The Alex McFarland Show-99-Equipping the Church to Fight the Culture War with guest George Barna

Do you have a desire to deepen your faith, better understand Christian apologetics, or to get a biblical perspective on current events? Well, I've tried to make it simple for you to do just that. On my website, alexmcfarland.com, there's a new section called Ask Alex Online. It's simple, it's clean, and you can read my answers to common questions about God, faith, and the Bible.

So visit the website alexmcfarland.com and look for the section that says Ask Alex Online. The spiritual condition of America, politics, culture, and current events analyzed through the lens of scripture. Welcome to the Alex McFarland Show. Well what a special show we have today. I welcome everybody. We have a guest that I can guarantee you know this name. You know, in Christianity there are some names that are just well-known and oft-quoted, one of whom is George Barna, and we are at NRB, National Religious Broadcasters. If you hear noise in the background, once a year we gather with all sorts of ministries. I mean, everybody you've ever heard of, and probably a few you haven't, I just saw Eric Metaxas out in the lobby, a frequent guest and a valued friend, and David Jeremiah, Samaritan's Purse, Compassion International, all the major networks are here. And by the way, I would ask that you pray, because we strategize, we get interviews, we do a lot at NRB annually to prepare to more effectively share the gospel.

And when some of our producers said, who would you like to interview, this was the top name on my list, literally. George Barna. Because for all of my Christian life, now 30 years as a believer, and really as one trying to understand the culture, trying to minister effectively, countless numbers of times, like so many other ministers, I go to the research of George Barna.

He has done so much to help the church stay on the pulse of culture, and there's so much I could say, but you know his name, you've heard him quoted, he is really the statistician and sociological measurer for the culture, and encouraging the church to impact that culture. And there's a lot I'd love to say, but my dear brother and colleague George Barna, welcome to our program. Thanks, Alex. I'm always amazed when I get an introduction like that. I listen to it. Really? Are they talking about me?

That doesn't make sense. Well, you really are a blessing, and what I want to talk with you about is worldview. I do a lot of traveling, I'm with a lot of young people, I was just all this week with college students at a Christian university, but before we get into that, I want you to tell people about you and your work and where they can find you.

I know GeorgeBarna.com, and how did you get into what the Lord has you doing, which is giving accurate assessment of the spiritual temperature of the culture? There's two unusual paths that I took to get there. The first of which was baseball cards. My friends would have baseball cards, we'd all have them, we'd trade them, we'd play games with them, but they loved the pictures of the batter standing there in their stance, and the pitcher with his stance. I loved the backside with the microscopic numbers, and I'd go through those, I'd recalculate them. I once, I was probably eight, nine years old, actually wrote to TOPS baseball, the place that put out the cards, told them some mistakes that they'd made in the calculations, never heard back from them. But then later on, I loved numbers, because to me they told a story. I love pie, not apple or blueberry. You and I would have been good friends growing up.

I think so, yeah, it would have been fun. And then after that, I grew up in college, took some research classes, I thought, whoa, this is pretty cool. Wound up getting out of school, managing political campaigns, and while I was managing them, had the opportunity to do the polling for a couple of candidates, and really enjoyed that. When the campaign season was over, I had to figure out what am I going to do, I figured I'd go back to grad school, get some degrees in the research, because that was the part I liked the best. Then I got involved working with a big secular media research firm, and was hired away by a Christian media management company, because I'd become a Christian while I was in grad school. And ever since then, I've been serving the Lord. It's been great. From where you began watching the culture some years ago, to where the culture is now in the 21st century, how concerned are you about our moral foundation, the commitment to family and traditional marriage, even the church understanding their role to be salt and light?

How have you seen that change? Those are the things, Alex, that literally keep me up at night, you know, where I'm sitting there looking at the data, praying, reading the Bible, trying to figure out how do we put all this together to turn things around? Am I concerned?

I couldn't be more concerned. We recently did our first release on the American Worldview Inventory, which is the worldview study we do at the beginning of every year. In that, I talked about the fact that we're losing ground, but also that we're moving toward Christian invisibility in American society, where we've got a lot of people who call themselves Christians, about 66 percent of all adults, but as we've studied children in particular, 8 to 12 year olds, and we look at what they believe and how they're translating that into a lifestyle, how they're trying to look ahead to their future life and say, who do I want to be? How do I want to live?

