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George Barna is one of the evangelical movement's "brand names." As the pollster for all things religious, Barna has been watching trends in evangelical circles for more than two decades. His most recent work, Revolution, has a surprising conclusion: Christians are leaving organized church bodies in droves, and that movement is a net bonus for the faith. According to Barna, within 20 years, only one-third of all Christians will have strong ties to local congregations. Instead, Christians will find spiritual nourishment from multiple resources, especially their deepened individual relationship with God.

Barna's thesis should not be completely surprising. Followers of Barna's work know he's been addressing the same themes about the fate of the American church for years. In 2002 his Grow Your Church From the Outside In explored the reasons why the unchurched remain that way. He noted that "most [of them] figure they have gotten along just fine without church … and until someone gives them reason to feel otherwise, they will remain spiritually unattached." Barna spoke then about non-Christians, and it's not much of a jump from concluding that church is irrelevant to the lost to saying that it's not particularly relevant to the saved, either.

His concern about the ultimate fate of the church is also well documented. In 1997 he published Leaders on Leadership, an anthology. Barna's conclusion: "the American church is dying due to a lack of strong leadership," and he wanted to provide resources to counteract it. And a Christianity Today profile observed that by November 2001 Barna had "concluded that his strategy [of building leadership in the church] was flawed and that he had failed." The church simply could not make serious inroads against the "moral and spiritual relativism" of the surrounding culture.

Barna has excelled over the years at providing concrete examples of how culture has captured Christianity, including the evangelical variety. Barna has frequently noted, for example, that Christian divorce rates are equal to or worse than that of non-Christians. And Ron Sider, as recently as 2005, used Barna's research to devastating effect in attacking the moral turpitude of self-proclaimed Christians, demonstrating (and lamenting) Barna's conclusion that "every day, the church is becoming more like the world it allegedly seeks to change."

Barna has flipped, then, not over the fate of organized churches, but the appropriate reaction to their alleged ineffectiveness. What he once dejectedly accepted as inevitable—with hopes of a revival with a new generation 20 to 30 years down the line—has become a celebration of the way Christians have adapted and flourished outside the traditional confines of the faith. Barna has found the leadership and culture-changing dynamics he craves, just not where he expected to find them.

Barna is not alone in his predictions. In Leadership's weblog, Out of Ur, the Rev. Dave Terpstra suggests that churches simply can't serve the spiritual needs of believers once they reach a certain stage of development. Thus, believers will distance themselves from church institutions once those groups cannot provide the resources that can aid their growth. Although Terpstra, unlike Barna, does not think these believers will stay alienated forever, he does claim that such "churchless" spiritual growth should be encouraged when it is found.

Barna rightly notes that church is irrelevant for many, even the faithful. But this makes his new enthusiasm for churchless Christians all the more confusing. Barna laments important concerns over the failings of church bodies—the loss of biblical truth and authority, an ignorance or outright denial of supernatural realities, and lack of discipleship, among other things. Yet as Leadership editor-at-large Kevin Miller notes in his review of Revolution, even the new churchless "Revolutionaries" must, by Barna's own statistics, suffer from the same problems that afflict the churched. Breaking fellowship with other believers does not a make them more dedicated followers of Christ.

It also remains to be seen how believers forming their own "personal 'church[es]' of the individual" will help Christianity stand strong against the forces of cultural conformity and relativism that Barna has rightly decried for so long. In a subsequent article, Miller summarizes Barna's reasons for being comparatively unconcerned about the death of churches: "[T]he traditional local congregation has not effectively produced mature disciples." But Barna has yet to explain how anything else can.

Ultimately, as both Miller and Tim Stafford note, the church has shown surprising resilience in the face of gloomy predictions and prognostications. So rumors of the church's demise might still be greatly exaggerated. Yet, while Barna's research should keep us from being sanguine about the spiritual health of Christians, his proposed cure seems distinctly dubious. As disturbing as the American church looks now, a world without it would certainly get worse.

Will Reaves, a recent Wheaton College graduate, works as a freelancer for Christianity Today International and Tyndale House Publishers.