A philosophy like London's leads to the inevitable conclusion that the church alone is to be blamed for its failure to reach the world for Christ. It has nothing to do with God's election or the enmity of the world against God, but everything to do with the church's poor sales-pitch to the profane populace of our planet. Why, if some Christian could just come up with the right approach, even renowned atheists like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking would rush right down to a nearby church to make a profession of faith and claim for themselves a Sunday perch on the sanctuary's front pew.

 

In there book Unchristian, a book based on George Barna's polling research, not on God's Word (the Bible), David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons argue that the church's failure to impact today's society should be chalked up to the fact that "Christianity has an image problem." According to Kinnaman and Lyons, "research shows that many of those outside of Christianity, especially younger adults...admit their emotional and intellectual barriers go up when they are around Christians, and they reject Jesus because they feel rejected by Christians."

 

Unfortunately, the authors of Unchristian, along with their admiring readership, misinterpret the above research as a signpost pointing to the saints—the sole stewards of the Gospel—as the chief barrier preventing men from coming to Christ. It has nothing to do with the sinner's sin, which Jesus said is the real reason for all unbelief (John 16:8-9), but everything to do with how sinners "feel" about Christians and the church. Thus, the cure for evangelical inertia is believed to be as simple as changing the perception of Christianity presently possessed by those at enmity with God.

 

Let's put this theory to the test. Many people in Jesus' day perceived Him to be a glutton, winebibber, madman, blasphemer, false prophet, sinner, criminal, Beelzebub (the prince of devils) and demon possessed. As a result, Christ ended up condemned and crucified following His loss of a public election by a landslide to a common criminal. Now, according to the prevailing opinion in the contemporary church, these widespread and unflattering perceptions of Christ should not be chalked up to the dark hearts of those who condemned Him, but only to Christ's own failure to have changed and improved His public image.

 

I guess the above explains why there were no more than 120 people in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost. With such a tremendous "image problem," Christ was lucky to have had that large of a congregation. If He had only listened to His disciples, who tried to persuade Him to improve His public relations skills and to stop being so confrontational and offensive (Matthew 15:1-14), Christ might have spared Himself from the cross and spawned Jerusalem's first megachurch.

 

Now, I'm not suggesting that Barna's research should be overlooked. I'm only suggesting that it has been grossly misinterpreted by the likes of Kinnaman and Lyons. The truth is; the emotional and intellectual barriers of sinners always go up in the presence of genuine Christians. This explains why the Bible teaches that "sinners cannot [stand] in the congregation of the righteous" (Psalm 1:5). It also explains why 1st century sinners didn't dare join in with the 1st century church, despite the fact that they held it in high regard (Acts 5:13).

 

The true insight offered to us by Barna's research, insight that we would be poorly served to overlook, is that the 21st century church, unlike the 1st century church, is not held in high regard. The explanation for this cannot be found, as Kinnaman and Lyons suggest, in a common denominator; namely the uncomfortableness of sinners around genuine saints, since this has always been and always will be the case. The explanation must be found elsewhere.

 

In his Christian classic, Born Crucified, L. E. Maxwell wrote: "Mark well, O popular Christian and worldly- wise preacher, venturing how far you must go with the world in order to win the world: never had the church so much influence over the world as when she had nothing to do with the world." The immutable truth, a truth not only proven time and time again down through the annals of church history, but one that also appears to elude all contemporary church growth gurus, is that the more cozy we try to get with the world and the more comfortable we try to make the world in the church, the less the world regards the church and the more irrelevant the church becomes in the world. This fact is irrefutably proven even by George Barna's own research.

 

For sometime now, church growth gurus like Bill Hybels, the pastor of Chicago's Willow Creek Community Church, the flagship of the seeker- sensitive church model, have been marketing the church on the basis of Barna's research. During this time, as indisputably proven by Barna's own ongoing polling, the church has not gained ground, but consistently lost ground in the world. Consequently, Bill Hybels, much to his credit, has publicly confessed: "If you simply want a crowd, the ‘seeker-sensitive’ model produces results. If you want solid, sincere, mature followers of Christ, it's a bust."

 

Unbelievably, the Barnas, Kinnamans and Lyons of our world are arguing that the contemporary church's needed course correction is the very thing that caused the church to get off course in the first place. In spite of its contradiction to the Bible and refutation by Barna's own research, today's church growth movement still insists that the church must conform to the world in order to transform it. How can a church being changed by the world effect any change within it? Obviously, such a supposition is totally illogical and absurd on its face.

