This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally airing on Sept. 23, 2022. To listen to the program, please click HERE.

Sam Rohrer:                      Today’s Stand in the Gap Today program is our monthly culture update program with Dr. George Barna and the latest breaking research conducted by Arizona Christian University Cultural Research Center, and overseen and analyzed by our guest, Dr. George Barna, now serving as director of research there at the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. My title for today’s program is this, 40%, you heard that right, 40% of Evangelical Pastors Reject Truth. Another sign of the times. Now that’s my title. And we’ll go into further detail on what that means, because it’s significant. In these days of desensitization where it seems like nothing is any longer beyond relief. I mean think about it. We’re in a time when boys can be girls. Murdering innocent babies can be moral. And killing the aged is good economics, as I just heard the other day.

When we know these things, we know we’re in perilous days indeed. But when a nation rewards lawlessness and perverts the law to persecute the law abiding and to protect the lawless, as is being done in our nation today, then we know that we’re in days of prophesied judgment. But when official research confirms that nearly 40% of evangelical pastors do not believe in absolute truth, that nearly two third maintain that human life is not sacred, and 37% say that just having faith is more important than which faith you have, then you know that apostasy has taken root, and God’s judgment can only increase.

Now in such times when accurate research proves that what people think does in fact align with what they do, then the question becomes, What can be done about it? And within the body of this program today, George will identify key findings from two recent major research projects, one with the American people generally, and the other with pastors. And we’re going to conclude with comparing these findings and conclusions with what is required if this nation is ever to see God’s blessing again. And with that, I welcome to the program again, George Barna. George, thanks for being back with me.

George Barna:                  Oh, always good to be with you Sam.

Sam Rohrer:                      George in the past several weeks, you’ve in your team have released two significant survey reports regarding various aspects of American culture. It’s a big undertaking, but it’s my hope that we can actually kind of merge and combine the essential findings of both, and walk away with a coordinated analysis of our culture, both people and pastors, and then address the solution revolving around the heart of your research, and the heart of our communication here on Stand in the Gap radio on TV. And that is a biblical world view. So let’s start with this George. Can you start by identifying and just laying out the two research projects that you did? Identify the purpose, the objective for each, and then in the next segment, then we’ll go further into the significant findings and really answer the question, What have we learned from it? But if you could, lay out what you did first of all.

George Barna:                  Well sure. The first of the research projects has to do with worldview. And as you know, at the Cultural Research Center, that’s our primary focus. So every year we’re doing different aspects of national research related to worldview. We started back in 2020, looking at the incidents of biblical worldview across the nation. Last year in 2021, we looked at what are the competing worldviews. How popular are they? How widely held are they? And this year we did two studies, one with parents of children under 13, looking at the worldview of those parents, because parents have the primary responsibility to raise their children to be disciples of Jesus. And having a biblical worldview is a critical part of that. We wanted to know how many parents have a biblical worldview.

And then the project that we’re going to talk about today was a big national survey we did among a representative sample of pastors of Christian churches across the country. And that’s important because of course, pastors are responsible for equipping those parents to raise their children to be disciples of Jesus, and to guide the parents and all other adults in understanding and living in harmony with God’s principles. So today we’ll talk about that survey of pastors regarding their worldview. You can’t give what you don’t have. So we need to know what they have. And of course their teaching and the accountability systems they have are linked to their central beliefs.

The second project has to do with the core values of the adult population across the entire United States. So we looked at 48 different values that people might choose to embrace as a core value, something that defines who they are, how they want to be known the way they want to live, the things that they would invest themselves in. And so we measured it by looking at what are the things that people are willing to die to protect, the things that they will fight to protect, the things that they’ll sacrifice, precious resources to preserve. And those were the things that emerged as the core values of Americans. It helps us to understand what really matters to the people in our nation. And it helps us to begin to put together a definition of who Americans are.

And of course, if you’re thinking, “Well, that sounds a lot like some of what we talk about related to worldview,” that’s because our values are really tightly linked to our worldview. These two things have a strong correlation. And so we’ve looked at worldview. Now we’re looking at values. And all of that will help us to better understand. All right, who are we as a people? What are we really willing to invest ourselves in as Americans? And what does that mean for the country moving forward, as well as the church itself?

