Just a quick reminder that your taxes are due on April 15th. If you were fortunate enough to get a "refund", make sure you look at that line on your 1040 about the taxes you actually paid. Make sure you take a peek at your paystub, and see how much the government confiscates each time you get paid.

Of course,if we could make more progress on the FairTax, things would be a lot simpler and fairer. And April 15th would be just another day.

If you haven't ready The FairTax Book yet, you should. It comes out on paperback in May. But if you ask nicely, I might just let you borrow mine.

Have any of you read the book? Have any questions or comments about the FairTax?

Labels: politics

Chapter three of George Barna's Revolution discusses the "seven passions of revolutionaries." In Barna's discussion, these are related to the passions of the early Church. He finds the following values characterized in the New Testament:

Intimate Worship - "every believer was expected to worship God every day."

Faith-Based Conversations - "nothing should excite us more than the realization that God Himself loves us, wants and intimate relationship with us, and allows us to invite others into that sacred and priceless relationship with Him."

Intentional Spiritual Growth - "they placed their faith at the center of their lives and derived their sense of meaning, purpose, and direction from their connection to God and His commands."

Servanthood - "the early Church fostered the notion that serving other people was the best means of demonstrating the example that Jesus had set for them."

Resource Investment - "they used the variety of resources at their disposal - money, food, clothing, housing, relationships, influence, skills, time - for the benefit of all believers."

Spiritual Friendships - "the friendships they formed provided not only encouragement but also loving accountability for spiritual integrity."

Family Faith - "parents were expected to model a Spirit-led lifestyle for their children... in a very real sense, the home was the early Church - supplemented by larger gatherings in the Temple and elsewhere, but never replaced by what took place in the homes of believers."

There is an organization that evaluates local churches using a process called "Natural Church Development," and using data compiled over decades, they have identified certain factors of churches that are thriving and having an impact, which they use to assess and help churches improve. Those factors are:

Empowering Leadership
Gift-Oriented Ministry
Passionate Spirituality
Functional Structures
Inspiring Worship
Holistic Small Groups
Need-Oriented Evangelism
Loving Relationships

It was interesting to me to see Barna's list being quite similar. Of course, Barna took his list out of examples in Acts, whereas the NCD process was "discovered" empirically. Truth is truth, though, no matter what process you use to arrive at it.

In chapter 4, however, Barna analyzes the current state of local churches using his seven principles. This is the depressing part. He had a lot of statistics, and I won't repeat all of them (I'd be copying too much of the book).

An example or two from each section, however, will suffice. First, know that he defines "believers" as "people who have confessed their sins, asked God for forgiveness, accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, are confident of their salvation solely because of the grace extended to them by God, and regularly participate in the life of a Christian congregation." This definition makes the following statistics even more depressing.

Intimate Worship - "eight out of every ten believers do not feel they have entered into the presence of God, or experienced a connection with Him, during the worship service." "Only one out of every four churched believers says that when they worship God, they expect Him to be the primary beneficiary of their worship. (Most people say they expect to get the most from the experience.)"

Faith-Based Conversations - "the typical churched believer will die without leading a single person to a lifesaving knowledge of and relationship with Jesus Christ."

Intentional Spiritual Growth - "when asked what constitutes success in life, few believers define success in spiritual terms. Most describe outcomes related to professional achievement, family solidarity, physical accomplishments, or resource acquisition."

Servanthood - "the typical believer would rather give money to an organization to allow it to do good deeds in society than personally assist in alleviating the needs of disadvantaged people."

Resource Investment - "when asked to explain their understanding of biblical stewardship, less than one out of every twenty includes resources such as time, relationships, ideas, or skills in their assessment." "Most believers are unable to identify anything specific they have ever donated money to that they would describe as producing life-changing outcomes."

Spiritual Friendships - "the most significant influence on the choices of churched believers is neither from the pulpit nor advice gleaned from fellow congregants; it is messages absorbed from the media, the law, and family members."

