Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Revolution vs. Kingdom

On the encouragement of a friend, by way of a gift, I recently read Revolution by George Barna.  Unfortunately, I wasn't all that impressed.  His basic point I find useful and thought-provoking.  And you get it in the first 5 sentences.  The rest of the book is mostly hot-air masquerading as an attempt to justify his initial conclusion.  However, it is devoid of factual information or any real supporting data at all.  Which would be fine if he wasn't trying to present his conclusion as based quantifiable changes instead of his potentially experienced perspective.

I have no issue with an experience or uniquely positioned individual postulating in a public forum.  And if this person has a reason via experience, intuition, or just an artistic-like ability to draw an actionable reality from the abstract, then I'm willing to listen.  But your position should be clear.

Following on that, I've been re-reading The Kingdom of Christ by Russell Moore.  While verbose and a little thickly worded it's a much better foundation on the perspective of change in the evangelical church.  I would love to see someone take Barna's concepts and ideas and address as thoroughly as Moore has done.

Personally, I agree with Barna's core idea and find myself a participant to some degree in this Revolution.  However, I disagree with his generalities and find myself drawn much closer to the theology resident in Moore's writing as convoluted as it can be.

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