should be a church service or congregational event. “And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25). Such interaction could be in a worship service or at Starbucks; it might be satisfied through a Sunday school class or a dinner in a fellow believer’s home. The same God who is more concerned about what’s in our hearts than about mindless observance of meaningless routines refuses to impose specific regulations about our religious practices. He wants us to use the creative abilities He entrusted to us to express in our own way how much we love Him and want to glorify Him.
In fact, there is no verse in Scripture that links the concepts of worshiping God and a “church meeting.” The Bible does not tell us that worship must happen in a church sanctuary and therefore we must be actively associated with a local church. It simply tells us that we must worship God regularly and purely, in spirit and truth. Take particular note of the fact that Jesus dismissed the organized worship of His day as “a farce” and intimated that we ought not be so limited as to how and when we worship God (see Mark 7:7). When the Samaritan woman asked about worship practices and places, Jesus responded bluntly that the place and even the form of worship meant less to God than the heart and commitment. He noted that, “The time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. . . . But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (John 4:21, 23). He was highlighting the same foolish irrelevancies that traditionalists argue about today.
We are commanded to worship God, and we are encouraged to meet with other Christians for various purposes. However, as we follow the development of the new covenant and the related community of faith, notice that Jesus and His disciples provide few guidelines and commands regarding such meetings. The same God who is so specific about things that matter to Him and that are important for us has provided few details about the logistics of Christian assemblies. That silence suggests that we have freedom to develop the means by which we act as a united body of disciples, as long as we perform the functions of God’s chosen ones in ways that comply with His general guidelines of behavior and the functioning of the body of believers.
And let’s be loving but honest about what really goes on within the body of Christ today. No informed Christian leader could make a straight-faced argument that involvement in a local church necessarily produces a more robust spiritual life than that seen among Revolutionaries. As seen in earlier chapters regarding the state of the Church in America these days, Christians who are involved in local churches are actually less likely than Revolutionaries to lead a biblical lifestyle.
We must also address one other reality: the Bible never describes “church” the way we have configured it. The Bible goes to great lengths to teach us principles for living and theology for understanding. However, it provides very little
guidance in terms of the methods and structures we must use to make those principles and insights prevail in our lives. It seems that God really doesn’t care how we honor and serve Him, as long as He is number one in our lives and our practices are consistent with His parameters. If a local church facilitates that kind of life, then it is good. And if a person is able to live a godly life outside of a congregation-based faith, then that, too, is good. Remember, Jesus looks at the fruit. “A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit” (Matthew 7:17-18).
True Revolutionaries agree that being isolated from other believers—i.e., the Church (note the capital C)—is unbiblical. However, while they may not be integrated into a formal church congregation, they are not isolated from the Church. They may not belong to a specific collection of saints that engages in routines and customs at a particular location and under the leadership of a specific individual or group. However, neither are they spiritual untouchables who have no connection to the global Church. Every Revolutionary I have interviewed described a network of Christians to whom he or she relates regularly and a portfolio of spiritual activities which he or she engages in on a regular basis. This schedule of relationships and ministry efforts is the Revolutionary equivalent of traditional congregational life—but better. These believers pursue the seven passions of a Christian Revolutionary with a variety of people, in different forms and environments, but they are exuberant about their faith life. Compared to the “average” Christian I encounter in our national surveys, I estimate that the “average” Revolutionary is substantially more Spirit-led, faith-focused, scripturally literate, and biblically obedient than their more traditional counterparts who are embedded within a congregation.