Sam Rohrer:                      Okay. George that’s great. Let me go back to just clarify here. In the sampling that you did in the parents, again, what you share in the next two segments, are those self-identified Christian parents, or are they just a cross section of the American public?

George Barna:                  Yeah, if we’re talking about the second of those studies where we looked at values, that was not among parents, that was among all adults. So it includes the 30% who currently have children under the age of 18. But it also includes the other 70% of adults who do not have children under the age of 18 living in their home.

Sam Rohrer:                      And then clarification on the pastors on that survey, because you’ve done a lot of work over the years with pastors, this particular group of pastors surveyed, again, clarify the sampling, who were they again?

George Barna:                  Well, this was a representative sampling of the pastors of all churches that consider themselves to be Christian. So it’s a combination of Protestant churches, Catholic churches, Orthodox churches. Of course the vast, vast majority of the churches would be Protestant [inaudible 00:07:13] 1% of the churches in our country are Orthodox Christian. You’ve got about 20,000 Catholic churches out of about 340,000 total Christian churches in the country, so that’s less than 10% of the churches. So more than nine out of 10 of the churches that we spoke to are Protestant churches.

Sam Rohrer:                      Okay, excellent. Ladies and gentlemen, you get an idea of where we’re going. It’s always important to clarify whenever you hear any research results, who you’re talking to, the purpose, the goals. We have that now. When we come back, we’re going to begin to walk into this process of what did we learn when we talked to George, the big bars in the chart, the big things that really stood out about the people, about the pastors. And then we’ll ultimately get into what’s it mean.

Welcome back. And this is our theme today, 40% of evangelical pastors reject truth. All right, now George Barna is my guest today, and we’re talking about findings from two research reports we’re kind of combining together, and we’re going to get into that. And my focus in this segment is, what did we learn from it? But this is a little bit of a setup.

In scripture, when I look through scripture, God admonishes, all wise people to seek wisdom, to pursue knowledge, and the book of Proverbs is full of that, and to choose to fear God and keep his commandments. That’s all through the Old Testament, but really particularly Ecclesiastes 12:13, the whole duty man, “fear God and keep his commandments.” But when this is done, there’s a result. It leads to blessing and earthly prosperity. Deuteronomy 28, lays this out very clearly. But more importantly, this choice, fear God and keep his commandments, leads to life eternal being found only as we know in Jesus Christ, who is the life, the truth and the only way. But there are those in scripture that we learn about who learn but never learned. And the apostle Paul talked to us about them. He wrote in 2 Timothy 3:7, he says there are always people out there who are, he says, “ever learning, yet never able to come to the knowledge of the truth,” because he said they have a form of godliness, but they deny the power and the authority of God.

We don’t want to be among that number. And I know if you’re listening to me now, you don’t want to be among that number. We want to learn. And then heed. So George, if you could identify the big bars so to speak, on the chart, the most significant findings perhaps, what we learned in the research of the American people. And then we’ll go to what we learned about the pastors, but just go where you want on that, and just profile what we learned of significance as you studied the people.

George Barna:                  Okay. Well, if we look at that study on values that we did with [inaudible 00:10:09], the first thing we learned is that by far the most important value to most Americans is family. 80% of people that we interviewed said that they would die, they would fight to protect, they would sacrifice resources to preserve family. There was nothing that was close to that. And so we can begin to understand that family, as we know God ordained it, he designed it. It’s the key structure for our life, so I don’t think it’s by accident that most people still relate to family. And it becomes a primary filter for how we understand and move about through our lives. We want to invest in things that will support our family, so that was one of the big takeaways from that study.

