Faith in America

Yesterday, The Barna Group posted their "12 Most Significant Religious Findings from 2006 Surveys." There were some interesting things on the list, to be sure. The coolest was that 9% of Americans were involved in some form of house church this year, although 80% of that group still have some affiliation with a larger church. My guess would be a lot of responders are really only a part of a cell group in a larger church, which is cool, but not as interesting as go-it-alone home churches.

The really striking part comes in the summary section:

American Christians are not as devoted to their faith as they like to believe. They have positive feelings about the importance of faith, but their faith is rarely the focal point of their life or a critical factor in their decision-making...few people take the time to evaluate their spiritual journey, or to develop benchmarks or indicators of their spiritual health.

If people’s faith is objectively measured against a biblical standard of how faith is to be practiced, Americans are spiritually lukewarm. “Very limited effort is devoted to spiritual growth. Most Americans experience ‘accidental spiritual growth’ since there is generally no plan or process other than showing up at a church and absorbing a few ideas here and there."

I think this pretty accurately describes us as Americans, unfortunately. This puts pretty succinctly some of the things I learned about myself during the last two years. The problem, though, is that these same things have been true of us (I think) for sometime, but what's the solution?

Barna suggests:

The growth of various converging movements of deeply spiritual people who are departing from the conventional forms and communities of faith, the Revolutionary community – which incorporates divergent but compatible groups of people who are seeking to make their faith the driving force in their life – is reshaping American faith in ways which we are just beginning to understand.

It seems as though all the work we do to make ourselves more appealing through newer music, more programs and a more relevant Christian popular culture (if that's not an oxymoron) isn't worth much if we don't seek "to make...faith the driving force" in our lives.

So where do we start?