S04 Ep37 Surveyed Pastors Have They Lost the Faith?

Welcome to Man Talk, a ministry sponsored by TAWCMM, talking and walking Christian men's ministry, where we're devoted to breaking down the walls of race and denomination, and to point men to their God-assigned roles. Now here's your hosts, Will Hardy and Roy Jones Jr.

Welcome to Man Talk. I'm Will Hardy. I'm here with Roy Jones Jr. Not to be confused with the boxer. Not to be confused. Slightly larger frame, a little different skin color. But he is my brother in Christ, even though he looked different. Amen, and I welcome that comment, and you are definitely my brother, Will Hardy.

Amen. Well, you know, Roy, it has been made known in the news that the worldview of some of our leaders in the church is being compromised. And, you know, and it's pretty sad, and actually because when you talk about worldview rather than biblical worldview, when you talk about, it's how you see life. How you see things that's happening around you. The process, the to be, what it looks like through your eyes. So your perception of what you see going on around, and of course that varies from, you know, place to place and people to people.

Sure. But when we're talking about biblical worldview, now we're saying that we're looking at things through the lens of the scripture. And I think that's what we are going to be talking about today, because in a cultural research center, which is an arm of Arizona State University, they did a poll, or they did some research, I'm not going to say poll, but they did some research. And they found some very, very dramatic things when it comes to the leaders of our church worldview, biblical worldview, and how they see things that's either happening around them or things that they are experiencing. Will, you made a great statement there about being through a biblical view, and we talk about that quite a bit in our meetings, right? About that, especially in this political hotspot that we're in at this particular time in our lives, people have a tendency to look at things through a left or a right. And it's really shocking and disappointing to hear that pastors, when we go through these numbers with you folks, you're going to be really shocked to know the number of pastors, especially if you're what I will call a pure follower of Christ, in that you believe the Word of God is truly the Word of God and that's our instruction and we're not supposed to modify the Word by fitting into the world. So you're going to be shocked by what Will and I are going to share with you today.

And, Will, thank you so much for that introduction. And, you know, George Barna, I believe, is the one who led this research, right? Right.

Who reported back on these results. And many of you will be familiar with Barna Research Center. Great work that they've done, Pew studies and some of that stuff about the pandemic and the impact. Exactly, Roy. And, you know, he also focuses a lot on the Christian perspective, I think, which is good.

Yes. So these percentages that we are going to be talking to you about, they're pretty solid when it comes to the things that they found during their research. And, Will, you know, the thing that's more concerning, I guess, maybe even discouraging, is that many folks don't read their Bible regularly, as we've talked about in the past, and don't understand and really have a depth of knowledge on the Scripture. So if a pastor is adapting their delivery to the world as opposed to coming at it from a biblical view, that means the collateral impact is much greater than just him or her alone, right?

It's much greater. They're affecting all these folks that are listening to them and then not going back and validating or studying for themselves. It's scary to think about the number of people that are being impacted negatively and incorrectly through this. And what makes this even more surprising, Roy, is that a lot of individuals look at their pastor and everything that come out of his mouth, they look at it as the gospel rather than searching the Scriptures to determine what is being taught or what they're saying in their messages is lining up with this truth. And, you know, most solid pastors will tell you, trust me, but verify me. Go back and study the Scriptures for yourself. They are humans just like us, and it's possible that something may be misinterpreted, misquoted, misstated.

But it's important to do just that, go back and validate and verify what you've heard. That's right, Roy, and see, if you don't know what the Bible says, then obviously you can't understand what a biblical worldview is because we're looking from things from the standpoint of other things. And, of course, we're going to list some things that actually shapes your worldview. And when we talk about those things, be conscious that you as a believer or if you're listening to this podcast and you're a non-believer, then you can understand what perspective we're coming from.

So what do you want to look at first, Roy? Well, I think it's important we just start right out of the gates here about the statistics behind the survey. A new nationwide survey among a representative sample of America's Christian pastors shows this, that a large majority of those pastors do not possess a biblical worldview. In fact, just slightly more than a third, 37%, have a biblical worldview, and the majority—listen to this, folks—the majority, 62%, possess a hybrid worldview known as syncretism. And what that syncretism is, Roy, is just a mishmash of basically a lot of feelings or how a person looks at something and then attempts to cooperate their feelings into the statement or fact that they're trying to defend.