A second one, is that contrary to what we hear in so much of the mainstream media, Americans have a lot in common that they believe, the things that they value in life. We are not a completely and hopelessly divided nation, as we’re often told, not only by the media, but by many political leaders. What we find is that that narrative is simply wrong. We have the potential for great unity, based on a series of common values that we share. And what we really need in America are people who, if they’re going to lead, they’re going to lead reflecting our values, and our pursuit of those values. They need to share those values as well. Rather than trying to change us, and change our values, and tell us that our values are wrong, and they know better, the American people could lead the way. We need leaders who reflect our values.

The third thing that comes out of that study is that several of the values that are among that handful of core values in America today are residual values from colonial America. In other words, a few years ago when David Barton and I were studying colonial America and contemporary American and comparing them, one of the things I did was I went back through a lot of the documentation for early America, to try to understand what were the values of early Americans. And in identifying those, and then looking at what we came up with in this survey, we found that there are at least five values that we share with our forefathers from the early days of America. And to me, what that says is that’s really part of our national DNA, and we dare not turn our backs on that and forget it.

I think one of the other things we take away as a big thought from this survey, is that many of the, I don’t know what you what to call them, but maybe the progressive, elite values that are being pushed on us these days, are being rejected by Americans. Things like being able to live without any kind of moral boundaries, having to live with strong government making a lot of choices for us, the whole cancel culture idea, eliminating hierarchies and whatnot, that doesn’t work. Not allowing people to own property, no, most Americans say that’s a vital part of America. So we’re rejecting a lot of those things that the elites are telling us.

Now, I know time is short, so let me move to the pastor’s research as well. And some of the things that we discovered from that study for instance, would be that again, by a long shot, it was pastors of non-denominational and independent Christian churches who are most likely to have a biblical worldview, far more likely than we found with evangelical churches, with mainline churches, Catholic churches, holiness churches, traditionally black churches. All of those were far behind what we saw among the pastors of the non-denominational churches.

A second big idea that came out of that research is that this is an era where apparently the pastors of evangelical churches are questioning many of the historical, traditional, biblical foundations of the Christian faith, regarding matters of truth, regarding matters of the Trinity, regarding our understanding and importance of life. All of these kinds of things, they’re questioning.

And that leads to a third big thought that comes out of that research, which is that we found that large segments of pastors are abandoning historical truths and principles of Christianity. Again, things like whether or not human life is sacred, whether or not you’re saved by grace alone, whether or not Christianity is the one true faith, or even if there is just one true faith, that the Bible is God’s truth, and it can be relied upon because it’s accurate, it’s relevant, it’s trustworthy. Disbelieving that the holy spirit is real, suggesting instead that the holy spirit is just a symbol. Not believing that the wealth that we manage here on earth is given to us by God for his purposes, but thinking instead that no, no, no, we earned that, we deserve that, we ought to be able to do whatever we want with that.

And then a final thought I’ll give you is that, we also found from the pastor’s research that senior or lead pastors in churches are most likely to have a biblical world view, 41% of them will. Much smaller percentages of all the other pastors on staff. So churches across the country, across the nominations, much smaller numbers have a biblical worldview. Teaching pastors, only one out of four of them. Children’s and youth pastors, probably the most important pastors in our churches, because they’re the one shaping the worldview of the next generation of Christians and leaders of the culture, only 12% of them having a biblical worldview. Executive pastors, the ones overseeing all the structure, the operations, the business activities of the church, only 4% with a biblical worldview. So those are very significant outcomes that tell us a lot about the state of the church, why our culture is why it is, and why the culture is influencing the church, more than the church at large is influencing the culture.

Sam Rohrer:                      Okay. Wow. That is a fantastic overview. Let me follow up with just one clarifying question, since we’re kind of looking at both these, people and the pastors. Now I know we talked about they’re not from the same category, but where there were parents who identified themselves as Christians, and then obviously the pastors were all identifying themselves, regardless of their position, were they basically reflecting what each other thought? [inaudible 00:17:01]

George Barna:                  Yes and no. Yeah. I mean, another way of maybe responding to that is to suggest churches aren’t really apparently having very much influence on the thinking and the lifestyles of the people who go to their churches. And so what all of this research, when we put this together with some of the other things that we’re looking at, it suggests that we need to go back and reevaluate. How is discipleship actually working in American culture today? Because the model that may have been effective 70, 80, 90, 100, 200 years ago in American culture at those times, is certainly not being effective at shaping the minds and hearts and souls of the American people today.

