Sid: Getting ready Mishpochah of the greatest revolution, the greatest revival, the greatest move of God’s Spirit on planet earth. And I have in my hands a new book it’s a hardback by George Barna. Many of you are probably familiar with him he’s the founder and directing leader of the Barna Group a research and resource firm whose clients have ranged from such ministries as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Focus on the Family, to corporations such as Ford, Walt Disney, US Navy, US Army. And the thing that intrigued me is although George has written 35 books he writes them because of the research that he does through polling principals and the understanding of the scripture, and the prophetic edge he has. What he predicts come to pass because of all of these ingredients and one of his books, which he wrote back in 1990 “The Frog in the Kettle” more than 90% of the predicted outcomes became reality. And I have in my hand his book “Revolution.” And let me read from the back of the book “Millions of believer’s have moved beyond the established church and chosen to be the church instead.” That almost doesn’t make sense George, what do you mean by that?
George: Well, what we have are many, many people that are so committed to their relationship with God that they’re saying “I cannot let anything stand in the way of me having an ever growing relationship with Him.” And as they have assessed their life and everything taking place within it many of them have realized that while they have counted on their local church to be the place that facilitates the development of that relationship they now realize that actually that body is not really helping then. And so they have said “You know what I can’t stand before a holy and righteous God after I die and say to Him “Well, don’t blame me it was my churches fault.” We’re responsible for what takes place in our spiritual development and so if we can work with the church productively that’s a great thing and certainly we want to invest in it and help it grow, but if we don’t have that place that really enabling us to be all that God had really intended us to be, it’s really our responsibility to figure out how to facilitate that. And what we’re seeing is that millions, tens of millions of people now are saying “I don’t want to just go to church I want to be the church.” And so they’re figuring out how to develop networks of relationships, how to get involved in different types of ministry activities that have absolutely nothing to do with a local church, and it’s not that these people hate the local church you know they would bless it as much as they can. They’re simply saying “But I have to be responsible for my life. My commitment is such that I cannot stand back and allow my spiritual life to flounder; I have to take this thing by the horns and go for it.”
Sid: In America today the easiest thing is to go with the flow. It takes really almost a move of God for someone to go against that stream.
George: I think this is an incredibly significant period of time where we’ve got this many people who have lived in our culture which on the one hand probably morally is becoming more decadent, then it’s been perhaps it’s history. But on the other hand we’ve got people who are experiencing so much pain and so much need and so much dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment with life that they’ve finally come back and realized you know what God is the only answer. His ways are the only ways that make sense and so I need to get really deeply in touch with that and wrap my life around His principals, so that all of this makes sense.
Sid: Now many of these millions of people that you give the title revolutionary to don’t understand what’s going on for instance take me. I’ve been a believer now for over 30 years. It’s always been my thought if I don’t do something through the local church, if I’m not submitted to everything the pastor says or if I don’t God forbid attend a local church then there’s something wrong with me. Do you find others are feeling that way?
George: One of the reasons I wrote the book was to encourage people like you who have that feeling. As we were doing this research and it just kind of happened on to obviously God led us to this but it wasn’t intentional on our part we discovered that there are all these people throughout the country who have this kind of holy angst within them to try to reach out to God and have this deeper relationship. We discovered that they couldn’t talk about it because every time they talk to another believer and they said “Well you know I’m not feeling like I’m really getting what I need to be deeper with God from my church.” Oh, you can’t say that, every time well you know I’ve had to drop out of church so that I could be the church, “Oh you can’t do that.” And so there was this whole issue that they were struggling with everything they talked to another believer who was part of a congregational church and had not really gone through this process of evaluating what was going on they were made to feel like they were defective Christians like they were second class citizens of the Kingdom of God. And what we’re trying to do now is to help them realize you know what if God wants to orchestrate your life use you in a different way that’s fine. You got to go back in church history and realize human beings made up the local church the way that it’s configured today about 1700 years ago. We’ve kind of made that tradition into something that we believe is holy and cannot be changed. But the reality is when you look through scripture what you find is that God tells us the kinds of things that we need to believe the ways that we need to live, but He gives us very little in the way of methodology for practicing that. He wants us to be His holy loving serving people obedient to Him, but whether we do it in a building, outside a building a lot of people a few people doesn’t matter to him. What He wants is our hearts, he wants us to bear fruit for His kingdom.