So, for example, if a person has a political worldview in reference to a particular candidate, and we're just going to use this because, again, it's a hot button topic. But when you look at that, and so what you'll do, even if the individual is showing a lot of immoral traits regarding themselves, an individual may back them or attempt to persuade through some biblical means to back them. Whereas we have to look at exactly what the individual is standing for when it comes to the Bible. So, Will, how does a person measure that up to truly go back to Scripture with where their position is, right? Absolutely.

Can it withstand the biblical vision test? Absolutely, and we talked about a few weeks ago, we were saying that we saw that there were 37 representatives who were Republicans who were in favor or voted for Same-Sex Marriage Act. So, we see that any and everybody who claimed to be conservative or moderate or however you get it, it simply doesn't matter. Because what we're doing today is we have to look at things as the Bible tells us to look at them, and we have to stand fast to that. Yes, as a father of Christ, it's imperative that you stand on the standard of the Bible.

Absolutely. If you come off the standard of the Bible, you're going to become worldly, and then you're not going to look any different than the world. And see, and this is some of the things I just jotted down, five things that shapes a person's worldview. One is their culture.

Now, when you talk about a person's culture, you're talking about, of course, where they're from, their customs and their heritage, traditions, and things like that. So, if you grew up somewhere in, say, India or Egypt, you might have grown up as a Muslim, because that's what you were supposed to. And, you know, if your parents held to that most Islamic faith, then that's the direction you're going to go. You're going to grow up that way until you get to the point to say, if I'm starting to hear other things, then are these other things that I'm listening to?

Some good, some bad. But if I'm listening to the Bible, how does the Bible now measure up against how they were taught? So, see, that's one thing, culture. Another thing is education. And there's a lot of schools out here, Roy, that call themselves Christian universities. And once you get in there, you find out, wow, what in the world is being taught here? Again, these things begin to shape your worldview.

Number three I wrote down here is your beliefs. What you believe will determine your worldview, how you look at things. And then your emotions.

And we could talk two hours about that. Emotions, amen to that. Because emotions, again, drive the way we feel. And sometimes we let our feelings override our faith. We all know that faith and following Christ is not an emotional decision, right? It's a conscious decision to love and to follow. So if we allow our emotions to affect our faith, we're really in trouble.

Absolutely. And I think that's when we have to take a step back and say, hey, are my feelings interfering with my faith, which is allowing me to reshape my worldview? You know, this is a very difficult issue in today's time, Will, because we have no absolutes of right and wrong. We have no moral yardstick that we're all in agreement to follow through on and to follow in general, right? So I think that's part of what's causing this problem, that the people as they're leading now have been through generations of their everything's okay.

Yeah. And you know, when you look at that, I think from that pastor's perspective, what he's saying is, well, if I continually preach the Bible or Romans chapter one and Romans chapter two, if I preach that, then I'll have people who disagree with me and they may leave. So it's about numbers rather than about what the Bible says. And we know what happens when you focused on numbers, then you lose track of what the real mission is. Absolutely.

Disciple the ones that are there, and then they'll come from that point forward and bring others. We've got to take a quick break here with you folks. We'd like to tell you about a few things that are coming up. We've got breakfast coming up here on Friday, September 16th, I believe if I've got the date right, I may be wrong, but it's either the 16th or 17th.

Forgive me, I don't have the calendar in front of me. Here at First Christian Church, 6 30 a.m. is man talk breakfast. We'd love for you to join us to come be a part of the men's fellowship. Always have good conversation and good challenge questions and discussion on Friday morning, and one of the best breakfasts in the area. If you're not in the area and would love to be a part of things, just send us an email. We'd love to hear from you. Give us your topics. Give us your thoughts.

Let us know what's on your mind, and we'll be more than happy to bring that forward on Man Talk Radio podcast. So, Roy, we were talking about the worldview of pastors, and of course, they put a little chart in here on page number two in reference to the position and then the percent with a biblical worldview. And I found that, of course, rather alarming as well. So the first one was all Christian pastors. They only had a 37% worldview.

