Crisis: The Future Of Christianity In America | Part 2

Lance: What an exciting piece of information we got for you right now. It’s powerful. We’ve got the world’s foremost authority on trends, on data, on what’s happening in the country regarding the way people are thinking. George Berna, the most quoted authority I think on statistics, data, and trends in the Christian world is going to be joining us for this dynamic part two with our broadcast. We’re going to be looking at the real fundamental connection between the great awakening that is happening in America right now, and the shift in beliefs that’s taking place that will produce a sustained transformation. You don’t want to miss this conversation. 

And that may explain a little bit of the appeal that Jordan Peterson has to a young demographic and Joe Rogan. Because while they clearly like with Peterson, he clearly has a way of thinking.He’s walking through the Socratic method in his monologues like, yeah, well why would you say that, well how about that. He’s answering the whys and asking himself questions and then throwing out what the data says and what the answers are and you’ll see how that. Then he’s got a historic perspective on communism and other stuff that brings out some shocking stories in history about what happens when you go down that road.

Well, why don’t you ask the Culogs when Stalin came to power and they took all their property from him. So, I’m kind of interested in this direction to go in and someone recently has been visiting me from the UK saying that they’re studying church growth movements in the United States that are of interest to them. And one of them is called like the L10 movement, which struck me as interesting I’m not sure. I think it’s from Luke 10, where they added. So, Luke 10Movement and you can see up in “Luke10.com” if you guys are curious, I’m looking at it. It’s all about relational discipleship that their conclusion is that the didactic teaching method is not nearly as effective as the relational engagement method. Which I find kind of correlates with what you’re saying about building in order to create dialogue that results in people thinking clearly.

Lucas Mather who’s a professor we’ve had from time to time we talked to says that, he’s been kind of like exiled from Pepperdine and other places because he was challenging the students academically when there’s a tendency to want to just give students grades easier and make them happy. He was challenging them to raise the bar and he said this to me. He said, the weakness of the proselytizing of the left in the modern university system is that they’ve taught their students what to think but they haven’t taught them how to think. And because of that there’s a great opportunity. If we understand what we’re thinking, we can engage them in a conversation because they really don’t have a very deep worldview. They just have, like you said a synchronism kind of a of different ideas that haven’t really been vetted.

In your university out there, the question I was going to ask you earlier is, are they coming in with a socialist orientation even to a Christian university? Are you finding that out?

George Berna: Yeah, we’re finding that it it’s not purely socialist or Marxist. They’re coming in like most Americans with all kinds of elements from different world views. From existentialism on down to whatever you want to call out. But that’s what We’re up against. It’s interesting when you talk about how the left has been weak at teaching people how to think so is the church.

Mercedes: Yeah.

George Berna: I mean, that’s the same approach that we take is don’t question the pastor. Don’t question anything. Just take notes and memorize them. Listen to what we say. I mean, I’ve had pastors literally tell me that. That that’s what I want my people to do is to come and hear me talk because I’ve studied this and I know. So, if they just believe what I believe, they’re going to be fine and that’s not at all what Biblical Christianity is all about. You can’t really know and love and serve and honor God unless you study these things more deeply. He doesn’t want a bunch of robots. He wants a relationship with us. That’s why relational evangelism works is because it’s a of what the scriptures are moving us to in our interaction with God. And God is happy for us to question him because he is the source of all truth. What are we going to come up with truth? So, by all means, look into the Bible, question it, question it honestly and come out with the right answers.

Lance: Well, let me ask a question. Jonathan and Carl, you’re over there. You’ve been listening to George and you got an opportunity here. You got the professor here. You have any questions you would like to ask him. Any areas you’re curious about?

Carl: I do. I have a Questions, doctor. Thank you so much for coming on the broadcast. You mentioned a handful of times about the Biblical Worldview. If you wouldn’t mind outright describing what the biblical worldview is in part. Because the Old Testament and the New Testament have some, I would say diametrically opposed views as far as like murder for instance thou shalt not kill yet in Ecclesiastes there’s a time to kill. So, what is the biblical worldview and what is the distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament in that biblical worldview?

