from Len Sweet's Annual West Va. Mountain Retreat

Without comment: From the September Len Sweet Mountain Retreat with George Barna and Sweet (in my home state of West Virginia)--

· Currently only 65% of self-professed Christian in America experience their faith through the local church, and that is diminishing every year. He predicts that by 2025 only about one-third of Americans will experience their faith through what we would define today as a local church.
· According to Barna, the people who sit in our pews on Sunday morning are statistically unrecognizable from everyone else in the culture in terms of their actions and attitudes. Great quote from Sweet to augment this thought: "John Stuart Mills said if you base a religion on a set of beliefs in a very short time the followers will look just like the rest of the culture. Mills was a prophet."

::taken from Will Sampson's Weblog; for a more complete report following this [link]
better yet visit Will Sampson's "Wilzhead" Blog a compliation of great thoughts on emerging church::