I just spent the last two days hanging out with George Barna, Leonard Sweet and some wonderful folks from mostly mainline denominations who care deeply about the Church. Many super cool conversations took place. Before I break down the information, let me give me a high-level perspective of the data that Barna presented: it’s the end of the Church as we know it.

This is not a statement about my desire nor am I expressing emerging church angst. In fact, as someone who spends a lot of time talking about the emerging church it was interesting to me how unknown the whole emerging conversation is to someone like George Barna who watches the American Church for a living. I don't think that is a statement about the value of the emerging conversation, but perhaps it has more to do with statistics and the ability to measure new things. However, at the end of a full day of conversation with Barna, I was left with the understanding that anyone who loves the Church (big ‘C’) needs to realize that our current US forms of church (little ‘c’) are fading away.

We spent Friday with Barna and Leonard Sweet, and Saturday with just Sweet. I won't replay all the statistics for you, in part because so many of them are available at Barna’s site for The Barna Group. Here are some of the major take-aways from those two days:

According to Barna:

• Americans have 3 levels of influence. The bottom tier, that which has about 10% influence on a person’s life, is the tier that includes the local church.


• Currently only 65% of self-professed Christian in America experience their faith through the local church, and that is diminishing every year. He predicts that by 2025 only about one-third of Americans will experience their faith through what we would define today as a local church.


• According to Barna, the people who sit in our pews on Sunday morning are statistically unrecognizable from everyone else in the culture in terms of their actions and attitudes. I have quoted this statistic several times. Great quote from Sweet to augment this thought: "John Stuart Mills said if you base a religion on a set of beliefs in a very short time the followers will look just like the rest of the culture. Mills was a prophet."


• There are a multitude of spiritual mini-movements happening around the country totally outside the confines of the institutional church. They are happening through things like house churches, prayer movements, market-place ministries and cyber-churches. None have more than 3 million adherents.


• Children’s ministry is the most important ministry of a spiritually healthy church. We talked about this a lot. One book I am planning to pick up is Barna’s book, Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions. More on this in the future.

Take-Away From Sweet:

• It is all about the priesthood of believers. The US church (small ‘c’) is powerless. The big ‘C’ church can make a huge impact, one person at a time. This will have a huge impact on our forms.


• God has some time-bomb scriptures that go off at certain times. Romans and Pauline literature, for example, exploded during the Reformation and its effect was felt for hundreds of years. What scriptures are exploding today?:
  
  
  
  • The Gospels – For many it is like they are seeing the words of Jesus for
    the first time. It is time to write doctrine from the gospels.
  
  
  • Wisdom Literature
  
  
  • Proverbs
  
  
  • Prophetic Literature


• Christianity’s unique contribution to the history of religion is that truth is not a point, principle, proposition or value...it is a person. For more on this subject I would point you to Len's latest book.

Comments

[alexander]

wow must have been a fun couple of days! Your point no.4 is exactly the area I am preparing to research here in the UK in readiness for a national church planting consultation in about 18 months. what else did Barna have to say on this?

[jason clark]

Thanks Will for taking the time to write notes for us.

[Bill]

Oh yeah, sure. Point us to a book that's not even out yet. That's real funny, Will. ;-)

Sounds like it was a great experience. Look forward to hearing more about it.

[tony sheng]

Hi Will,

Been poking around your site for a few months... Thanks for writing, its a great blog. I really appreciated the notes from Barna... I was always partial to youth ministries being the cornerstone of health churches.... but oh well.... haha

Thanks, blessings!

[stephen shields]

thanks for the info, will!

[bobbie]

oh i LOVE that concept of the 'time bomb' scriptures - i have thought that to be true, almost like a redemption of truth that is going to reassert itself soon.

so looking forward to hearing more! thanks for being our eyes and ears there!

[Thorny]

Will~

It was a great experience indeed! Thank you for posting this info so I can add it to my notes that I took. I'll email you soon!

Thorny

[will]

Alexander: one of the most interesting parts of his research is that he is seeing a lot of these movements but not measuring them per se. So, to answer your question, there is not much to talk about statistically as far as would you call 'simple church' movements. However, one word of caution - Barna, while one of the pre-eminent researchers of the Church, researches what he is paid to look into. The irony is that these smaller movements may not be as measured in part because he is not being asked to measure them.

[Randy]

Great stuff man...thanks for blogging....

it will be interesting to see how are experinces in the emerging church will effect our children 15 years from now. I need to get Barna's book

[Paul Fromont]

Thanks Will. Very interesting stuff. Another piece of the missional jig-saw puzzle.

[jen lemen]

i'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about barna's kids book. he makes me crazy because i think he equates christianity with foundationalist, modern worldviews that have been fused to christianity. for this reason lots is off his radar.

[Linda Grenz]

Someone (name escapes me at the moment) is doing a study that says that all of the major religious movements in the US began with youth ministry. One of the reasons I (adult educator) decided to publish the Journey to Adulthood -- a youth program that does, in fact, change churches. So, I think Barna's point about youth is right on.

[Benjy (groovythpstr)]

Hey, is the emerging church a mini spiritual movement? ! !

I respect Barna, but have to strongly disagree with this stat: Currently only 65% of self-professed Christian in America experience their faith through the local church, and that is diminishing every year.

That one is way too high. We would need to know more about what went into this one, but my hunch is that it favors the church. In other words, if a non christian organization conducted the same poll, the stat would be much less higher.