My Friday morning study group has started to read George Barna’s Revolution. I had been putting if off because one of my friends told me not to waste my money on Barna’s heresy. And I had also read several scathing reviews of the book. I tend to agree with those assessments, but there’s no denying that some of what Barna points out in his book is a shameful indictment against the modern church:

Driven out of their longtime church by boredom and the inability to serve in ways that made use of their considerable skills and knowledge…

After months of honest effort, neither found a ministry that was sufficiently stimulating and having an impact on the surrounding community.

They are not willing to play religious games and aren’t interested in being part of a religious community that is not intentionally and aggressively advancing God’s Kingdom.

They have no use for churches that play religious games whether those games are worship services that drone on without the presence of God or ministry programs that bear no spiritual fruit. Revolutionaries eschew ministries that compromise or soft sell our sinful nature to expands organizational turf…they refuse to follow people in leadership positions who cast a personal vision rather than God’s…or who are more concerned about their own legacy than that of Jesus Christ…they are embarrassed by language that promises Christian love and holiness but turns out to be all sizzle and no substance.

If the local church is the answer to our spiritual needs, then why are most Christians so spiritually immature and desperate?

Ouch! I’ve only read the first third of the book, but I don’t think he’s going to ease up on us. More later.