I’m not saying that the Bible isn’t effective in doing that, what I’m saying is that we’re not being very effective at getting Americans to understand what the Bible teaches us about how God wants us to thrive on earth what the core principles are that we need to embrace, what the consequences are for rejecting God’s truths and principles. Those things, Americans aren’t buying into. Partly it’s because our churches aren’t talking clearly about them, if at all. And partly it’s because of the approaches that we’re taking to try to help people to understand these principles, and to embrace them, and grow through them.

Sam Rohrer:                      Okay. George, we’re just about it to break. Do you have those five principles that came out of colonial thought, that are still a part of our culture that you could give us when I come back?

George Barna:                  Yeah. [inaudible 00:18:35]

Sam Rohrer:                      Okay. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, stay with us. When we come back, I’m going to shift with George into now, these are the things that we’ve learned from the report, but you get into the analysis. Now, what does it mean? Right? And we’re going to talk about that in the next segment. But I am going to ask George, just to give us quickly those five areas where he said there was evidence ingrained, kind of like into our DNA, that were trackable back to the colonial days. I’m interested in what those are. I’m going to ask him to share them [inaudible 00:19:05] first, and then we’ll move into what does all this mean.

Well, before I go back with George, let me just share briefly two comments that we’ve gotten from listeners, because it’s this type of program today that we’re doing, that generates these kinds of responses. Here’s one from Barb. She said this, “Thank you all for what you do to spread valuable, believable information.” She said, “your encouragement, prayer, God’s messages through Bible passages are so important in these days of dishonest media.” That’s a very good one. All of the comments are good, but that one just really jumped out.

And here’s another one. This one’s from Jim. Jim said this, “I so thoroughly enjoy your program. I seldom ever miss it.” Then he said, “I have no email.” He said … So anyways, he goes on, gives us some other information about himself. But those kind of comments are important for us to hear ladies and gentlemen, because it helps us to know, I mean, we’re going to continue to communicate the truth as the scripture lays it out, just like what pastors and up pulpit ought to do. But we’re convinced that there are many across this country who do want to know the truth. And we’re talking about today, learning. They really generally want to learn, with the intent to then obey and put into practice what God says. And that is our whole goal. That’s discipleship. And that’s why we’re talking [inaudible 00:20:29] George just a little bit ago.

So George, I want to go back to you, before we get into what’s it mean from reports and the research you’ve just done, you referenced in that last one, in what we learned, that there were five I think you said, values that were identifiable, all the way back to colonial days, that are still showing up in the research you just did, which you used the phraseology, which means it’s kind of embedded within our cultural DNA. Would you mind sharing those?

George Barna:                  Yeah. Thankfully, one of those was family. That was a big deal back then. It’s still a big deal now. Financial cautiousness, trying to be thrifty, trying to be responsible with our money and other resources. Hard work, the willingness to work hard to earn things. Humility and moderation, so those were the five that we saw in common across more than 250 years of history in this country.

Sam Rohrer:                      Okay. Those are significant. And I think that’ll come up in probably what you say about what it means. But those who are listening to me, as I referred to before the apostle Paul said there were some like the Pharisees who were ever learning, but they never came to the knowledge of the truth. Okay. Now that’s a big issue. We don’t want to be in that category. But Jesus also told those very people he was talking about, the Pharisees. As a matter of fact, he said in Matthew 16, he said, “Oh, you hypocrites, you know how to interpret,” or discern, or to analyze or bring analysis to, however you want to put it, “the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret or discern the signs of the times.” And of course, what he’s talking about was that they couldn’t recognize the truth, Jesus Christ, who was standing right in front of them.

