All Hail The Revolutionary!

I just finished George Barna's new book "Revolution."

The book identifies a growing segment of the Christian population that is earnestly pursuing a life that imitates Christ independent of a local church. I personally think this is exciting. Barna calls this group "revolutionaries" and I was expecting the kind of research and analysis that Barna's organization is famous for to help me understand the movement.

Instead I got retread statistics on the problems with the local church and Barna's in depth description of how he would like to see things change. This description frequently made mention of his years of research but very rarely offered any hard facts to hold up the picture he was painting. It was mostly filler and like some reviewers on Amazon, I had to force myself to finish it.

This revolution Barna describes is not so new. These Christians that Barna has tried to slap a label on have already been labeled by the by another popular modern church movement, the "Purpose Driven" church. I know that in the youth ministry model these Christians would be called "Committed." They are at the first level of commitment where they don't need the church. That is to say, if there were no local church they would still be committed to developing spiritual disciplines in their lives. Barna also seems to be trying to improve on the Purpose Driven model when he expands the 5 Biblical purposes into the 7 passions of a revolutionary.

The way to understand the growing number of Christians who are pursuing Christ disconnected from the local church is to read their blogs and listen to their podcasts. They've already found their voice online. They don't need Gearge Barna to tell them how to live anymore than they need the local church to do it.

The Other Nine

A couple of weeks ago Chris gave a message on gratitude (listen online). Here's the Scripture reference if you want to read it for yourself:

Bible Gateway: Luke 16:11-19

It's the story of the 10 lepers who came to Jesus to be healed. He told them to go show themselves to the priests in the temple and as they left they were healed. One of these lepers returned to Jesus to thank him and Jesus asked, "Where are the other nine?"

I wish I knew what happened to the other nine. Jesus told this one that his faith had healed him. The Bible says that they all were healed. Weren't they all healed by their faith in Jesus? The "foreigner" among them broke ranks and returned to Jesus to fall at His feet and thank him. Why didn't the other nine?

It's easy to assume that the other nine were not grateful (or at the very least, less grateful) for their healing. But what did the other nine have in common? The one that returned was identified as a Samaritan so we can probably deduce that the other nine were Jews. And if they were Jews perhaps they were more familiar with the significance of the command that Jesus gave them. They needed to go to the Temple to be declared clean and to be accepted back into Jewish society. The Samaritan was NEVER going to be accepted in Jewish society no matter what he did.

You see, the other nine did what Jesus commanded them to do and we don't know anything else about them. Under the Jewish law they needed to be declared clean before they could get close to other people much less a Rabbi like Jesus. And they had been ordered by the One who gave them their healing to do exactly that.

I'm not sure that the most important lesson in this story is about gratitude. I think it's about legalism. Nine lepers were obedient to the letter of the law and missed and opportunity to celebrate the gift they recieved in the presence of the Giver. One was more focused on Jesus than the rules imposed by religion. He was not only healed but got to experience the joy of going back to the Son of God to worship and thank Him in person.

Have you had a life-changing encounter with the Lord? Is your life full of joy because of it or, are you too focused on being a "good christian" and living according to a set of rules? Is worship something you attend out of a sense of obligation, or is it how you live your life?