A Review Article -- By: Doug Thompson

Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 08:3 (Summer 1999)
Article: A Review Article
Author: Doug Thompson


A Review Article

Doug Thompson

The Second Coming Of The Church—A Blueprint For Survival, George Barna. Nashville, Tennessee: Word Publishing (1998). 223 pages, cloth, $18.99

One of the dustcover endorsements for this book states “This book ... will probably alarm, anger or arouse you.” It certainly had that effect on this reviewer ... even before I opened it. I was startled by Barna’s statement on the cover: “Today’s church is incapable of responding to the present moral crisis. It must reinvent itself or face virtual oblivion by mid-21st century.” Like some aging actress, the church must get a liturgical facelift and an evangelistic makeover if it is to revive its sagging career in the next millennium, and Christian sociologist George Barna purports to have just the cosmetics to do the job in The Second Coming of the Church.

In seeking to redirect the course of the church Barna makes the unflattering comparison of the church to a huge oil tanker on the high seas which takes more than a mile to make a U-turn. The ship, he insists, must put strenuous efforts into making this turn, or “we may run aground before we know what hit us” (p. 9). He begins his book with a barrage of statistics about the lukewarm condition of Christianity and its lack of impact upon society and culture.

To profit at all from The Second Coming of the Church, the reader should make a distinction between Barna’s data and his analysis of that data. The data is interesting and might spice up a sermon. The analysis, on the other hand, is severely flawed.

At the deepest level, the theological grid through which Barna interprets his findings is not rooted in the doctrines of the Reformation. He gives lip service to the sufficiency of the Scriptures, but in substituting secular theories for biblical principles, he treats the Word as woefully inadequate to meet the modern challenges facing the church. Statistics and current trends take on a canonical status while the Scriptures are lackluster in comparison. They are just too—well—old. Perhaps he gives a clue to his personal bibliology when he says, “We must be constantly sensitive to His guidance, which He gives to us through the Bible, experience, history, and direct revelation” (italics mine). So much for Sola Scriptura!

Much of his faulty analysis of the church and its problems stems from an inadequate understanding of the gospel, evangelism, and what constitutes a true believer. For example, Barna writes, “Jesus acknowledged that evangelizing the world is a huge undertaking. But He also encouraged His followers to persevere for the sake of the numerou...

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