And when it comes to research like we’re talking about today, the same mentality has to be brought into it. We don’t want to make this research mean whatever you want it to mean. It’s got to mean what it means, or otherwise it’s not honest. So George you’ve been involved in this your whole life. You have produced the most longstanding, in my opinion, and valuable cultural research of the attitudes of the American people, the American church in particular of anybody who’s out there. So honesty and integrity in the process is key, if we’re going to allow the research to drive our decisions, therefore wise decisions, versus using research as most of what we see out there, used to prove some assumption that somebody’s already previously made. That’s dishonest. That’s not where we want to go.

But [inaudible 00:23:02] question here, before we get into what it means, looking at the people and the values we just talked about as an example, what does this research suggest [inaudible 00:23:12] common values such as support for family and so forth, what does that really mean? Now you referenced potential benefit of unity, but beyond that to a nation as a whole, a nation wanting God’s blessing to return, what does that mean? What’s the application of that?

George Barna:                  Yeah. I think there’s several things that we could consider here Sam. One of those would be I’d encourage people to not have any shame or embarrassment or fear or any other kind of negative emotion when it comes to standing up for family. Oftentimes we’ll see that people suddenly get quiet when there’s political conflict, over family related issues. Well, that’s not right. I mean, we all believe that family is important. So yeah, we may disagree sometimes on definitions of it, or what needs to be done about certain conditions, but it’s important to almost all Americans. And so it’s something that we have to be willing to discuss. We have to accept it also as part of God’s central structure for our lives. So it’s not surprising that we all share that in common.

I think a second thing that values research suggests to us is that maybe it’s time for a new way for us to consider how we choose our political leaders. That instead of looking for leaders who are speaking about issues in a particular manner, or are suggesting particular solutions, we know that there’s a lot of research out there showing that we don’t have much confidence in our political leaders. We think they’re corrupt. We think they’re not trustworthy. We feel that we’ve been burned by many of them in the past and are continuing to be burned by them today. And so maybe part of the problem is that we’re choosing the wrong leaders, because we’re looking for the wrong things. What would happen instead if we said, “Now, I’m not going to listen so much to what they say about the issues, I want to know who they are. I want to know what their values are, because the kinds of policies they’re going to recommend, the types of bills that they’re going to vote for, the kinds of programs that they’re going to seek to fund, are going to flow from their values.”

And that’s part of the problem with the people that we have in office oftentimes these days, is that their values are so diametrically opposed to ours, that they’re pushing for things we don’t want. But they’re in office. We almost feel like, “Gee, there’s nothing we can do.” Maybe what we need to do is be looking for different types of leaders, based on different indicators. But I think also related to that then, there’s a third way of looking at that, at this research, and that’s maybe there’s a different way of even evaluating the key issues. That what we do is we use the family, which matters so much to us, so deeply to most Americans, we use that as a filter for looking at what would a potential law or bill or policy or program do to our family. Use that to get a grip on whether or not it’s good or bad for the nation and for us.

But a fourth thing we might think about is that it’s important right now, right now, because we’ve got an election coming up in just a few weeks, we’ve got to reject the arguments of those who are dividing Americans. And recognize that, you know what, we’ve got so much in common as a nation. We can’t allow those who are intent upon dividing us for their own political game, when really the future, the health and wellbeing of the nation and its people is at stake. Strength comes from unity. And that unity can be built upon our shared vision and values. We need good leaders who are going to reflect that vision and those values. But we found in this research that Americans want stability more than constant change. And there’s a whole segment of leaders running for office and currently in office who simply want to keep changing everything, changing everything. People are saying, no, no, no, no, no, build something strong and stable for us.

Sam Rohrer:                      Okay, all right. That moves us right now. The next couple minutes here left in the segment, to the pastors. You shared some of what we learned, significant, wow, what we learned. Okay, what’s the application for this? What does it mean for our nation, and a return to a position of God’s blessing on this nation?

George Barna:                  Well, number one, we really are in a place where we can’t trust labels related to churches and pastors and schools anymore. A lot of our assumptions I think, are being proven wrong by this research. And so we really have to take greater responsibility as individuals to do our due diligence, to do our homework about what is it that a pastor believes. What is it that a church is trying to facilitate, theologically, behaviorally, culturally? We cannot assume that a pastor is a spiritual leader worth following, simply because of the credentials they have, a seminary degree, a denominational label, maybe past experience. That may be more misleading than helpful, in terms of understanding what’s going on. So in the same way that we evaluate people who we want to be our friends, we’re going to have to do that with our spiritual leaders as well. Political leaders, certainly business leaders, community leaders, but certainly with our pastors and church leaders as well.

