Our Guest George Barna
Sid: I’ve got on the telephone a man that has devoted his life to research. He’s worked for many Christian organizations in research and many secular organizations such as Walt Disney, Ford, the US Navy, the US Army. And the amazing thing is because he’s also a strong Christian, is he sees trends that are occurring. His books have made him almost a prophet because what he sees by the statistics and the research and the polling methods he’s able to analyze and predict what will happen in the future. Tell me what you see Christianity like in America 20 years from today George Barna.
George: Well Sid, we know that we study many, many different things going on there’s some things that I think really stand out that help us to understand how the future church will be shaped. One of those has to do with new leadership that emerging; we’re in the midst of a generational shift right now where the builder and boomer generations who have pretty much had a grip on the pastorate in most of our churches and most leadership positions and ministries are moving aside. So we’ve got the two younger generations the baby busters and the mosaic who are now stepping into some of those positions and they have a very different style much more of a collegial style a team leader based style that will change things. A second trend and of course that we see….
Sid: And of course we’re used to the one man show.
George: Oh yeah and these two generations that are merging have no interest what so ever in performance base leadership; to them it’s really about people coming together and being collaborative in using everyone’s respective gifts to bring about positive change.
Sid: And isn’t that really the Body working together as a team verses an island unto themselves?
George: Very much in fact if you go back in the book of Acts and you look at how did the initial the early church orchestrate what it was doing. You find that it’s an unusual group of characters that were the leaders of that early church. They had different gifts and even they had to find out their way to figure out “How do we not become the church of Peter, but how instead do we become a church of individuals who work together to accomplish greater things as a unified group than we can as individuals.
Sid: So we’ll always have our “Charismatic type leaders.”
George: We will but one of the things that you find about an effective leader is that they recognize how to use that charisma to point people toward a vision from God rather than to draw people toward themselves. That’s to me one of the marks of what really drives a leader; is what are you motivating people to get involved with. Is it the advancement of your career, is it the development of your popularity, those kinds of things, or is it really about going back and praying and listening and understanding why has God brought this particular group together at this time as the body of believers. There’s some unique sense of purpose that He has for us that if we do not fulfill that the Kingdom of God suffers.
Sid: So it’s not a cookie cutter religion.
George: Oh, it can’t be, it can’t be. You know as you look at everything that Jesus did; every time He talked with somebody He orchestrated the conversation and the relationship and the activity based upon who they were, what’s the circumstances were. I think one of the things that He was trying to teach His disciples is this is not about having the magic formula that you repeat over and over. It’s really about understanding the need of the individual, the principals of the Kingdom, and bringing those two things together to reshape the individual to be more in the image of God.
Sid: Now we’re talking about, at least you’ve listed a few from your book, the 7 Trends leading to the new church. Tell me some more of them.
George: Oh another one that’s really a challenging one has to do with the worldviews that are taking prominence in our culture today. Certainly one of the most prominent if not the most prominent world views is that of post modernism. And some of the elements of post modernism can be very challenging.
Sid: What do you mean by post modernism?
George: Post modernism is kind of moving after modernism that everything is logical and rational. Post modernism essentially says “Well, you have to understand first of all that there is no such thing as absolute moral truth; you as an individual determine what’s true in your life and nobody can tell you if it’s right or wrong that’s up to you you dictate that.” The way that you determine these things is largely based on emotions and experiences as opposed to any kind of transcendent truth that may have been delivered to us by God Himself. Now when you look at the fact that today most people under the age of 35 have that kind of postmodern perspective particularly in relation to moral truth, moral spiritual truth. Well, that’s a direct contradiction to what scripture teaches and so right off the bat we’ve got a real challenge here in terms of how do we then connect with our culture when by in large their perspective would lead them to say “Well, you know Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Scientology doesn’t really matter they’re all the same because there is no absolute moral or spiritual truth.” And so what that does it challenges us to rethink then how do we propose to a population that by enlarge does not believe that such a thing can exist as absolute moral truth. How do we engage them in a dialogue that helps them to see the ends of their own perspective and how that really is antithetical and not only to their own wellbeing but also to the order of the universe and everything that God has created within it?
