drury and barna

friends,

interested to hear what you all think of this. methinks the three iwu profs who did this work had an axe to grind and have completely missed something (lots of things).

critique of practical critique: drury's charge that barna's work will "encourage (young people) to drop out of church attendance and practice a do-it-yourself religion" completely and utterly misses the actual group emphasis of barna's work. dropping out of a "local church" does not mean practicing a do-it-yourself religion. his charge that it "encourages them to seek other more exciting venues for their ministry instead of the old fashioned local church" is spot on, however. actually, what it should do is re-create the bigger sense of vocation and take some students away from local church ministry and to other creative ministries. (tim's assertion to crisis of authority has all kinds to say at this point, but would take too long to flesh out.) saying, "to the laity it legitimizes dropping out of church and going golfing—just so long as they go on a mission’s trip with a Para church organization occasionally and have a neighbor Bible study with a few friends on Tuesday evenings so they can skip church and go golfing on Sunday mornings," is a complete red-herring and straw-man argument. sadly, i would expect more charity from a Christian. the more organic nature of church for Barna is not nearly so pathetically stated.

i almost wonder if drury has read the book when he says, "the practical effect of the book is to elevate lone ranger religion." it is rather a call to be church outside the four walls of a building (the "old fashioned local church"). By saying "it s not global in focus, making it an American Christianity issue, not Kingdom," he has made the argument from silence and, possibly, a theological mistake. to be Christian in America means you have to be an American Christian (not in this order, though!; you have to present Christianity to the people of America--where it confronts and changes this culture). the gospel is always and necessarily contextualized, else it is a gnostic gospel.

critique of theological critique: when they say, "Barna sees the Church, the Body of Christ, exclusively as a mystical, spiritual community of “revolutionaries” without any direct relationship to the local church," they are half-right. the Body of Christ need not have a relationship to the "local church," if by local church they mean a specific denominalized building. it ought to and best would have such a relationship, but need not. the Church may occur in many settings. to say that barna is spiritual and mystical, i am flabbergasted. the work simply is not mystical and spiritual, primarily because it is so physically mission oriented.

their linking baptism and local church discipline completely misses that baptism is baptism into Jesus Christ and the discipline of the Holy Spirit. as Zizioulas might say, baptism grounds the church, not vice versa. i find some irony when they complain about barna by saying this: "the Church is expressed concretely in local churches." the fact that people drive for 45 minutes to come to a "local church" proves that it is not a "local" church. it's a distant church. (local church is becoming oxymoronic.) barna's desire for groups to meet locally makes much more linguistic (and theological) sense. (willow creek and randy frazee are moving in this direction, btw. well done, frazee!)

they say: "Local churches are the means by which God’s saving grace in Christ Jesus given to the Church is made available to humanity." well, no. if they had said "God the Spirit through the Church is the main means," or even, "local churches are *a* mean," then they would be right. to say "through the preaching of the Word, the due administration of the sacraments, and the community rightly ordered (the marks of the Church), saving, confirming and sanctifying grace is communicated to people," they are exactly right. the only problem is that "communication" is not "gift" of salvation, unless you are the divinely spoken (and living) Word, or even the written word--who offer salvation by their ontology. so, the Church can communicate and bear the marks of Jesus in many ways--and not be stuck to one model--there are many avenues to communicate the gospel, knowing that salvation is only given by God. Further, the Church is evidence of the gospel, not its only vehicle. saying that "Barna’s ecclesiology has more in common with the Donatist movement in the third century and Pelegianism (sic) in the fifth century than it does in orthodox Christian theology" is utterly misleading. it is misleading because the Donatist heresy was only a heresy inasmuch as it condemned those who were the people of God any way but their own, and left those who had backslidden in their condemnation (something Barna is utterly against; perhaps he should cry semper Reformada!). the Pelagian heresy is way off the mark (the denial that God would expect standards so high that they would be out of human reach apart from his divine gift) and has nothing to do with his work. calling Christians to mission is nothing new and nothing unbiblical.

the biblical critique has some value. barna is not an exegete and his biblical work is, at best, illustrative. his view of Jesus is somewhat limited and anemic. to say, however, that "the nature of what Barna is calling the future church to look like, not a unified Body but individuals working disconnected from one another and from the 'head'" again completely misses the missiological thrust of the book. he wants to and sees mission as the unifying point of these individuals, but not individuals engaged in mission in isolation.

my own take is that the change in theological education that will come about (our schools are structured to create pastors for "local churches") has put some people back into a corner and they are baring their claws. i also suspect that "local church" is used equivocally in their critique and would like to see them define what they mean by it. unfortunately, this critique is well below Christian charity or scholarship, and should not have warranted so much of my time.