That’s part of our responsibility. I think one of the big takeaways here is, you are responsible for the quality of your spiritual life. It’s not up to your church. It’s not up to your pastor. It’s up to you. And you need to align yourself with people who are aligned with God’s word, and are only going to be teaching you that. We dare not automatically trust by the way, the spiritual development of our children, of all people, these are the most important human beings that we’ve got to be protecting spiritually, we cannot assume that simply dropping them off at a church that has a particular label, or it’s big, or it has great facilities, or it has a fun program. That has nothing to do with whether or not they’re going to disciple our children to develop a biblical worldview and to live the council [inaudible 00:29:42] of the Lord.

Sam Rohrer:                      Remember ladies and gentlemen, what George just said. I’ll put it in this perspective. When we stand before the Lord, which ultimately we all will, none of us are going to be able to say, “Well, I raised my kids this way because somebody down the road told me, or it was the teacher’s fault, or it was the pastor’s fault, or was the politician’s fault.” Nothing like that will work before God. It’s up to us. We will give an account for ourselves. That’s what George is saying. That is a practical take away.

Well, as we summarize this program today, I know we’ve shared a lot of information. We’ve tried to take a vast amount of research, condense it, give the highlights. And that’s been my pleasure to have George Barna here with us again today, to actually highlight from his perspective in laying out the research and analyzing it in the application form, to how we can take and use it. Now at the end of the day, whether it’s the stated views of the people we’ve heard today toward family. And part of that research had to do with what they thought about happiness, and justice, and freedom, and honor, and other tested values, and some of those were shared, or the views of pastors, and what they thought, and think about truth, or Jesus Christ, or salvation, or eternal life, morality, life or gender, as an example.

The same situation applies now as it did in the Pharisees of old, and they shared that passage. See, they could see the sky. It was obvious to everybody. But they couldn’t recognize truth within what they saw, because they saw standing right in front of them, someone who they could touch, the incarnate son of God, Yeshu, Messiah, Jesus Christ. He was standing there right in front of them, and yet they could not see the truth. And because they could not see the truth, they could not receive the truth. And when they did not receive the truth, they rejected the truth.

Now they had a perspective of life. It was a perspective, but it was a wrong perspective and it led them to reject the Messiah, and they went to hell. That’s what scripture says. That’s what Jesus Christ himself said. See, now in our [inaudible 00:31:52] to this. Only a biblical worldview can lead anyone to recognize truth within what we see, which then leads to life and Liberty and freedom. And in the context of our nation, a nation blessed of God. So George, in the context, in light of all of that, for the sake of where do we go from here, could I ask you here, as we talk about biblical worldview, and I want to end on this theme, perhaps give you some rapid fire questions here, but first, if you could briefly define, just so everybody knows, what is meant by biblical worldview? And you can’t go into super detail obviously, but when you’re measuring people’s values, it’s within the context of biblical worldview. Define that for us, please.

George Barna:                  And just remind everyone, that everybody has a worldview. It begins developing at 15 to 18 months of age, pretty much fully formed by the age of 13. You need it to get through the day. And that’s because a worldview is the intellectual, emotional and moral lens through which we experience and understand and interpret and respond to reality. So that filter that we have that worldview filter leads to every decision that we make every moment of every day. When we talk about a biblical worldview, that means that that filter that we have is based upon biblical foundations, biblical principles, where every decision we make is going to be made in harmony with God’s word of his truths. Everything that we evaluate and respond to is done in light of biblical teaching. And so a biblical worldview really is consistently responding to the world in harmony with biblical principles, our beliefs and behaviors.