George Berna: Yeah, I mean essentially what we’re talking about biblical principles. What arecore biblical principles that virtually no matter what age you look at in history, what churches you look at. These are the things that we agree on. Why? Because they’re so clearly right in the scriptures. So, I would even talk sometimes about the seven cornerstones of a Biblical Worldview where we’re talking about understanding who God is. Having an orthodox biblical definition of God which by the way most Americans most people who call themselves Christian in America do not have. But be simply that this is the all-knowing all powerful perfect and just creator of the universe who still rules that universe today. Things like understanding that when people are born, they’re born into sin. We are sinners from birth, and there’s only one solution to that sin that would be turning our lives over to Jesus Christ. Confessing that we’re sinners. Asking him to save us from that.

It would be things like recognizing that there is absolute moral truth that that truth is given to us by God who by his very nature is truth. He speaks truth all he can do and accept is truth. So, then when we look at the Bible, the Bible is his word to humanity that conveys truth to us so that we know what it looks like in practice. It’ll be things like as I alluded to before, success. Success is not about money. It’s not about possessions, reputation, fame. It’s about consistent obedience to God. That is what success in this life is. Why? Because if we look at something like purpose and calling in life. Our purpose is to know, love, and serve God with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul and so if that’s why we are on earth, that changes everything about what we’re trying to accomplish, what is success.

So, it’s these kinds of things that we’re looking at. We’re not looking for how many angels are there on the head of a pen. That first of all is not biblical and it doesn’t really matter. We’re trying to focus on the things that really matter and that will help us to be Christ like. The whole objective here of having a Biblical Worldview is for you to be able to think like Jesus. Why? Because the purpose of life is to be able to live like Jesus. We do what we believe. So, we need to think like Jesus before we can live like Jesus but all of those things hinge on having a biblical mindset.

Carl: Okay, follow up question if you don’t mind. I’m curious. How do you go about conducting the research for this? Is it a questionnaire?

George Berna: Yes, we have a national sample of 2000 adults that we randomly choose from across the country. Now, when I talk about our pastoral research, that’s a separate study that we did with a thousand pastors of Christian churches across the country. When I talk about our research among preteen parents, that was a separate study that we did with the parents of children under the age of 13. But in all of these surveys that we do, yes, its survey based and we ask the 54 worldview-oriented questions. I think it’s about another 10 or 12 maybe 14 demographic questions. So, that we can look at different subsets of the population that we’re studying but that that’s how we do it, yes.

Carl: Okay. So, in those questionnaires that have been submitted, is there a space for them to fill in their respective denominations?

George Berna: We ask them that, yes.

Carl: You do ask them that. Okay. So, that informs the statistics that come out of it. Okay, very cool. Earlier, also, if you don’t mind, just one more question if that’s okay. Also again, thank you so much for your time. This has been very eliminating.

George Berna: Oh, this is fun.

Carl: One of the questions that I was curious about earlier you had mentioned how a lot of these young adults or youth individuals aren’t really thinking through a lot of their own worldview. So,if family schools and churches aren’t thinking these world views through, why should we trust family schools, churches, and even schools in shaping the worldview of the youth or especially schools, excuse me?

George Berna: Yeah, it’s a great question and it’s part of the reason why we’re developing these tools to measure these things so that parents or adults in whatever situation don’t have to make assumptions. I mean we have this research showing that most pastors don’t have a biblical worldview. Well, if you think biblical worldview matters. What that means is maybe you should not be attending those churches. So, that means that you can’t make an assumption that simply because the church is of a particular denomination. For instance, we found the majority of Baptist Churches which historically have been the churches that have been most like to say the Bible matters. The Bible is true. You got to learn the Bible. We’re going to teach the Bible.

Well, now we’re finding that a majority of the pastors of Baptist Churches aren’t there anymore.And so, as a consumer of religion if you will, when I’m choosing a church for me or particularly for my children, I cannot assume that because it’s of a particular religious persuasion. That it’s safe for me to go to, that it’s beneficial for family and I to attend. And so yes, we’re trying to create these tools. We’re now using them here at our university. We’re going to start using them with other universities that care about these things. One of the ways by the way that you’ll know that a school is not a biblical worldview university is that they will not use these tools. Because they don’t necessarily want people knowing, yes, we’re a Christian university but we don’t really believe in the Bible or professors don’t teach from a biblical point of view. So, now we’re not going to have our faculty and our staff and our students go through a worldview assessment.

Lance: That’s so powerful. Jonathan, you got one question for the professor. This is your moment.

