The Epitaph Of Cheap Grace

[FONT=georgia, palatino]Religious pollster George Barna has come out with his annual report on the state of the church. In my view, it is less a report on Christianity as the epitaph of cheap grace.[/FONT]
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[FONT=georgia, palatino]Cheap grace was coined by the late Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship.[/FONT]
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[FONT=georgia, palatino]"Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate." [/FONT]

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[FONT=georgia, palatino]Cheap grace, as opposed to costly grace, has been the mantra of the "numbers matter most" crowd down through the years. The results aren't pretty.[/FONT]
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[FONT=georgia, palatino]Barna notes in his "Six Megathemes Emerge From Barna Group Research in 2010" the disturbing trends in the modern church world:[/FONT]
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[FONT=georgia, palatino]1. The Christian church is becoming less theologically literate.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia, palatino]2. Christians are becoming more ingrown and less outreach-oriented.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia, palatino]3. Growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia, palatino]4. Among Christians, interest in participating in community action is escalating.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia, palatino]5. The postmodern insistence on tolerance is winning over the Christian Church.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia, palatino]6. The influence of Christianity on culture and individual lives is largely invisible.[/FONT]
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[FONT=georgia, palatino]Christians are more interested in participating in their communities, but they see no change in their own lives or in those of their neighbors. That's an expected result of the "cheap grace" mentality. Only changed lives change lives. [/FONT]