This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program that originally aired on 3/3/23.  To listen to the program, please click HERE.

Isaac Crockett:

Welcome to today’s program on this Friday edition. I’m Isaac Crockett and my co-host today is the regular host of this program, the Honorable Sam Rohrer, the President of the American Pastors Network. And Sam and I have a special guest on today that in many ways is part of this program a lot of times because of the connection to Dr. George Barna.

And today, we have the President of Arizona Christian University. That name is familiar to a lot of you because you hear a lot of information from Dr. Barna about the Cultural Research Center, which is part of Arizona Christian University. So, we have Dr. Len Munsil.

And Dr. Len Munsil and his wife, Dr. Tracy Munsil are at Arizona Christian University and started the Cultural Research Center. So, it is an honor to have him on. Dr. Munsil, thank you so much for working your schedule to be on with us. We’re excited about this program today.

Len Munsil:

Well, thanks so much Isaac and Sam. It’s great to be with you guys. Appreciate all the incredible work that you do spreading the word about the need for a biblical worldview in our country.

Isaac Crockett:

Well, and you brought up biblical worldview, and that is something that our programs stand in the gap, that is what we do. We talk about worldview and teach and show the biblical worldview what the bible says about different things.

And one of the topics that we talk about a lot is Christian education, the responsibility to train up our children, to disciple our children so that we produce more godly offspring and we want to evangelize the entire world, but we also want to evangelize our families.

And so, today, we want to talk about something we talk about a lot on here, Christian education, but we want to look at the collegiate level and we want to talk to you about woke colleges, specifically about woke Christian colleges. But to get started and for you to talk to us about what you’re doing at Arizona Christian University, you’ve been there for over a decade.

The school there has been around, I’m looking at my notes here, but I think it’s about 60 years, you can correct me. But I would just love to hear from you because you have a background. It reminds me a little bit of our host, Sam Rohrer here.

But your background is as a public speaker with preaching, writing things, a journalist, a constitutional attorney, as well as a husband, a father, a homeschool parent, and just lots of other roles. Now, a grandfather of 18 children I think just within the last few days.

So, I would just like to ask you, you’re a constitutional attorney and have so many things you’ve been involved with. What led you into the field of education particularly taking on the role college president of Arizona Christian University?

Len Munsil:

Well, that’s a great question. I sometimes ask myself that and sometimes ask God that. But one of the things I’ve learned in walking with God for decades is play the position. What God calls you to do, you do in and you trust him with it. The irony for me, my wife, you mentioned Dr. Tracy Munsil has her PhD in political theory and she developed a love for teaching when she was home educating our kids.

And she’s a true academic and I’m really not. I’m an activist. I couldn’t wait to get out of school so I could go do stuff. And so, I had a career. I founded Arizona’s Family Policy Council, the Center for Arizona Policy, led it for a decade. Prior to that, I’d served as an attorney, a young attorney.

I worked for a guy named Alan Sears who went on to found ADF and was involved in the fight against pornography with Ed Meese, the former Attorney General of the United States.

And so, I came into this role having 25 years of experience on the front lines of our cultural battles as an activist for the sanctity of life and marriage between a man and a woman and religious freedom, religious liberty, parental rights, all those things is what I’d spent my career focusing on.

And yet, I served on the board of a little bible college that was then called Southwestern College and had its trials and travails. And somehow in the midst of that, ended up being asked to step in as an interim president. And I told him, I don’t want to do this forever, but I want to do it long enough that we can set a new trajectory for the university.

And so, I committed two years to it as an interim, and that was over 12 years ago now. So, you can see how that went. But God is amazing. He’s shown up and taken really a little bible college to a place that none of us could have anticipated of… you talk about having George Barna with us, but just as the growth that we’ve had as a Christian liberal arts university.

And really now our tagline today is we’re a premiere biblical worldview university. That is what we are about as an institution. And so, I’ve seen it in families close to us and the effect of the four years of college on young people, even those that have been raised in the church, that have been homeschooled, that have had biblical truth poured into them.

The number of those kids that go off to secular institutions, and sadly even some Christian colleges that have gone woke and either lose their faith or become progressive Christians, which my description of progressive Christians is they’re progressive out of the church, they’re progressing out of faith. And so, that just seems to happen over and over and over again. And at ACU, we’re trying to counteract that.

Sam Rohrer:

Len, you’re doing a great job. It’s a real privilege to have you on. I wanted to ask another question to follow up what you’re talking about because your background of mind, we do have a lot of similarities, both understand education, but the secular world understands education.

College is everywhere, but we know there’s a huge difference. So, when it comes to Christian education, let me just ask you to define that. What is Christian education and what does Christian college education say to you? How do you define that? I mean, it might be obvious to people, but I’d like to hear your definition of that.

Len Munsil:

Well, it’s not necessarily obvious, and I guess I would define it as education that not only understands and embraces the truths of scripture incorporating them that because these are true things and they affect every academic discipline.

But not only teaches those teaches consistently with biblical truth and incorporates biblical truth into every subject matter, but also is involved in the world of discipleship, of holding students accountable to grow in their faith and in their character consistently with biblical truth.