Jonathan: That would he actually just answered it because I was curious about universities across the country. Because I went to Region University. I personally felt that they did a really good job of incorporating a biblical worldview as well as just into the general the themes and topics of the discussions. But I also recognize that just because a school slaps a Christian name or says that they’re Christian does not mean at all that they adhere to a biblical worldview. So that was curious if you were doing anything to determine across the nation, if these Christian schools actually do adhere to it or if they just have the name Christian on them or not.

George Berna: Yeah, we’ll have a better sense of that by the end of the year because we’re going to start rolling out something called the ACU Worldview Assessment. Which is the same survey that we use with pastors with our national samples of adults across the country with the pre–teen parents. Same questions. Later this year in just a month or two. People will be able to go online and take that same inventory, that same evaluation tool to determine if have a biblical world view. Schools will be able to use it. Churches will be able to use it. Families will be able to use it. So yeah, we’re trying to get that ready to be out in the marketplace.

Right now, we’re still wrestling through a few technology issues to make it useful online for others. But yeah, I agree with you wholeheartedly. It’s going to be so helpful to be able to find out did they get that kind of good housekeeping seal of approval in terms of their worldview.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Lance: Wow and you know what strikes me as being so relevant is your point about beliefs lead to behaviors. And if you think about this people separate religion from politics, but then looked to the extent to which the left has infused their moral worldview into the issue of litigation legislation laws. And almost like the intimidating practices of reinforcing certain views. A lot of that has to do with the biblical worldview regarding man. If man is sinful by nature, then he needs checks and balances. He’s responsible for what he does but a considerable amount of the political philosophy that we’re up against in America is that man is not inherently sinful but man is a victim of oppression because of other people’s choices and behaviors. And that government’s job is to rectify that imbalance in the universe by equity and that policy has to kind of do something to deal with the sin of power being used against the powerless.

So, it’s become like almost a manipulation of ideas in the void of a Christian argument or a biblical worldview. Other ideas come in which are so contradictory to the reality of the engineering of moral nature that it actually produces anarchy rather than order and it’s calculated to keep on doing that if it’s not corrected. So, when we say America needs an awakening for a lot of Christians as a knee jerk over simplified solution to everything is well, we just need God. It’s more important than that and more profound than that. It’s what specifically is it that an awakening produces that can save America, and it has to do with the reorientation of fundamental ideas that shape decisions. Awakening is related to worldview. Isn’t it George?

George Berna: Absolutely and Lance I couldn’t agree with you more and I would also say that we’ve been fooling ourselves into thinking that it’s the world out there that needs an awakening. And I’m yelling as loud as I can that really the first place that needs to be awakened is the church itself. We have been trumpeting a false gospel to our nation for a long time and now that false gospel is bearing fruit. Part of the problem that we’re looking at in our culture is our fault. We’ve got to get our own house in order and then we can go out and share God’s truth with the rest of the culture. We’ve got to get our act together.

Lance: I love it. Now it’s kind of coming full circle for me. So, Mercedes and I are interested in knowing about your book. American Worldview Inventories where your research comes out. How can they get a hold of that book, George?

George Berna: They can get that book and they can get a free copy of all the research that we do. I put all these reports I write on our website for free. Go to “Culturalresearchcenter.com”. The book is we’ve got several books there actually as well as all of these reports. You can sign up and we’ll send you an alert each time a new report comes out. Every couple of weeks, I’m trying to have a new report based on our latest research coming out and hopefully it’ll help to awaken the church

Lance: I think it will. “Culturalresearchcenter.com”. you all need to go sign up and get a hold of the data that it’s there. Get a hold of the American Worldview Inventory. And my take away from this conversation Mercedes is that these key 7-cornerstone beliefs, the orthodox view of God that god is a morally just and a good god that is actively engaged in the affairs of the universe. That Jesus is the sole means of salvation. That the Bible is accurate true relevant that moral truth does exist success is defined as obedience to God and the outcome of that is the flourishing of humanity that life’s purpose is to know God, to serve him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And that human beings by nature are corrupt and fallen and that choices have consequences.

I think those fundamental ideas are probably more what we should be teaching than obsessing with the types of themes that we as evangelicals do on human potential and serving God and being blessed and finding your purpose. I mean, these are like even more fundamental and I wonder to what degree my own audience maybe isn’t even sold on these ideas.