 

Jesus once said, "If the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is" (Matthew 6:23 NLT). It's a dark day in today's church, a day so dark that we're mistaking "darkness for light, and light for darkness" (Isaiah 5:20).

 

George Barna fans will undoubtedly protest at this point by pointing out that Barna has moved on from the seeker- sensitive model of church growth he helped to market. Indeed, he has! He is now championing what he has dubbed the “Revolution” or “Reawakening.” Unlike the Great Awakening, a movement that brought people into the local church, Barna’s “Reawakening” is a mass exodus out of the local church. Whereas previous generations of believers would have viewed such a thing as spiritually cataclysmic, Barna applauds it as the beginning of a “spiritual revolution that is reshaping Christianity, personal faith, corporate religious practice, and the moral contours of the nation.”

 

According to Barna, the “Revolution”—this supposed fresh breath of the Spirit of God—is being led by 20 million “Revolutionaries” who have stopped going to church in order to find “a deeper connection with and reliance upon God.” In the figure-filled mind of pollster George Barna, a Christian with no church is no problem! What used to be commonly considered among Christians as the first slippery step to backsliding; namely, quitting the local church, has now been redefined by Barna as the first big step into deeper spirituality.

 

It is not that Barna does not emphasize the importance of church; he does, as long as it is church with a capital-C. His emphasis is on the “invisible” church comprised of all born-again believers in Jesus Christ, not on the “visible” church, the local body of baptized believers. To Barna, the local church is merely a “congregational-formatted ministry” that “we made up.” He even goes as far as to make the following startling statement: “Whether you become a Revolutionary immersed in, minimally involved in, or completed disassociated from the local church is irrelevant to me (and, within boundaries, to God).”

 

The Protestant Reformers distinguished the “visible” (local) church from the “invisible” (universal) church in order to point out that one’s name on the membership roll of a local church did not guarantee its appearance in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Still, they insisted upon the necessity of the local church, seeing the Christian’s involvement in it as essential to his or her spiritual maturity and ministry. George Barna, on the other hand, has no problem with “Lone Ranger” Christians whose faith is freelanced “from a proliferation of options” and “favored alternatives,” which they are free to weave “together...into a unique tapestry that constitutes the personal ‘church’ of the individual.” 

 

One is hard pressed to find Barna’s 20 million “Revolutionaries” in the real world today. In fact, you can’t even find them in Barna’s own research, since his own research shows that only 9 percent of America’s 77 million professed believers possess a biblical worldview. What is even more difficult, however, is to find Barna’s notions about the local church anywhere upon the sacred page. Although Barna teaches that each individual should tailor a “personal church” for themselves, the Bible teaches that we should “not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhort one another: and so much the more, as [we] see the day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25).

 

In an attempt to sidestep the obvious contradictions of his contentions with the Word of God, Barna argues, “The Bible does not tell us that worship must happen in a church sanctuary and therefore we must be actively associated with a local church.” Sanctuaries aside, the New Testament clearly teaches the absolute necessity of each Christian’s involvement in a local church (Matthew 18:20; John 20:19, 26; Acts 1:13-14; 2:1, 42-47; 8:3; 11:25-26; 20:7; Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 5:4; 11:17, 18, 20; 14:23, 26; 16:1-2, 15-16, 19; Ephesians 5:19-21; Colossians 3:16; 4:15; Philemon 2; Hebrews 3:12-14; 10:25; 1 Peter 4:7-11).

 

Furthermore, of the 115 times the Greek word for church (ekklesia) appears in the New Testament, it is referring to a local congregation at least 92 of those times. Although Barna is right in saying that the New Testament does not stipulate that Christians join together for corporate worship “in a church sanctuary,” he is as wrong as he can be in suggesting that the New Testament does not teach believers to “be actively associated with a local church.”

 

Think about it, how are Barna’s “Revolutionaries” going to disciple and minister to one another apart from a local church? How are they going to join together in missionary cooperation to further the cause of Christ to the ends of the earth? How are they going to encourage and hold each other accountable if they fail to regularly fellowship one with another? Barna’s applauded abandonment of the local church doesn’t sound anything like “spiritual revolution” to me, but more like Christianity coming to a screeching halt.

 

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 targeting 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:

 

“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)

 

“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)

 

“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)

 

“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)

 

“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).