According to George Barna, research shows that there are now more than five million people involved regularly in simple church in this country. These figures were confirmed in a similar study by Ed Stetzer.
"Where are these people," Tony and I often wonder. We often refer to them as "Barna's Five Million."
Between us and all our friends who have contact with thousands involved in simple church, we reckon at the most we are in contact with 5% of them–probably closer to 2-3%. What about the other 95%? We sometimes wonder if they have healthy churches. Our naive assumption has been that they are mainly of the "Honey, I shrunk the church!" variety. Our thought has been that they are people who have left the traditional church disillusioned, and who are meeting together with a few others in their living rooms.
We were therefore greatly encouraged when we met one of "Barna's Five Million" the other day. Here was a guy, working with those who did not yet know Jesus, making disciples round his kitchen table, sending them out, starting churches in other parts of the country. And he had never heard of House2House, or any of the other simple/organic organizations like CMA and Lk10. In fact, he didn't really know anything about what is going on across the nations. This was entirely the Holy Spirit's work.
If he is representative of Barna's Five Million, then there is a move of God going on!
One reply on “Barna’s Five Million”
A nice spin on “tabling the motion.”
Dan
GA
USA