Family Faith - "the likelihood of a married couple who are born-again churchgoers getting divorced is the same as couples who are not disciples of Jesus." "Apart from church-based programs, the typical Christian family spends less than three hours per month in endeavors designed to jointly develop or apply their faith."

Some additional quotes from his conclusion:

There is nothing inherently wrong with being involved in a local church. But realize that being part of a group that calls itself a "church" does not make you saved, holy, righteous or godly any more than being in Yankee Stadium makes you a professional baseball player...

The local church many have come to cherish - the services, offices, programs, buildings, ceremonies - is neither biblical or unbiblical. It is abiblical - that is, such an organization is not addressed in the Bible...

Revolutionaries realize - sometimes very reluctantly - that the core issue isn't whether or not one is involved in a local church, but whether or not one is connected to the body of believers in the pursuit of godliness and worship...

Or, to put it more succinctly, the Revolution is about recognizing that we are not called to go to church. We are called to be the Church.

To be continued...

Labels: books, emerging

I finally procured my own copy of George Barna's Revolution yesterday. I got turned on to this book by my brother in law, Ben, during our family trip to West Virginia last weekend. (You can see his review of the book.)

So far, I've pretty much only re-read the two chapters that I read last weekend. But I think this book is going to have so much in it that I'm going to want to talk about, that I'm going to review it "as I go."

To lay the groundwork, Barna relies on the "revolution" terminology very heavily. Those who are participating in this "Revolution" are called, quite simply, "Revolutionaries." The first definition he gives of a Revolutionary is that they "have chosen to live in concert with core biblical principles... returning to a first-century lifestyle based on faith, goodness, love, generosity, kindness, simplicity, and other values deemed 'quaint' by today's frenetic and morally untethered standards."

But perhaps the best definition is this one (emphases mine):

They have no use for churches that play religious games, whether those games are worship services that drone on without the presence of God or ministry programs that bear no spiritual fruit. Revolutionaries eschew ministries that compromise or soft sell our sinful nature to expand organizational turf. They refuse to follow people in ministry leadership positions who cast a personal vision rather than God's, who seek popularity rather than the proclamation of truth in their public statements, or who are more concerned about their own legacy than that of Jesus Christ. They refuse to donate one more dollar to man-made monuments that mark their own achievements and guarantee their place in history. They are unimpressed by accredited degrees and endowed chairs in Christian colleges and seminaries that produce young people incapable of defending the Bible or unwilling to devote their lives to serving others. And Revolutionaries are embarrassed by language that promises Christian love and holiness but turns out to be all sizzle and no substance.

In fact, many Revolutionaries have been active in good churches that have biblical preaching, people coming ot Christ and being baptized, a full roster of interesting classes and programs, and a congregation packed with nice people. There is nothing overtly wrong with anything taking place at such churches. But Revolutionaries innately realize that it is not just enough to go with the flow. The experience provded through their church, although better than average, still seems flat. They are seeking a faith experience that is more robust and awe inspiring, a spiritual journey that prioritizes transformation at every turn, something worthy of the Creator whom their faith reflects. They are seeking the spark provided by a commitment to a true revolution in thinking, behavior, and experience, where settling for what is merely good and above average is defeat.

When I read this today, it just stunned me, because it is the best description I've seen yet of how I've been feeling over the past couple of years.

To connect this with something that Pastor Pat shared on Sunday:

The church should be a symbol of risk, of creativity, or cultural engagement, of the willingness to change, and do whatever it takes to connect to the world around us with the power of the gospel. But somewhere along the way, instead the church has become a symbol of stability. Of changelessness. A symbol of holding on to the traditions of the past. And the world around us is changing. The church has become the wrong symbol. Jesus Christ constantly challenged the status quo, so that people would be willing to risk, to reach disconnected people with the power of the gospel. And we're in a changing culture today, where we need to learn to risk again, that we might reach disconnected people.

I would definitely sum this up by saying that Revolutionaries would be the ones willing to take the risks.

More to come as I go through the book. Stay tuned.

Labels: books, emerging