Sid: So how do we?
George: Again it goes back to I think part of what Jesus was doing, you look back in His day certainly the Romans of His time had a very different perspective on truth. I think Pontius Pilate you know kind of summarized it best of all during the crucifixion time when he said “Truth, what is truth?” You know kind of sneeringly rejecting the whole idea that there is such a thing that we can put our finger on. Jesus and Paul I think maybe a more prolific example that we’re giving in scripture of how do you engage people in a process where you’re talking, you’re debating, you’re conversing, your experiencing things together that cause us to go deeper and deeper and deeper. Almost a syncretic approach where we challenge people thinking not like calling them wrong, not by saying “Well, if you don’t believe the Bible you’re an idiot your wrong. But instead by asking them questions about what they believe, why they believe it, what the bottom line implications of those beliefs are if you play them out to their very end point.
Sid: You know what your forcing them to think for themselves.
George: It’s a scary thought I know.
Sid: Tell me some other trends that are going on with this new church.
George: We’re finding out in our culture today particularly with young people they have no room or time or willingness in their life to address things that they perceive to be irrelevant. If you cannot customize things to their needs, if you cannot help them draw the connections from whatever it is your purposing to who they are or where they want to go or what they perceive to be significant they won’t give you a second thought. So the whole issue of not teaching things because we can teach them. Not teaching them because they’ve been taught in the past, not teaching them because we don’t know what else to do, but tying our key principals to the things that matter in a person’s life, that’s what gets their attention. That’s what gets their mind and heart and so ultimately we have the chance to introduce them to the living God and see transformation happen.
Sid: Tell me what the impact of technology will be on the future church.
George: Well, it a huge one even if you look at our churches today what you find is right now we’ve got a bout 2/3’s of all protestant churches that are using the big screen projection system. They’re using email to communicate through email blasts, they’re using websites to communicate. So what we’re find is that the more and more people are reliant upon these new means of technology to have information and ultimate truth communicated to them in some meaningful fashion. We’ve done some studies on what works and what doesn’t work in terms of teaching and preaching. And again in particularly with the youngest two generations we’re finding that if it’s almost imperative that we use some of these technologies to not only take advantage of the fact that people learn in different ways. But to give them different perspectives on the same information by giving them something visual to look at through a movie or a video; by giving them something that grasps their attention through music that’s audio based; by giving them something that’s relational through the kinds of personal conversation and accountability. By getting them involved in an activity that takes a principal and makes it real a more kinetic type of learning experience. I think all of these different things together is critical.
Sid: Now what is relevant to communicate to these new people.
George: Let me just quickly identify three other trends that we find because it really answers that question Sid. You know that relevance to them has to do with relationships, it has to do with involvement in the world around them, and it has to do with grasping meaning for their life. And so as we look at technology as we look at events, as we look at anything that were trying to do we always have to come back to “But what is the need of the audience that we’re attempting to minister to; the individuals that were part of that whose lives we want to see changed to become more Christ like.” And so much of the answer to that has to do with “Well, we have to help you develop authentic relationships.” Realize that most people in America today, this has been fascinating in our research with young people with elementary and secondary school kids they are not taught how to make a friend. They are not encouraged when they do make friends, they get no positive kind of feedback in terms of the development of the friendships and the relationships that they’ve made. So even when they do something well, they often discard it because they’re not getting much positive feedback. So this whole notion of “How you develop a friend, how do you love somebody, how do you demonstrate com…”
Sid: That’s a very relevant subject to talk about.
George: Oh, it’s huge, it’s huge and you know what we find is that kids love that stuff, young adults love that stuff because another thing coming out of our research is that so many of them feel like they never really had a parent that they connected with. And so there is…
Sid: I’m sorry we’re out of time.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth