George Barna presented some material from his book, Maximum Faith, in which he describes what he and his researchers have discovered about people in churches and their spiritual growth, or lack of spiritual growth. He briefly described “ten stops on the journey to spiritual wholeness,” saying that Christians rarely experience the sense of brokenness (stop seven) and surrender (stop eight) necessary to become true disciples of Jesus Christ.
I spoke briefly with Mr. Barna after his presentation at the BBFI meeting, and we talked about transformation and the journey he described.
Editor: I’ve been reading George Barna since sometime in the 1980s and quite honestly didn’t know what to expect today, because I’ve never heard you actually speak. I expected a lot of stats and analysis, but you sounded more like Dallas Willard with your spiritual transformation material.
Barna: I’ve been called a lot worse; I can tell you that. I’ve learned that when I do presentations I can’t give [people] the full blast of the data that’s behind whatever it is they are wanting me to communicate to them. So I have to give them an analysis or interpretation without necessarily the specific data analysis. People’s eyes glaze over when I do too much of that.
Editor: The group you spoke to today is made up mainly of pastors. What is a pastor’s first step to moving people along in these transformational stops?
Barna: I don’t know whether I can give you a generic first step for every ministry, because everybody is starting at a different place with different people. But, I think in terms of the philosophical perspective on what to do, certainly, one of the things would be to recognize that people have to have a biblical worldview in order to make the right kind of choices to enable them to be willing to move through the stops on the journey. So, teaching is a vital part of that, certainly not the only part, it is not even the major part, but you know, we are talking about what can a pastor do. That is certainly something they can do — make sure people have a really solid biblical foundation. Then when they get to different stops of the journey, when they are confronted with different possibilities in life, they can make the best choice possible from a biblical vantage point. One of the things I didn’t get to talk about is how people are broken by crises that happen in their lives. They are not broken because they figured it out intellectually, or they read about it in the Scripture. They might have a beginning of an understanding of what brokenness is from that, but then God either orchestrates or allows situations that are very difficult for them, situations that are designed to move them closer to Christ and recognize that God is their only hope.
Editor: So you are saying you could learn about brokenness by reading a text, say Psalm 51. But Psalm 51 would not break you in and of itself. A crisis is necessary.
Barna: Having that as context for understanding what is going on is vitally important, but even more important is to have people around you who can see the crisis for what it is, which is a message from God. And not listening to the message from the culture that says, “Don’t give in, you can overcome this,” and realizing maybe God doesn’t want you to overcome it. You know, this could well be, in most cases it seems to me, He’s trying to get your attention. He’s trying to help you put life in perspective and understand what He wants with you in that relationship. So, for pastors to help people see those kinds of things as well, and, you know, to recognize that, sure, we can pray that your house is going to be restored after a fire, you know, pray that you are emotionally whole after the divorce, pray that you’ll get a job after you’ve just suffered through a bankruptcy, but that’s typically, its odd to say, but typically I’ve found that’s not the kind of prayer that God answers. So, the better prayer and relational encouragement and practical assistance would be to help the person look at that situation and seek to understand, what is God doing? Why? And be able to move forward on the journey recognizing this is actually for my benefit.
Editor: Is brokenness and humility the same thing?
Barna: Humility is the diminution of your ego, but brokenness is coming to recognize that there are so many things that have gotten out of control or out of order, or have been too magnified that should not have been, and I have latched onto those things, those would become the things that I want. Brokenness, I think, is all about redefining what you love. And so, it can’t be sin, or sinful activities, it can’t be self, and it can’t be adulation or comfort or whatever. We have to be broken of all that stuff. The only thing that really matters is that relationship I have with God, who made me, who loves me, who protects me, and who has incredible stuff in mind for me. If I would just give up my agenda and adopt His.
Editor: You mentioned in your presentation that we should be investing resources in the last four stops (experiencing personal brokenness, choosing to surrender and submit fully to God, love for God, love for humanity). What exactly are we talking about in terms of investing resources?
Barna: Number one is helping people first of all to know this is the journey. I mean they settle for churchianity now because they don’t know what the end of the journey is supposed to look like and what’s supposed to happen for them to get there. You know, we give them the big tool of a menu and we say, “Oh, all right, I have to complete as much of this as possible” and it becomes like school. Wow, we finished all the papers, I’m an A student. It doesn’t matter. They need the map.
Editor: An assignment might be reading your Bible through in a year. Something like that?
Barna: Not a bad thing, but not the end game, you know. It can help in the end game, but it’s not your main game. So, helping people understand what that’s about, connecting people in such a way that now they begin creating a different language around the journey and start talking to each other about where they are along the journey, and starting loading up with people who can help them to get further down the journey. And it’s not going to be much quicker but it will make more sense, it will be more efficient, maybe less painful. It will certainly be more fulfilling because they will have greater context for understanding what is going on and what their potential from that is — encouraging people through all of that and creating new measures of fruit. One of the things I’m writing now is basing my new research trying to figure out is that if you’re a Stop-4 person, you don’t bear Stop-7 fruit. So we’re beginning to understand what is a Stop-4 person looks like in terms of what they produce for the kingdom? And what I am beginning to see is that there’s patterns, there is a lot of overlap, but there are specific things that happen at each stop that you couldn’t have produced earlier because of who you were, and so that transformation process enables you to become a more fruitful person, a more broadly fruitful person.
Editor: Thank you for taking the time talk with the Tribune, I know you have to catch a flight.