What do I want to do? How do I want to make a difference? We're projecting that only 1 to 2 percent of the children who right now are 8 to 12 years old are going to wind up with a biblical worldview, and the reason that this matters is because we're all called to be disciples of Jesus Christ, but over the years I've come to recognize through the variety of research projects I've done, you really can't be a genuine disciple of Christ the way he defines it in Scripture. There are six places where he talks about this is what will make you a disciple. If you measure those, you find that we've got about 3 percent of adults in America who are actually disciples. If you measure worldview in America, you find we get about 4 percent of adults who have a biblical worldview currently, and that continues to decline with each succeeding generation.

So we're rapidly reaching that point where it's going to be tough to find a Christian in our circles of relationships, so we've really got to ramp it up and be much more serious about discipleship. To what do you attribute this result? Is it one thing, or was it multiple things?

Yeah, it was multiple things. One of the biggest things has been the encroachment of media in our lives, and so as we've measured what impacts what people believe, what they think, what they do, who they want to be, media has the deepest impact of anything. Most of the influence that, at least to me, is measurable is actually coming from the media messages that people are absorbing, and in many cases subconsciously embracing as part of their philosophy of life. But it could be argued that many, many generations of Americans and Westerners have been immersed in media, and I've spent 30 years reading atheist philosophers, because that's just the world that I'm in, but my wife and I are, we would say, devout Christians. So people can't be insulated completely from media.

Is there a way that the church, even in a world of media, even in a world of secular media, can still retain a biblical foundation of life? Oh, of course. So you go back to something like Deuteronomy 6, where it talks about the responsibility of a parent, and so we're supposed to be always talking about, always dialoguing about, always reading about the things of God, the things of the Lord, and we're supposed to be doing that with our family together. This is our primary joint exercise as a family. This is what we do. This is what defines us.

And we've gotten completely away from that. Churches are giving us a lot of happy talk today, trying to make sure people feel happy. Happy talk. We're doing talk, we're doing happy things. You know, that's not what life is.

Jesus promises us, look, if you really love me and follow me and do my will, you're going to be persecuted. How happy is that? You know, so. Hold that thought. We've got to take a brief break. This is Alex McFarland from the National Religious Broadcasters with our very special guest, George Barna.

Worldview what we believe and why we must, as Christians, live it out. Stay tuned. We're back after this. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert.

Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. Are you tired of liberal agendas ruining our country, but you don't know what to do about it? That's why Truth and Liberty Coalition was founded. We want to equip you to take back our country and impact the world. Here's how we do it. We educate through broadcasts, conferences and our website with resources that inform, equip and motivate. We unify by collaborating with like-minded organizations like the Family Research Council, the Family Policy Alliance and My Faith Votes. We mobilize by providing practical tools you can use to impact your local community.

As Christians, we are called to make disciples of nations. Together, we can change the course of our country for good. Join Truth and Liberty to connect with believers and organizations who not only want to see a change in our nation, but a community that is actually doing something about it. Join us online for our broadcast and subscribe for relevant updates on our website, truthandliberty.net.

He's been called trusted, truthful and timely. Welcome back to The Alex McFarland Show. Welcome back to our conversation with George Barna. George, you know, I love the church. I've pastored two myself, but I've been around the block. And I said, and I don't, somebody said to me, you sound like you have contempt for pastors. I don't mean to sound that way, but so much of what I hear in American pulpits are what I would call B-grade motivational speeches. That's not going to appreciably change the world, is it?

No. And, you know, I go back to some of the research we've done with pastors in the last few years where we looked at the worldview of pastors and we found, for instance, that only 41% of senior pastors of Christian churches in America have a biblical worldview. Worse than that, only 12% of children's pastors have a biblical worldview.

Now, to me, children's pastors are the most important pastors in America because a person's worldview develops starting 15 to 18 months of age is fully developed by the age of 13. We can change it, we modify it, we refine it during our teens and 20s. By our mid-20s, we are who we are. But it's that early stage of a person's life where those influences make the biggest difference because kids are frantically trying to figure out who am I, why am I here, etc. How does life work? How am I going to fit in?

How am I going to get to be where I want to be? And so that's when they're developing their worldview. Children's pastors are representing the church in the development of that worldview.

