Brian Jones

I’m not a gambling man, but I’ll bet the house you’ll NEVER see a newspaper with that headline.

If you’ve followed George Barna’s books for any length of time you know that he’s been dissing the local church for, like, ever.

By now you’ve probably heard about the slow-building mass hysteria that's been affecting local churches nationwide because of George Barna’s book entitled Revolution.

In Revolution Barna predicts,

"As we entered the twenty-first century, the local church was the focus of most people’s spiritual lives. About 70 percent of all Americans relied upon some local congregation to be their dominant source of spiritual input and output…I have concluded that by the year 2025…only about one-third of the population will rely upon a local congregation as the primary or exclusive means for experiencing and expressing their faith…" (Page 48-49)

I wasn’t a math major in college, but I’m pretty sure that’s more than a 50% drop in church participation nationwide in less than two decades. That’s a startling prediction.

Fortunately we know we can trust Barna. He has a proven track record predicting future trends. If you doubt this I’d suggest you rummage through your local discount bookstore and find another book by Barna: The Frog in the Kettle: What Christians Need to Know about Life in the Year 2000. His predictions in that book, made almost two decades ago, are just as bold as the ones made in his latest one.

For instance, most of us have all kinds of extra time on our hands thanks to Barna’s prediction that,

"Genetic advances will provide us with the gardener’s dream -- a self-weeding lawn -- by 1993." (p. 59)

Just like you, for years now I’ve watched the dandelions on my lawn just disappear overnight. Just disappear. I always wondered how that happened.

Elsewhere in The Frog and the Kettle, Barna predicted with deadly accuracy the number one societal problem in America today: the hostile take over of entry-level jobs in the fast-food industry by robots,

"…Robots will be developed which will perform basic, routine functions both in business (burger flipping, hospital orderly functions) and at home." (p. 58)

Finally, the most upsetting prediction Barna made in The Frog and the Kettle has to do with the same prediction Barna made in Revolution: church participation will decline! Almost two decades ago he predicted,

"By 2000…less than 40 percent of the population will even associate themselves with a protestant denomination." (p. 117)

Again, let me remind you that I am not a mathematician, so you will have to take what I am about to say with a grain of salt, but didn’t I just quote something from Revolution that read, something like, “As we entered the twenty-first century …about 70 percent of all Americans relied upon some local congregation to be their dominant source of spiritual input and output”?

Wasn’t that, by Barna’s own acknowledgement, more than a 30% increase between 1990 and 2000 instead of a decrease?

George, take it from me and other pastors and hard-working Christ-followers from all across the country – quit crapping on the local church with your negative and wildly inaccurate predictions.

We need you to use your platform and keen insight to build up the body of Christ. Sure local churches have lots of room for improvement. Sure we pastors blow it at times, me most of all. But we still believe, in the midst of all of this dysfunction and chaos, that the local church is the hope of the world.

God is powerfully working through all the things you keep despising –churches with buildings, megachurches, 200 year old mainline churches, and every variation in between.

I for one have never been more hopeful about what I see happening in local churches across the country. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.

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