Revolution

George Barna recently wrote a book called Revolution. I enjoyed the book very much, although I thought he gave up on the church much too easily. But there is certainly a revolution going on. There are actually multiple revolutions going on:

• In tech/communications....where speed is critical
• In relationships....where there is less face to face interaction, and more impersonal ones (email, etc.)
• In worldview....where the mental filter is now post-modernism and mass media is the dominant
• In information....where mass media is the dominant teacher
• In demographics....where the population is getting more diverse
• In culture....where superficiality is predominant
• In lifestyles....where younger people are very tribal
• In work....where people want to have more leisure options

There is also a revolution coming to the church. People want more of God. They want to live their faith. They want God to be top priority. These type of people are "God crazy." They want everything they do to be an act of worship. They do not want to go to church. They want to be the church. They don't want political or religious games. They are looking for a transformational experience. They are reaching for what C.S. Lewis called "deep church."

Spiritual revolutionaries are getting involved in new forms of what we call church, and they are making a different kind of impact. They have a passion for growth and relationships. They are not interested in building an institution. They are wanting to change the world.

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One thing that I heard Barna say is that "There is a difference between being a revolutionary and being a rebel." I thought that was a very insightful comment. Rebels see what is wrong, but don't offer preferable alternatives. There are a lot of young church leaders running around right now espousing what's wrong with the church. I think it is important to not just say, "The institutional church is broken" but to also say, "and this is how God's organic church can work."

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Characteristic of revolutions is inefficiency and messiness. Revolutionaries advance into uncharted territory and face new problems. I have said through the years that it takes the ability to deal with "a high level of ambiguity" to function in the CTK story. It reminds me of the commercial where they are building the plane after it is already in the air.

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If you are in a place where you have more questions than answers, be thankful. This is where you should be, at least at this point in history. This is where the revolutionaries are. In the cycle of "storming, forming, norming, performing" the organized church, after hundreds of years of norming, needs to get back to the drawing board.