But the reality is you can't get what you don't have. And knowing that seven out of eight children's pastors do not even have a biblical worldview tells me in most cases it's more dangerous for a child to go to a Christian church than to stay away from it. Wow. You know, this is really true. I was a full-time youth pastor 11 years, and this is 25 years ago. My wife and I were deeply involved in youth ministry all around the Carolinas. And I was always like the weird guy because we did Josh McDowell books and we did Billy Graham Bible studies, whereas most of my colleagues, and many of whom are friends to this day, they were all about, you know, water balloon fights and, you know, shaving their head if, you know, it was crazy stuff.

But here's the thing. I saw this cartoon. It was a personnel committee interviewing a prospective youth pastor.

This is a cartoon like 30 years ago. And you'll see why I'm sharing this in a moment. The personnel committee says we would like a youth pastor with an MDiv and 10 years experience, but we'll settle for someone who plays guitar and has a van. And my point being, you're right, many of the gatekeepers of children and teen theology, they don't know what they believe themselves. How can you impart a biblical worldview when perhaps the youth pastor himself doesn't really have a biblical worldview?

And you know, I don't want to just bag on pastors. That's not my point. I mean, we're all in this fight together. So the only reason I do the research is to open our eyes and say, oh my gosh, maybe we could do better.

You know, and I'm just trying to point away. Here's a way maybe we could do better than what we're doing now. And so even in talking about the absence of a biblical worldview among children's pastors, all pastors really, you know, on average, I also need to go back to the family and say, but this is only happening because the parents allow it to happen. And so if parents did their due diligence and understood what was happening with their child when they went off to Sunday school or whatever it is that they go off to at a church, things would, well, things might change.

Now parents have issues too. We know that among parents of kids under the age of 13, only 2% have a biblical worldview. So in all likelihood, they're not going to walk into a children's ministry, look at the pastor and say, let me see if he has a biblical worldview because they don't have one.

It's not uppermost in their mind. What we found parents are looking for when they bring their children to a church is I want them to be safe. I want them to be happy. I want them to have fun. I want them to meet some nice kids.

And if they get exposed to some good religious teaching, wonderful. What is a biblical worldview? Let's lay that out. A fully-orbed view of life from God's Word.

What would that look like? A good friend of mine, Wayne Grudem, great theologian, chided me one time. We were speaking together at our place and he said, George, you realized to have a real biblical worldview. You'd have to know everything on every page of the Bible, right? I said, okay, you got me Wayne, but you know, the reality is we can know the principles, the core principles.

And if we live by those, the Holy Spirit will keep enlightening us as to what else we need to know and to do to honor God. So we've got to start someplace in developing this worldview. Understand, everybody has a worldview. You have to have one to get through the day because a worldview is simply your decision-making filter.

It's the filter, your intellectual, emotional, moral, spiritual filter through which you see and understand and interpret and respond to the world. And we look to others, other outside sources to help us shape that worldview. What we're trying to do is to get something that we think is going to help us to lead our best life.

Unfortunately, what's happening is we're thinking that our best life means we need to be happy. And so we're looking at all the different worldviews that are out there that we can draw from. And what we're choosing to do is instead of saying, let me go to a source of truth, I'm going to go to a source of comfort. And so what we do is we pick elements from many different worldviews, postmodernism, secular humanism, Eastern mysticism, Wicca, Satanism, Marxism, biblical theism, moralistic therapeutic deism, all these and more. And we just draw out those elements that they believe, that they teach, that make us feel good, that are comfortable, that are popular. And we say, okay, I'm going to put all of those together, which is why in America today, the dominant worldview, the filter that most people use is a syncretistic filter.

Syncretism is embraced by 92% of Americans. And that's when you're simply combining things from many different places. You're not buying into one worldview.

You're buying into many of them, but just bits and pieces of many of them and creating your own individualized blend. What we think will work and what we think feels good, rather than truth. You know, I read Matthew 6.33 and the Lord said, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things of the attitude. If we seek Jesus and truth, we'll get comfort and life will work.

You know, if we seek pragmatism and comfort to the exclusion of Jesus, life won't work. We've got to take a break, forgive me, but Alex McFarland with our very special guest George Barna, and folks, his website, georgebarna.com, and then culturalresearchcenter.com, two websites I would urge you to avail yourselves to. Stay tuned, we're back after this brief break coming to you from the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, Nashville, Tennessee.