And that incorporated all categories, right? All categories, all denominations. Which included senior lead pastor for folks listening, associate assistant pastor, teaching pastor, children's youth pastor, and executive pastor, and, Will, if it's okay, I want to jump right in here on the teaching pastors. Only 13% of teaching pastors surveyed had a biblical worldview.

Now think about that. Teaching pastors. And see, and so what you are taught is the foundation of eventually what you're going to believe.

Of course. So you're building off of that foundation of teaching. It's just like, you know, I share with the congregation. You know, when you come to Bible study or when you're coming to any type of class where you're being taught the Bible, that is reinforcing what you have already heard through the message on Sunday morning or Saturday if you attend on Saturday. So it's a reinforcement.

And of course during that teaching portion, it also gives you an opportunity to ask questions or take a deeper dive into things where you don't have that during the morning message. So I think, you know, foundationally that is really, really shocking that, you know, you only have 13% of teaching pastors of the denominations in which they surveyed or did their research from. So it wasn't just one denomination, obviously, but a variety of denominations that they looked at.

And again, I think it comes down to that acceptance, Roy. You know, we want to open ourselves up to everyone. And on my Facebook page, you know, I only have it going out to those who I'm friends with. I don't have it going out to the whole community. But on my Facebook page, I put out five things that the enemy has used over the course and period of time to divide the church.

What were those five? Sexually, theologically, socially, biblically, and it goes on and on. But the foundation of all that, it comes back to deception and acceptance. So if you are a senior or executive pastor and all of a sudden you say, okay, we're going to open up ourselves to receive people of who, as Romans 1 describes. So if I open myself up to that particular group of people and accept them within our congregation, eventually there is going to be a divide in what you believe. Whether you're going to go by the Bible or you're going to say, we're going to accept your lifestyle as a result of accepting you into our congregation. So the two eventually is going to conflict. And that's the decision that I think some of the congregants are going to have to make.

Do we want to stay here and subject ourselves to something that may be damaging to our family or our children? Or do we want to move on to another Bible-believing church? And I think we're seeing that happening.

It's been happening around the country. Yeah, that's one of those things when we talk about the modern-day church. Pastors are trying to pull people in, so therefore they are willing to allow their standards to be lowered as it relates to not looking at it from a biblical worldview. And they're saying, okay, these things are okay because it's socially accepted.

Whatever you want to call it. It could be any number of sins that we see the modern-day church embracing as okay when the Bible clearly says they're not okay. And that's one of those things that as pastors we have to stand on the standards of the Bible.

We have to teach solid foundational theology. We have to instruct our folks the way the Bible tells us to instruct them and the way to live our lives. If people choose to live differently than what the Bible tells us, that's their choice. But you can't say you're a follower of Christ and choose to live different than what the Bible tells you to live. If you do, then you're in immediate conflict. And essentially you're mocking God if you're doing things that He tells you are wrong on a continual basis. And then you're saying, I'm a follower of Christ.

The two just do not line up. And Will, one of the things in looking at this, the teaching pastors, 13%, have a biblical worldview. Executive pastors of the total, only 4% of that group had a biblical worldview.

And then the associate was at 28%, the senior leads were at 41%. Which says a lot about the staff being brought in behind many of these pastors, right? If their ratios are lower than even the lead pastors, you would expect them to be somewhat consistent, right?

Based on recruiting like-minded people working together, that sort of thing. But if one were to analyze this, they may say, well, this explains a lot of what's going on in the church today. If the leadership is not fully aligned, how do you expect the body of Christ to be aligned? Over in Acts chapter 17, now while Paul waited for them, and I'm reading verse 16, at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. Therefore, he reasoned with the synagogue, in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the Gentile worshipers.

And in the marketplace daily with those who happen to be there. And then certain Epicureans and Stoic philosophers encountered him and some said, what does this babbler want to say? Others said, he seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus saying, may we know what this new doctrine of which you speak for you are bringing some strange thing to our ears.