Sam Rohrer:                      Okay. Excellent. All right now ladies and gentlemen, George’s referenced it. We’ve talked about it before. A biblical worldview in essence was embraced by our founders. They laid down the precepts for this nation based on principles, right out of the word of God. I’ve taken, and we’ve put these together, we’ve got 11 principles for national renewal, a return to God journey guide. You can find it on Amazon or by going to our website. And we’re going to have a book that’s going to be coming out shortly that will take and put these all together in a form that will allow people to look back to what God used to bless a biblical worldview framework, and then what frankly is necessary for today.

And George you’ve graciously gone and linked some of your key research to these basic principles. And they’re going to be reflected in this book, and what’s in these 11 principles. But that being set, we’ll talk more about that later, if you could, I’d like to ask you some rapid fire questions here, to kind of summarize this, to help people frame in their own mind, the application of biblical worldview. Here’s my first question. What is the level of biblical worldview in our nation now, as you have most recently measured it?

George Barna:                  Percent among all adults, if we look just at people who call themselves Christians, consider themselves Christians, it’s 9%. If we look at those people who theologically could be described as born again, Christians believing that their salvation is based solely on confessing their sins and embracing Christ their savior, it’s only 19%. Among parents, it’s 2%. Among pastors of Christian churches, 37%.

Sam Rohrer:                      Wow. Okay. If we have time, we’ll follow up on it. Let’s go back here in application [inaudible 00:35:20]. If left unchanged, is there a sufficient number of people and leaders in our country who hold a biblical worldview, which we know is necessary for justice and all of the things underpinning our representative republic to happen, are there enough people in place knowing all these things who are able to make these types of choices and policies that would once again, God to bless our nation as he did in the past? I’m saying this, if left unchanged from what you said, is there a sufficient number of people here to actually do what’s necessary?

George Barna:                  Oddly enough, the answer is yes. And that’s because God never waits until he has a majority to do great work in a culture. Scripturally, what we read about is he consistently uses just a remnant of people who [inaudible 00:36:08] people with a biblical worldview represent that remnant. So yes, there are enough of those to be salt and light in this decaying culture. But that group has to be intentional, and strategic, and consistent, and has to have a sense of urgency about this.

Sam Rohrer:                      Okay. And that’s what you were talking about in the last segment. Individuals have got to step forward. Okay. Let me go to the next question I have here. Looking at the pastors now. The research indicates, and my observation is this also, that there’s a greater, put it this way, rush to apostasy by American pulpits, than there is a rush to repentance by the pulpits. So that being the case, our politicians, they’ve jumped off of the ledge of biblical truth. The pastors are going the wrong direction. Is there any entity within our culture capable of leading the people back to God?

George Barna:                  It’s interesting. We found that the big value in America is family. And I think that we need to look at the family of faith in America, those people and those groups that truly are beholden to God’s word as truth, and trying to live it out. So I would say there’s no individual, there’s no one group or industry that we can turn to. But when we look at the combined efforts of families who love Jesus, Christian schools and universities that are teaching the Bible straight from God’s word, not adulterating it. When we look at the churches that really love Christ and are teaching his word straight out, parachurch ministries, Christian media, such as Stand in the Gap Today, all of those groups working together can have tremendous influence. Working alone, maybe not so much. But because we have that common desire to know, love, and serve God with all our heart, mind, strength and soul, as we are committed to doing that together, we can see great things happen.

Sam Rohrer:                      Okay. 20 seconds left here approximately. Biblical worldview is all important in defining what we mean by family, or faith, or life, in the fact that there’s a majority of people who say they favor the family. Are there enough of them who actually understand the family to be interpreted as God interprets them to make that strength and strong?

George Barna:                  I think it’s possible in a country like ours to build unity without everybody rallying around biblical truth. I don’t think it’s possible to see lives transformed in the way that God wants [inaudible 00:38:39] without that being at the heart [inaudible 00:38:40].

Sam Rohrer:                      Okay. That’s an excellent answer to a hard question. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us today. George Barna, wonderful. God bless you brother for this information, and for what you have shared. And ladies and gentlemen, take this information, listen to it again, apply it. You can make a difference, if you’re part of the remnant, you are the solution.