somewhere over the holidays i finished reading barna's book "the revolution." i must say that before entering into the book i felt it was going to be a book that challenged me. i'm not a huge fan of barna, not him personally, but how people use his research to push forth ideologies that i feel mix too much with political ideologies than kingdom practices. with that said, i was pleasantly surprised going through the book.
simply put, barna shares how their research has shown them a growing force in the faith community of "revolutionaries" who are doing church outside the common framework of the institutional church. this doesn't scream "emergent" (or even mention the word) but it sure did feel like it when i was reading it. i suppose in part because the "revolutionaries" are not necessarily part of that framework of practice, but he allows it/them to be whatever it is they/we dream them to be.
through the book i got rather bored of hearing the word "revolutionaries" over and over and over again. other than that, it was an accessible, not lengthy, read and worth my time.
what i have a will probably use it for is to help bridging some of those post-modern/modern mindsets and language gaps. i have long held the perception that barna is for the modern era. this piece, however, does help to say to the modern person, here is what is happening & here is what you can do.
what is happening is this revolution within the world outside of the church. people can do one of three things as barna suggests. get on board, learn what the "revolutionaries" are doing and seek to be like them in spirit. support them, don't jump on board with what they are doing (ie. go to your church as you do) but support them in their efforts to do things differently. both will help to ensure that you, as an institution will be relevant in the coming years. third, stick you head in the sand, you can pretend it is not happening, condemn those who are doing different things. eventually though, barna shares that you will become completely irrelevant to society as a church and will die.
so who is on board with the revolution?
