My vehement disagreement with George Barna should not be misinterpreted as a carte blanche defense of today’s listless and lifeless local churches. I’ve attended more than a few so-called church services that were tantamount in my mind to a form of spiritual Chinese water torture. The pulpit was void of anointing, the music was void of joy, the prayers were void of heart and, to no surprise, the pews were void of people. I’ve sprung from many an attended church service like a paroled prisoner does from a federal penitentiary.
We all know the tragic truth that much of what passes for “church” today is nothing more than the congregating of a bunch of navel-gazers; that is, people so concentrated upon themselves that they’ve lost sight of everything else. Everyone who finds themselves in one of these self-absorbed spiritual mausoleums should immediately flee for fear of their spiritual lives. Still, this doesn’t justify, as Barna portends, throwing the “baby” of the local church out with the dirty, cold, “bath water” of its manifold present-day counterfeits.
Much of the present-day plight of the local church is actually attributable to church growth gurus like George Barna. By his own admission, much of his polling-based preaching to the contemporary church has proven to be both flawed and ineffectual. For instance, he personally helped plant a new church that ultimately failed to survive, much less thrive. Still, despite his dismal batting average, here we are again breathlessly listening to his latest advice; namely, to abandon the “hollow” concept of the local church that he and others helped hollow out.
Barna contends that his latest and most radical polling-based proposition will take twenty to thirty years to come to fruition. So we’ll have to wait that long to see if his advocacy of the abandonment of the local church will prove to be a spiritual boon or bust. Never mind that all of his “sage” advice up till now has “failed” and proven “flawed” by his own admission, or that traveling a wrong path paved by the shifting sand of public opinion polls for so long may lead the church into an inescapable bog, Barna, a man often wrong but never in doubt, still expects to be given the benefit of the doubt.
If one looks carefully at Barna’s counsel to the contemporary church, it always boils down to a suggestion that the church grab a canoe to go with the flow of contemporary culture. Barna’s polling shows the latest trends and fads, then, Barna draws a bull’s-eye around them and counsels the church to aim for the target drawn by public opinion. By doing so, Barna contends that the church will woo the world by catering to all of its current crazes.
Barna’s so-called “Revolution” or “Reawakening” is actually nothing more than the present-day movement of a profane culture away from everything Christian. It is the spirit of the age or what the Bible calls “this present evil world” (Galatians 1:4).
The Greek word Paul uses for “world” in Galatians 1:4 (aion) means “age.” It is best understood as the man-centered system of thought that most characterizes our time. According to C. Fred Dickason, the former head of the theology department of Moody Bible Institute, “The Greek term, aion, refers in its various contexts to a spirit of the age that rejects the true God and sets up a counterfeit life and substitute religion with the creature at the center.”
Far from targeted the spirit of our age, as George Barna proposes, the Apostle Paul taught that Christ died to deliver us from it. Rather than fitting in, the church should be standing out, as the Scripture clearly teaches:
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“Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.” (2 Corinthians 6:17)
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“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” (1 Peter 2:11)
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“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27)
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“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14)
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“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” (Galatians 6:14)
Though Madison Avenue may applaud the contemporary church’s use of public opinion polls to market itself, I’m quite sure that Heaven’s golden streets are less taken with the church replacing the preaching of the cross with the peddling of itself.
While many a starry-eyed, present-day professor of Christ will readily embrace Barna’s redefining of a profane culture’s spiritual obstinacy as an opportunity for spiritual revolution, God’s true remnant must refuse to stare through the looking glass into George Barna’s polling Wonderland. Instead, we must face the harsh reality of our times so that we’ll “know what [we] ought to do,” for, as our Lord Himself predicted, the “night is [quickly] coming when no man can work” (1 Chronicles 12:32; John 9:24).
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