Don't go away. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. Christian author and speaker Alex McFarland is an advocate for Christian apologetics. Teaching in more than 2,200 churches around the world, schools, and college campuses, Alex is driven by a desire to help people grow in relationship with God. He arms his audiences with the tools they need to defend their faith, while also empowering the unchurched to find out the truth for themselves. In the midst of a culture obsessed with relativism, Alex is a sound voice who speaks timeless truths of Christianity in a timely way. With 18 published books to his name, it's no surprise that CNN, Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets have described Alex as a religion and culture expert. To learn more about Alex and to book him as a speaker at your next event, visit alexmcfarland.com or you can contact us directly by emailing booking at alexmcfarland.com.

It's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to the Alex McFarland Show. Welcome back to the program. Alex McFarland here. I would remind you to please check out the newly redesigned alexmcfarland.com.

We've got our seven summer youth camps coming up at equipretreat.org for middle school and high schoolers. And then I'll be at the Billy Graham Training Center July 12th through 14th, and that website is thecove.org. But I want to give maximum time to our very special guest, George Barna. Again, thank you for being with us this day, but thank you. I know I say this, you're a very humble person, but you really are providing a valuable resource to the body of Christ. And I want to say how much I appreciate you. I know you've given your life for the Great Commission. The Lord knows that. When I think about you, 1 Corinthians 15, 58 comes to mind that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Blessings to you, my friend, and thank you. That's kind of you, Alex. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I look at it as a team effort. Everybody's got to play their part. Yeah.

You know, my position is researcher, you know, so I'm just trying to do my position the best I can. Amen. Of the Christians that do have a solidly biblical worldview and they live it out, how did they arrive at that? The providence of God, the work of the Holy Spirit we know, but there are masses, like you said in the previous segment, that are syncretistic.

A little bit of Jesus, a little bit of a lot of other things. But of those that have and live life through the lens of Scripture, what does your research tell you about how that happens? More often than not, not in all cases, but more often than not, they had parents or grandparents, some trusted family member who came alongside them and discipled them. It's rare in America today, I'm finding, to identify individuals who are actually discipled by another person. More often what's happened is we've got this outsourcing mentality where what we do is we come to church and we kind of outsource our faith to the professional on stage.

It's like, give me the goods, give me what I need in this hour that I'm allowing you to have and if it's any good, I'll be back next week and you can try again. But that's about as much discipling as most people ever get and that's not real discipling. That's education, which is good.

We need that, but it's very different than a relationship where I'm investing my time, my energy, my knowledge, my prayers, my hope in you and begging the Holy Spirit to come into this relationship and shape it and give us what we need to become the people that God put us on earth to become. So that doesn't happen very often. Parents have a great opportunity to do that. Grandparents have a great opportunity to do that. Teachers, coaches, there are a lot of people who have that opportunity.

Most people don't take advantage of it. So those who do become dynamic, biblical worldview kinds of Christians tend to have had that kind of experience. Let's talk about senior pastors because just a week ago before I came out here on this particular speaking tour, I was counseling with a pastor who wanted me to come and speak and he said this and I quote, he said, I made the Lord a promise years ago that I would never use the pulpit to speak about anything political. Now, if there are, I don't know, several hundred thousand Protestant churches in America and maybe a hundred million adults that claim to have a born again relationship with Jesus. I know our home is heaven. I care about heaven.

I care about this world too. But how do we harness the pastors, hundreds of thousands of ordained clergy that if they would, they could make a difference. And yet, like this pastor who tells me, he promised God he would never speak about politics from the pulpit. You may imagine I had some counsel that I gave him.

But here's my point. How do we get the pastors to realize that they have a platform by which to influence people, people who can go vote, vote righteously from a biblical perspective, and save our nation so that we'll have religious freedom and the chance to give ourselves to the Great Commission? I think part of it, Alex, is helping pastors to get a better understanding of the opportunity and the responsibility that they have. They haven't been called just to be teachers where we gauge their effectiveness by how many notes people took.

Their effectiveness should be gauged by what are your people doing the other six and a half days of the week? Are they in the marketplace serving as agents of transformation in this culture, representing God with his truth? And in order to do that, somebody has to be sharing what the scriptures would call the full counsel of God. And not choosing to jump over those passages where Jesus himself talked about politics and government, but saying, whoa, if that was something that Jesus thought was important, I need to think it's important. And because I think it's important because Jesus thinks it's important, I've got to make sure that my people know it's important.

But I've also got to teach them the principles that will enable them to be effective agents of transformation in politics, in business, in education, in the home. Any place where a Christian is, we are the church. God sends us into that place intentionally.