Now, strange things. See, these things are strange because they were holding to philosophy. And I think when you start looking at why certain ideologies are coming into the church, this is one of the reasons why. You're bringing all these other things and you're presenting these other things as the gospel.

And that's why it's foreign to them. So it's like, oh, yes, I can understand this because I took a philosophy class in college. So you want to get on the same page. So now, but you're not preaching the Bible, you're preaching philosophy. So I think that also shows when we start incorporating these things into messages and into our church, we need to be careful on how they're being explained or how they're being presented because someone could take some philosophy as the gospel. And God just put on my heart about the men's role in all this, the men and their families. The man is supposed to be the priest of their home, right? So if the man has a similar approach, if you think about this, and the man that's in the church and he's being impacted by this view, this worldly view versus the biblical worldview, then that's what's transcending back into the homes. And that may be some of the issue that we're dealing with in today's time. So men, if you're listening, we really just want to encourage you, really encourage you to get in the Word, validate, trust what you're hearing, but validate it, and then have a conversation if something's out of alignment with what the Bible says from what you're hearing. We want to give you a few of the categories.

We've got a few more minutes here. We want to talk to you about the percentage of pastors who have a biblical worldview in relation to the categories of belief and behavior. Purpose calling ranked the highest among all those things. It was among all pastors was 57%, had a biblical view of that. Family value of life.

Here's an interesting number. 57% had, in terms of all pastors, senior lead pastors had 49% that had a biblical view of that. Assistant associate pastors, only 38% of those surveyed. Teaching pastors, 30% of those felt that family value of life was an important biblical issue. 17% of executive pastor focused on family value of life through a biblical view.

Children's youth, obviously 44%, which was, you would expect that to be a higher number, which is, I would have even thought it may have been even higher than that, but that's certainly highest on this particular grid. And we wonder why we have messed up families. Yes, we do.

And listen to this one, Will. God, creation, and history, 44% of all pastors believe that has a biblical, look at it through a biblical world. 47% senior leads of the assistant pastors, only 34% of those surveyed look at it through a biblical view. 29% under the teaching pastors, 14% of the executive pastors, and 33% of the youth pastors felt that this was viewed, should be viewed through a biblical view. Now, the faith practice, 7% of executive pastors look at this through a biblical view. 47% on the senior lead, associate pastors were at 29%, teaching pastors were at 15%. Now here, sin, salvation, God, and relationship, this is a very interesting number. 48% of the senior leads, great, we need to be up in the 60 or 70, we actually should be at 100%, not even that, we should be at 100%. 30% of the associate pastors, 18% of the teaching pastors, 7% of the executive pastors, and 22% of the children's youth look at that through a biblical worldview. So, key components, salvation, key components, sin, key component, relationship with God, and those numbers aren't even above 50% for any group, in fact, quite a bit lower than the 50% mark. And you will, that just speaks volumes about where we're at as a country, because we know that, as Tony Evans shared with us in 2018, you know, your city's only going to be as strong as your community, your community's only going to be as strong as your neighborhoods, your neighborhood's only going to be as strong as your homes are, and the same holds true for our churches. Community's only going to be as strong as our churches are, and if we're getting away from the Bible, and it's apparent by these numbers, and certainly when we look at the world, we are getting away from the Bible in so many ways, we're heading down the wrong path. And again, I think it comes back to acceptance, Roy. We want to accept any and all worldviews instead of standing fast on the biblical worldview.

So, when we venture out and we get away from the biblical worldview, that's when we find ourselves in trouble. Will, this has been a great discussion. Thank you, folks, for listening and being here with us. It's been a great time. Will, so good to see you again.

It's been a few weeks since we've been together, and we're back with the next show coming up here in just another week, folks. So, thank you again for joining us. As we conclude today's show, TAWCMM, Talking and Walking Christian Men's Ministry, are building a community of men to be servant leaders in their home, communities, churches, and work environment. Check us out at our website for upcoming events and regular scheduled meetings. Don't forget to send us an email for topics that you would like us to visit in the future. Thank you for joining us today on Man Talk. Visit us at tawcmm.com.