Sid: I want you to define a revolutionary, and to tell me what are the passions of a revolutionary?
George: A revolutionary is somebody who has said when I look at my life what I understand is that I live for one reason and that is to love, obey and serve God. My life is all about Him, He created me for His purposes not for me to go out trying to make sense out of my own purposes. And so these are individuals who say “I want more of God in my life, I will do whatever it takes to get it, I will go where He sends me; I will do what He tells me to do. I live for Him. That is first and foremost in my life.” And as we examine these people more closely all these revolutionaries we found that there’s a commonality they have is that their constantly trying to balance these things that we’ve come to label the 7 passions of a revolutionary. And these very simply are things like having constant intimate worship experiences with God. In other words not just saying “Hey, I got to be at the place Sunday morning where they do the worship.
Sid: But why does that person have to be a revolutionary what your describing if someone were to know nothing but read the New Testament they would say “George Barna what you’re talking about is normal.”
George: Well, that would be wonderful if that were the case, but the reason we’ve labeled these people revolutionaries is because they refused to become wrapped up in a the cultural assumptions that have really in many ways prevented us from being 1st Century Christians. From being the kind of believers the devout followers of Christ that we’re called to be in scripture. Am I suggesting that this something absolutely new on them? Absolutely not. What I’m saying is what we’re thankfully finding is a growing cadre of people around the nation who are saying “You know when I read the book of Acts it doesn’t look at all like the church that I’ve been part of. When I look at the book of Acts it doesn’t seem at all like the life style like I’m living today but I got to get back to that.”
Sid: What are other passions of revolutionaries?
George: Well, we talked about the constant intimate worship, secondly it has to do with having spiritual conversations with people that we know. You know there’s all the talk about evangelism in churches but that typically become programmatic. What you see in scripture is that it’s relational, it’s all about developing a personal connection and being able in a regular course of conversation to talk with people about the meaning of Christ for their life. A third passion has to do with spiritual depth and formation of the person, we might think of this as discipleship. But having some kind of deep commitment where every day they’re working on their knowledge of God, their relationship to Him and His scriptures. The fourth passion has to do with how we invest all of the resources that God entrust to us for the advancement of His Kingdom. So often we look at all the things that we have and we think it’s for us. It’s not for us, He has really kind of hired us, or empowered us to be portfolio managers for the Kingdom. So our money, our ideas, our relationships, our possessions all these things and more were given to us for one reason, and that’s to advance His Kingdom. Revolutionaries are constantly thinking about “How do I use it for that purpose.” A fifth element has to do with our commitment to serving needy people what you see all throughout scriptures, it’s certainly throughout Jesus life is it’s about ministering to other individuals and so revolutionaries have that commitment. A sixth thing has to do with the nature of our relationship. Christianity is abundantly relational kind of faith, but it’s not just enjoying each other’s presence it’s also all about accountability being able to help each other grow by being serious about living in ways that scripture talks about. And the final passion that we’ve found common to revolutionaries had to do with the centrality of family as a faith oriented experience.
Sid: Now do you know what you’re describing to me?
George: What?
Sid: You’re describing the Hebraic understanding of God and working out your relationship with God and man, as opposed to the Greco Roman understanding, that’s what you’re saying. I even used the work Mishpochah to start my radio show which is a Hebrew word, and it means family.
George: Well, then we need more of that kind of teaching.
Sid: Okay Mishpochah maybe you have felt almost isolated because your so on fire for God and you don’t understand what is going on and you think maybe there’s something wrong with you because you’re almost bored by what’s going on. You know George I spoke to someone from a very well-known and wonderful congregation that has been going to that congregation now for 30 years. And you know what they said? The saddest thing, it hasn’t changed in 30 years. If you miss a Sunday you will go the next week and it’s the same. But God has got so much more, He’s so diverse; you want to understand yourself, you want to understand what’s about ready to happen in the future….
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth