But this made the world of sense to me, no one gets my journey because so few people are trying to do this journey. That is the biggest tragedy of our planet. In a world where over 2.1 billion people say they are Christians, only 2% are making progress on this Christian journey? That is heart-breaking.
George Barna is known for doing Christian research, he has also written over 40 books and his life's mission is to get Christian churches in America excited, revolutionized, you could say to get them going, to transform them.
This book is not one I have read, in fact all I know about it is what the author himself has said and written about the research and findings of the research that he conducted. Here is my summary of what these two sources "straight from the author's mouth" said about it.
About the research
"Most Christians mirror cultural goals, desiring happiness, comfort, security, belonging, and popularity. Surprisingly few are focused on completely cooperating with God to experience the kind of whole-life transformation described in the Bible and made possible only through a partnership with God. The lack of understanding of the goals of a truly Christian life prevents people from making the extraordinary life transition that are possible."
According to Barna…most people who consider themselves to be Christian, regardless of their level of spiritual maturity, are entangled in more of a circular journey than a consistently progressive route… the journey orchestrated by God … has discernible destination points along the way…
"…Transformation is like a tug of war, where an individual has periods of sustained progress followed by periods of dramatic retreat to levels of lesser maturity and capability. How a person handles each period of regression determines their transformational potential."
While God-driven transformation is more common among people who are engaged in church life than among those who are not, neither the length of time involved with churches nor the amount of hours devoted to church-oriented activities bears much of a correlation to transformational progress.
The transformation journey has ten stops en route to wholeness and freedom. Most Americans, according to the research, never get beyond stop three (awareness and concern about sin and its effects, but not cooperating with Christ to alleviate that problem). Among those who become "born again Christians," most never move past stop five (i.e., having invited Christ to be their savior and then engaging in a lot of religious activity). In other words, a majority of the American public never reaches the second half of the stops on the journey to wholeness. Barna also determined that most church programs are designed to help people get to stop five of the journey but not to move farther down the road to Christ-likeness.
The single most challenging stop is what Barna identified as "stop 7, which is that of brokenness." Driven by social mores, few adults who believe they are Christian are willing to abandon worldly objectives in favor of seeking godliness.
Emphasizing that "you get what you measure" – that is, you evaluate yourself in areas that you believe are important and generally ignore the rest – Barna asserted that neither churches nor individuals usually have measurement criteria for spiritual development that reflect the outcomes promoted by Jesus. Citing "tangible fruit" as a more desirable outcome than the factors often measured – such as attendance, giving, program completion, or even Bible knowledge – he suggested that Christians and communities of faith reconsider how they determine "success" and "maturity" in light of what the research has shown to be the characteristics of those who have reached the latter stops on the journey and exhibit more substantial evidence of holistic life transformation.
Transformation
Our destination is: Christ-likeness, wholeness, holiness, transformation (Jesus died to enable our lives to be completely transformed).
Transformation looks like: Living completely for Jesus, giving Jesus full control of everything in our lives, intimately and intently loving both God and other people, demonstrating that kind of love, that depth of love by pursuing only his will. Mark 12:30-31, Galatians 6:15, Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 5, Galatians 5 and John (he didn't specify where in John, but alluded to John 13:35, other places in John such as John 14:6--7, John 14, 15 and 16 are also speaking about growth and transformation).
How Christians get confused: Christians confuse Christianity with religion, participation in events with faith integration, salvation with transformation, presence at events with connection with God, physical comfort with divine reward, emotional happiness with spiritual joy, religious knowledge with faith maturity, holiness with perfection, business with significance.
And the 10 stops are:
stop 1) When we are born - ignorant of sin (only 1% die without moving on from this stop).
stop 2) Aware of sin - an intellectual awareness (56% of America remain at stop 2).
stop 3) Know what sin means and become concerned that sin might potentially affect your life, keep you from having all the things you desire or could achieve - reflect on and consider what should they do about sin that could be affecting their life.
Most people in America never move past stop 3.
stop 4) Become aware that sin is harmful to their health, so they ask Jesus Christ to forgive them for their sins and they get what is often termed "born again" (33% of America).
stop 5) What almost immediately happens after stop 4, is they move to stop 5 where they become immersed in a lot of religious activity. They attend a lot more church events and engage in a lot more personal, spiritual activities (reading the Bible, praying, volunteering, small groups, Sunday school classes etc.).
