I have attempted to apply my marketing and design skills to the institutional church for the last ten years and come away with a sense that I was treading water. I feel as though I am excited about knowing God, but that the churches I have attended (in the end) are more concerned with growth than grace. (And I was a contributor to it.)

Reading Barna’s Revolution and then Pagan Christianity has really thrown me for a loop. I can’t even visit an institutional church these days without deconstructing it. At times, I even think it is doing more harm than good by giving people a false sense that by going to “church” that they are being the Church.

It is very disconcerting to me. The big question in my mind is, “How can the institutional church be transformed?”

I think that as you dig deeper into the book you’ll see that the specific “traditions” selected for historical review have their applications in both the low church and high church. Having just returned from Spain, and freshly reminded of the “high church” as it existed in Europe, I am reminded of the many “pagan” elements we have in our shared history (Protestants and R. Catholics, etc.)

It was also interesting to note in the footnotes (Page XX) how this book is focused on the Protestant movement (”low church”), not folks in the realm of Anglican, Episcopal, and Lutheran (”high church”). I don’t know why that was interesting, but right off, there’s a split made in the body of Christ being discussed.