Revolutionaries For God

This is a time of revolution. The geo-political balance is restructuring with new in-groups and out-groups that will affect trade and other alliances for the coming 50 to 100 years. Global enterprises merge and expand beyond any attempt to define their nationality and grow to sizes that dwarf small nation states. War is fought in a decentralized fashion that blurs attempts to define who is on which side. And faith and spirituality move out from under the control of institutional religion and into the hearts of individuals who ally themselves with like-minded individuals and in overlapping and unrelated organizations. And it's happening at the edges of authority and orthodoxy.

In his latest book Revolution: Finding Vibrant Faith Beyond the Walls of the Sanctuary, George Barna describes and documents the revolution in Christianity that's been occurring beyond the walls of Christendom, and even despite institutional religion, for some years now. I've personally been in contact with such revolutionaries off and on for 15 years. And this web site is dedicated to these revolutionaries that Barna is now describing in rationalistic, empirical terms. Take a look at Reido's Church Without Walls.

This is not Emergent Church, by the way. It may well be emerging church, in the sense that church includes all believers. In fact, if there is a true emerging, it will be among these because they fit the definition of emergence much better than a consortium of pastors and missionaries who take the name for their group. It is not a movement in the sense that there is central control or even a conversation.

Revolution may seem an inappropriate term in this era of radical and violent religious fundamentalism, but it fits well. The two phenomena are related in the sense that they are the opposing tails of the great bell curve of human religious orthodoxy. Both are on the edges of orthodoxy—regardless of fundamentalism's claim of orthodoxy. Both seek to return efficacy to the tepid and complacent inert coagulum of the mainstream. But they differ in that one wished to force change in others while the other changes itself.

This web site was established one year ago intending to give voice to those who seek God outside of, or in spite of, institutional church. And I am grateful that a man of such a stature among the church leaders as George Barna has written a book to document this phenomenon that some of us have felt and known for several years now. This book is now one of the books in my new study into emergence as a scientific and social force and how the real church, the ekklesia, might be affected, not only by emergence, but by society's increasing ability to grasp emergence and complexity as ways to understand our physical, social and spiritual world. While I don't expect to learn much that's new to my own experience, I do hope that Barna will give me some substance to help in convincing others that the barbarians are not only at the gate, but that they are here to help.