Very few people get past stop 5. Often stop 6 happens after 15-30 years at stop 5.
stop 6) Holy discontent - an inner irritation with their faith, an inner frustration of, "Is this all?", "Did Jesus die for this mundane and unfulfilling life I am leading?", "Have I become the person that God made me to be?" This is the Holy Spirit. People can go anywhere from stop 6 (forwards or backwards).
stop 7) Brokenness - which is where they finally better understand their sin and how it is continuing to keep them apart from God. People have to be broken from sin, self and society to such an extent that they move from independence to absolute dependence on God. We come to the end of ourselves to fully give it up to God. We allow God to fully break us. Full brokenness puts four things under God's control - Mark 12:30-34 (heart, mind, strength or behaviour and soul or spirituality).
Only 2% get past stop 7.
stop 8) Surrender and submission to God - we give up total control to God of heart, mind, behaviour and spirituality. It's not until that point that true depth and growth can occur. Our life is no longer about us at that point, it's only about fully trusting God, depending on him, being completely obedient to him, recognizing we are here to serve him and his ends.
stop 9) We then are able to experience a profound love to and from God. It's what the Bible describes as that extraordinary peace with God, because he is always in your consciousness 24/7. You are always moving forward with him.
stop10) Last stop is being able to fully and totally love other people (God is love, so this made so much sense to me - God loves the unlovables so much, so of course this would be the last stop - to love like he loves). Extreme unusual love for people. Because people are not lovable, it's got to be God loving them through us.
What an exceptional journey and it makes so much sense to me. It is the journey, it is my journey, it is the journey of friends I know who are also walking it.
Critical insights:
These critical insights that George then spoke about are the truely sad parts.
- Most Americans, including most Christians, including those who are "born again" really have no idea what transformation means or what it takes.
- If you want a real eye-opener, ask a sample of people from your church, Bible study, cell group etc just out of the blue, "What is a transformed life, what does it look like, how do you get there?" Ask them for details.
- What the research has shown is that startlingly few people persevere to get beyond the first piece of the journey.
- The dramatic implications for churches and culture and the world, that so few Christians master love.
- Another thing that comes out of the research is that a huge number of Christians enter churches without allowing brokenness to occur. This means very little difference in life between Christians and non-Christians, very little fruit that comes out of their lives. In our culture brokenness and dependence is seen as something worthless and undesirable.
- Add to that, most Christians enter into Christianity as a transaction; church offers free salvation. Christians must confess sins and ask forgiveness, without any obligation to change anything, except attend church more. It's a good deal that people like. They get a secure afterlife, with no demand to demonstrate change, the Christian understanding is: God loves them so much, he's offering almost universal, no investment salvation. If they later see the fine print that they need to be broken by the filth of their sins in the presence of this pure, holy, loving God - they are stunned, they are perplexed. Most Christians either go on ignorant of this fact or ignoring it. Remember only 5% pursue brokenness and only 2% follow it through to the next stop. What the research revealed was that a great number after encountering the need for brokenness either go back to churchiness or reject everything and go back to stop 3.
- Another thing discovered by the research was that a very limited number of people reach stop 7 by discovering who they are and what God had to do for them. The majority have a tougher road on this journey, and many people turn around and settle for a less challenging stop as described. Research showed that God uses events and crisis' to get people to stop 7. Six crisis in particular occur very regularly and are used by God namely; ugly acrimonious divorce, going to prison, personal bankruptcy, contracting a debilitating illness or debilitating injury, experiencing the painful death or debilitating crippling of someone who you're very close to, a disaster that results in the loss of all your possessions. Also the research showed that most people had to experience two or more of these crisis' before they hand over control of their lives to God.
Action points for your life:
George Barna suggests the following actions to take in your own life (this teleconference was addressing church pastors, leaders, etc, so it focuses on what a person can do to help others).
- Examine where you are on the map (the 10 stops)? Is there a better itinery for you to follow? You can't give anyone what you don't have. What matters in this life is not what you accomplish, but who you become - how God is evident in your life.
- What can you do to inform people that you influence about what you're learnt about this journey?
- Avoid the trap of short cutting holy discontent. Work with the Holy Spirit.
- Help people reach the "lonely" stops (holy discontent, brokenness, submission etc.), where they will be faced with the Holy Spirit and decisions. Meditating, fasting, solitude. (Help yourself reach the "lonely" stops by making a choice - do you want to move forward, or don't you?)
- The success should be reaching stops on the journey, bearing fruit because you are being transformed.
- Transformation takes years.
What this new book means to me:
This book is proof of what I have been thinking more and more recently; Christians don't know God, Christians don't choose to know God. Christians love the idea about the Bible for example, they love reading about the Bible, they love talking about the Bible - but how often do they read the actual Bible? Mostly these days we read other books about the Bible, instead of reading the actual Bible.
The best thing though that I can personally advise you to do, is to make a conscious choice whether you want to stay at stop 3, 4, 5 or 6, OR if you want to progress up into stop 7 and upwards? It's your call, I challenge you to make that decision, today!
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