Mercedes: So, here’s what I think thinking through this. For me like when I became a Christian,I had an encounter. Like God I prayed the prayer in the middle of a worship service as like a as a 15, 16-year-old. And the Holy Spirit came into me. I mean in a radical way to I couldn’t deny it. It was there the next day to that feeling. But I knew nothing about who God was. But the encounter was so strong that I walked away from that feeling like I want to know everything there is to know about God. And so, I began to just read the scripture. I mean, the Bible is really straightforward. The Bible is not some big complicated book. I mean, it essentially describes this is who God is. This is who man is and it leaves you with the decision to make. Will you serve God with your life? Is he Christ? Is he the lord of your life?

And if so, then you should know him like you know your best friend. They should know him like you know your spouse or your kids. Like if somebody comes up to you and said, hey, God thinks this about these types of people or God gets mad about this. And if you’ve read the word, then you know what god thinks about those things. So, it’s like it would be like somebody coming up to me and say like Lance really loves mayonnaise. He really likes Hellman’s mayonnaise. And I’d be like, well, if you knew Lance, he likes miracle whip. He doesn’t like actual mayonnaise.

Lance: I’m Pentecostal, I like miracles.

Mercedes: So, that’s what I’m saying though. It’s that the Bible doesn’t need to be big and intimidating and the other thing I want to encourage people too I’m going to just break it down and really make it super. It’s overwhelming sometimes to read the word. What’s crazy to me is you can sit on social media for like two hours and watch videos or YouTubes. But then the minute you open up the Bible and you start reading, you’re like, I’m so tired and like you like pass out. And so, one of the things that I’ve started to do is that I have this app. It’s called “Bible.IS”. And I put it on when I’m driving around in the car and it reads you the Bible. It’s like really fun because they have different voices for different characters and it’s like, Jesus, Jesus, Heal me. Like they do all these fun voices and like crowds and stuff.

I think it’s so great and so like you can consume a gospel in like two or three days. So, I’m just trying to make it applicable because listen, this to George’s point, this needs to start in the church first. And the only other thing I want to mention is we wrote this in our book. You put this in the book. It’s in the first couple chapters. Again, people can’t hang in there through it. It’s not the fun prophetic stuff, but what we put in there is that we are stuck on the church’s built a house for the lord he didn’t ask for. And what did they rediscover when they were rebuilding the house what did they come across to you? You wrote the book with me, what did they come across and they asked Ezra to read?

Lance: Oh, that’s right. They asked for the open book.

Mercedes: The people, the people were so overwhelmed with the fact that they found the book of the law and they said read it for it, Ezra. And so, Ezra began to read it and they rediscovered the law and they begin to weep because they were so incongruent with what god asked them to do and God had done this big huge demonstration. A lot of them rebuild the temple and all these things and then they found the book of the law. And so, that’s when my prayer is that as we have this awakening, we will rediscover the Bible and our love for the Word of God.

Lance: Well and there’s another piece in that which is and the Levites were there to give the plain sense of the meaning. The Bible needs that does need that interpretation. And the Levites interpreted the meaning of it and work with the crowds that they understood the application of what was said. Do we still have George here?

Mercedes: Sorry George.

Lance: Sorry George. We got lost here with our own conversation. He probably, are you still there? Thank you, George. Yeah, I’m sorry about that. We got lost in our own conversation but there’s one verse that I always thought was interesting. It’s in the book of Acts where Paul is with Felix and they’re discussing and it’s interesting what it says. It says, and the reason Paul reason with him regarding faith, self-control and righteousness. This is one of those little lines in the Bible you could easily lose. But what it meant was that to a pagan authority like Felix coming out of the Roman culture. He had his own ideas about virtue and about humanity and about what was courageous or good or righteous.

Paul had to reason with him about self-control, because there’s a limit to what self-control can do in terms of it may help you manage your passions. But what drives your passions is still selfish.So, I would love to have been a fly on the wall to hear Paul talk about righteousness, faith, and self-control because it shows that a good rabbi can engage ideas with a good pagan and be able to converse on those subjects so practically perhaps and come about to some conclusion. And finally, George is it your assessment that millennials and youth are low-hanging fruit for discipleship if we the way we engage them?

George Berna: I believe so. Now, we know that both of our younger generations, millennials and Gen Z. With millennials only 4% have a biblical worldview with Gen Z. It’s about 1.5 to 2%. So, there’s a lot of opportunity there but we’ve got to take a careful look at how we’re approaching this. It’s got to be relational. And one other thing that that I alluded to, I didn’t specify it is that stories are very important in this. Experience matters to people.

