Many Long for a Different Kind of Church

For decades the primary way that Americans have experienced and expressed their faith has been through participating in a local church within their community. 

That reality is rapidly changing, according to researcher George Barna.  In his book entitled, Revolution, Barna describes what he believes will be the most massive reshaping of the nation's faith community in more than a century.

Relying upon national research conducted over a number of years, Barna profiles a group of more than 20 million adults throughout the nation labeled, "Revolutionaries," who long for a greater faith experience than they have known in the local church.  Barna says:

"A common misconception about revolutionaries is that they are disengaging from God when they leave a local church. We found that while some people leave the local church and fall away from God altogether, there is a much larger segment of Americans who are currently leaving churches precisely because they want more of God in their life but cannot get what they need from a local church.  They have decided to get serious about their faith by piecing together a more robust faith experience.  Instead of going to church, they have chosen to be the Church, in a way that harkens back to the Church detailed in the Book of Acts."

According to Barna, millions of Americans are leaving their local churches in order to be part of a different kind of church.  This expression of Church has been given several different names: Simple Church, House Church or Organic Church.  Frank Viola, a prolific writer and one of the leaders in this movement says, "The New Testament only knows one kind of church, and it's organic. The ekklesia is a living organism not an institutional organization.  Here is how he describes this latest expression of New Testament Church:

• The members meet often, not out of guilt or obligation, but because the Spirit draws them together naturally to fellowship, share, and express their Love for one another and for the Lord (ekklesia literally means an assembly or meeting).

• Jesus Christ is their living, breathing Head. The members make Christ profoundly central, preeminent, and they pursue and explore His fullness together. In short, the church is intoxicated with the Lord Jesus.

• They take care of each other, have open-participatory meetings where every member functions, make decisions together, and follow the Spirit's leading for outreach and inreach, both in their proper season.

• They are learning how to live by Christ and express Him corporately in endless variety and creativity to both the lost and the found.

• The condemnation and guilt is gone. The members experience the liberty and freedom that is in Christ, experience and express His unfailing love, and are free to follow Him out of genuine love rather than guilt, duty, obligation, condemnation, shame and guilt - the typical "tools" that are used to motivate God's people.

• They are missional in the sense that they understand "the mission" to be God's eternal purpose, which goes beyond human needs to the very reason why God created the universe in the first place. And they give themselves wholly to that mission. 

• After the foundation of the church is laid, it is able to meet on its own without a clergy or human headship that controls or directs it. The church can sustain herself by the functioning of every member; it doesn't need a clergy system for direction or ministry.