We're not there by accident. And I'm not there just to have a good time. I'm not there just to make money.

I'm not there to build my reputation. I'm there to honor, respect, glorify God through the things that he enables me to do in that moment, in that place, through his power based on his word. But I can't do that unless I know his word, unless I'm ready to take it and do battle, recognizing that every moment of every day I'm engaged in spiritual war. And so I got to see myself as a warrior. I've got to take on the armor of God. I've got to be ready to fight the good fight. There's nothing else.

It's not about me going out and having a good time. So the more that pastors can understand, you're actually a drill sergeant. What you're supposed to be doing is preparing the troops for battle. Because once they walk out that door, maybe even when they're inside this building, but certainly once they walk outside the door, the battle rages on. The enemy is coming for them. The enemy isn't passive saying, well, we'll see what happens. The enemy wants to take us down and is very aggressive about it.

And we've got to be prepared for that. And you know, and I want to say to everybody listening, as a Christian, whether you're in ministry or not, but if you're a believer, life is all about stewardship. My life is not my own.

Brother, pastor, your reputation, your image, that's not yours. 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20, Paul says we are not our own. And as we close, I think about our time, our opportunities, our abilities. Those are all stewardship issues that the Lord has entrusted to us. And we need to view all of life in terms of stewardship, don't we?

We do. And it's interesting you raise that, because in our worldview research, we of course look at that. What do you think about all the resources that you have? And the mindset that, well, God entrusted them to me to manage for the advancement of his kingdom, very few Christians perceive it that way. The more common perspective is, I've worked hard, I've earned what I have, I deserve it. Shame on us.

I mean, we don't want what we really deserve. You know, I mean, Jesus is sparing us from what we really deserve. Thank you, Lord, for grace.

Yeah, everything post-salvation, really. And look, life is a blessing. Walking with Christ, family, it's a joy. God is so good to us. But I'm so blessed, my wife and I, we were engaged and we were writing down what our values were.

And I didn't know I would be called to the ministry. But we both viewed that somehow, some way, our life was about the Great Commission. And I really feel like, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think every Christian should understand that we're saved by God's grace. But like Ephesians 2, 8, and 10, we're saved unto good works. We're to live in light of Christ's Great Commission, aren't we? Yeah, or go back to Genesis 12, you know, you're blessed to be a blessing. Amen. So whatever abilities, gifts, skills, resources, relationships, time, anything that you have, God intentionally allowed you to have it so that you could go out and serve him with that. It's his, it's not ours. We're like you say, we're just stewards of that.

So, you know, let's take advantage of that. Every person I believe needs to sit down and do a self assessment of what am I doing to advance God's kingdom? How am I a Great Commission steward? What am I doing to disciple people? And we have to recognize the only people that can make disciples are disciples. Well said. You can only reproduce who you are. Indeed. And so if you're not a disciple, then get in the game. You can become one. It's available to everybody. And then you have the privilege of being able to serve God as a disciple, making disciples, honoring the greatest challenge he ever gave to humankind. And we can see phenomenal things happen as a result of that.

Any final homework assignment or reading that you would encourage us to read the Bible? I mean, people aren't reading it. People aren't believing it. People don't trust it. You know, wrap your head around it.

You think it's not trustworthy? Go back and figure out where it came from. Look at the impact it's had over the centuries. Do all the things you have to do to understand why the Bible is the only book you ever need to read. I've written 60.

You've written a bunch of books. We're just trying to help people go back to the original source. Amen. That's all that matters.

One of my favorite verses, John 10 35, Jesus said, the Scripture cannot be broken. Indeed. George Barna, thank you. And folks, you can listen to this again. We'll have it posted on all the podcast platforms, alexmcfarland.com as well.

By the way, there is a download on our website now on what to look for in a church. And I would encourage you to check that out. Thank you again, sir. I hope we can visit again soon.

I look forward to it. Thanks, Alex. God bless you, brother.

You too. Alex McFarland ministries are made possible through the prayers and financial support of partners like you. For over 20 years, this ministry has been bringing individuals into a personal relationship with Christ and has been equipping people to stand strong for truth. Learn more and donate securely online at alexmcfarland.com. You may also reach us at alexmcfarland P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404, or by calling 1-877-Yes-God-1. That's 1-877-Y-E-S-G-O-D-1. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again on the next edition of the Alex McFarland Show.