Mercedes: Yeah.

George Berna: Particularly in in our kind of a world, our kind of culture and so the more that you can share God’s truth through your personal experiences, your stories, the more impactful that’s going to be.

Lance: That’s a profound takeaway. We’ll end with that. The more that you can engage in the dialogue and then illustrate with the stories, the easier it is for like modern parables for your young mind to get around the meaning of what’s being said. Thank you, George. We’re looking forward to hearing more about you. “Culturalresearchcenter.com” and you want to get a hold of the American Worldview inventory, the data, and I’m sure that and knowing you, there’s tons of information in there we didn’t cover. So, you’ve got probably some insight on discipling processes and stuff. So, we’ll have you back and you’ll be able to tell us more. Thank you, George Berna.

George Berna: Thank you Lance good to be with you. Good to see you too Mercedes.

Mercedes: Thanks George.

Lance: Great research, great resource for the church.

Mercedes: I think I want a hat that says I am the 4% because I’m the 4% man. Because I’m the millennial and I got a biblical worldview so like the 1% of the 4%.

Lance: Yeah, this questionnaire is really, I really I’m glad that George is asking the questions he did. I took a questionnaire once at, it was kind of embarrassing. I met David Green from Hobby Lobby and he was funding someone doing research on biblical worldview and we all took the biblical worldview test and I only got like a 78.

Mercedes: Oh no.

Lance: And I was teaching there. Then I’ll tell you why. And I’m going to let you guys know something as we close this this podcast out. There were two dumb questions in there on taxation.

Mercedes: Watch it with Berna’s point.

Lance: Watch it be Georgia. Watch it be Georgia’s servant. Oh my gosh. It was probably George. But I was, and they said, Lance is only a 78%. I mean I was there teaching Seven Malones. I’m assuming that because it was some cleverly worded thing that had to reveal who really owned that what, it was a biblical concept they said was being violated. It had to do with ownership government taxation and sovereignty and it undercut the biblical idea of, which is which is in the New Testament. It’s a great verse in there where Ananias and Sapphire. Remember when they dropped on dead, it’s a lesson on politics and government and economics. They were asked did you actually remember everybody was selling what they had and presenting it to the apostles as a gift for the church.

Now, these guys sold and kept back part of the proceeds and then acted like they were generously giving. So, they got a prestige in front of everybody else and Peter said, you guys don’t really understand this, do you? The Holy Spirit is in charge of this church. What you’re doing right now in front of everybody is a lie. Did you really sell that for that amount and like the lady goes yeah and boom drops down dead? And Peter said, while it was yours was it not yours to do whatever you wanted to do with it implying by the spirit. That the property you had and the material you had that was in your possession was your possession. It was yours to do whatever you wanted, and when you said that you sold it and you kept back part of the proceeds,it was your freedom to do whatever you wanted. You could have kept back part of it and been honest and said, no, this is half of it. But you lied to the holy spirit.

But the statement was interesting is while it was yet yours it was yours to do what you wanted.Meaning your property and your labor and your prophets are yours. They don’t belong to me or to the church or to the government. They’re your stewardship and you misrepresented your generosity. But that’s an interesting second layer of how the biblical worldview actually works there. But anyway, I think I have a better worldview score now that I know more about how to answer the tax question. But we’ll be back again with the next broadcast, but before you go anywhere, you want to know that in our office right here and in Mercedes Sparks Kitchen and now, in various businessmen’s conference rooms, there is green leafy foliage from 5 or 6different plants in their offices. Because “letusgrow.com”. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what is it?

Mercedes: No, it’s “Lancewallnau.com/garden”.

Lance: “Lancewallnau.com/garden”. That’s where you can get a hold of the and this is basically the without being dependent on outside.

Mercedes: Soil or weather condition.

Lance: Weather conditions or fertilizer or whatever. You can grow your own food substances right there. Green healthy food right in your own house and you’re just you got a whole deciduous forest there in your kitchen now.

Mercedes: I do yeah, and actually I don’t know if you’ve seen the conference room but it’s it a lot of green back there.

Lance: We got a lot of green in the office now folks. You want to check that out? It’s Lancewallnau.com/Garden. Alright, we’ll be seeing you again on the next broadcast. God bless you.

Closing: Did you enjoy this latest episode? Please remember to share it with your friends because the more knowledge you have, the better equipped you are to navigate the world. See you tomorrow.