So, what we do at Arizona Christian University is all encompassing. It doesn’t end when you leave the classroom. It certainly occurs in the classroom. But the entire community at ACU is filled with believers in Christ and from our custodial staff to our security team.

Everybody who works here aligns with our statement of faith and our core commitments and is really committed to investing in the lives of the young men and women who come here and being involved in part of the discipleship. So, it’s an entire community dedicated to that purpose.

But one of the other things I would say our mission is to educate Christians. I don’t have any interest in giving a great education to students that are going to leave here and go out and fight against Christian values and the culture. So, we are a covenantal school and it’s a shrinking number of Christian colleges that hold the line on admissions to where we admit kids that follow Christ.

Isaac Crockett:

That is wonderful because that’s how discipleship works. You can’t disciple somebody who’s not a follower. And so, biblical truth in discipleship if all so-called Christian Colleges did that, what a difference that would make. We want to talk about the difference though between them.

We’re going to take a quick time out and we’ll be back, talk about woke colleges, including woke Christian colleges.

 

 

Isaac Crockett:

 

Welcome back to the program. Sam Rohrer and myself are talking with Dr. Len Munsil from Arizona Christian University.

And today, we’re looking at… we want to get into colleges, woke secular colleges, and then we want to get into even unfortunately schools that used to be Christian and maybe have Christian in their name. There are many woke Christian schools or woke Christian universities, and we want to talk about that on the program.

Before I go any further though, I want to turn things over to our program producer, Tim Schneider, to hear some of the things, some of the offers going on at Stand in the Gap media and the American Pastors Network behind the scenes. And you serve our country in the military and retired from that.

But you also have been to several different colleges, have multiple collegiate and postgraduate degrees, and you’ve studied in both secular and Christian and so-called Christian universities. So, I’m sure this program hits right home to things that you’ve seen as well. But could you go ahead and talk to us about some of the things going on at our ministries?

Tim Schneider:

Yes, certainly, Isaac. I have had a lot of experience between secular and non-Christian colleges, and so I definitely understand what’s being discussed today. We have two great websites. I want to let you know about them, americanpastorsnetwork.net and standinthegapmedia.org, please go and check them out.

At americanpastorsnetwork.net, you can sign up for our e-newsletter, we highly encourage you to, you can find our information about what’s happening here at the American Pastors Network. So, please consider going to americanpastorsnetwork.net and signing up for that e-newsletter.

Also, do you find yourself ever too busy to listen to the whole Stand in the Gap Today show? We are on an hour, but we have a lot of people with busy schedules, so you may not have an hour to be able to do that.

Well, did you know that we have shorter audio segments of somewhere between two and 11 minutes covering various topics discussed on our Stand in the Gap today radio show, we call these podcast Q&As, and these are podcasts that are good for listeners who desire to hear a short segment on a certain topic.

We have lots of different things we discuss on our podcast Q&As, Islam, finances, the Constitution, cultural issues, biblical worldview, lots of stuff there for our podcast Q&As. If you find something you like, you can go and find a whole entire show on our archives.

But check out our podcast Q&As on our app and at our website, standinthegapmedia.org. Also, if you are on a streaming platform, we’re on all the major streaming platforms, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, tune in Spotify, iHeartRadio.

So, if you are on those certain streaming platforms, please sign up to get our podcast downloaded to your smart device every time a new podcast is loaded. And additionally, if you’re a subscriber to one of these podcasts, please make sure you rate us, ratings will allow other like-minded individuals to find us as they search for podcasts.

It’s a funny thing called an algorithm, and it certainly has something to do with being able to find us. So, one thing that you may not know is that I actually lived down in Arizona for a year. And my first duty station in the Air Force was down in Tucson, Arizona.

So, I can attest probably as Dr. Munsil can attest that the weather out there is fantastic and that your children should certainly consider going to Arizona Christian University. So, back to you, Isaac.

Isaac Crockett:

All right. And that was free commercial there, but not too long ago, it wasn’t the last interview we had with Keith Getty, but I think maybe the interview before that, and I don’t remember if it was a year ago already, but they had sent us their latest album and one of the songs was called Pass the Promise.

And the lyrics of the song, and I won’t sing the song, you should look it up on YouTube if you want to listen to it, but it’s this idea of past the promises to your sons and daughters, and it’s quite a simple concept.

But as parents, and not just parents and grandparents, but everyone who is a believer, everyone who has a Christian, a biblical worldview, our goal is to reproduce that worldview in others, whether it be our own family members, our extended family, people in our church, people in our community that we get to talk to them, to disciple them.

Dr. Munsil was talking about the goal of their Arizona Christian universities, every Christian school should be biblical truth and discipleship of Christians. And so, we talk about that a lot on this program. And I think a lot of parents focus on trying to get into their children and teach them from the time they’re little all the way up through the time they’re teenagers.

But sometimes, then they get ready to go off to college and it’s like, “Okay, now, what college can I send them to, where they get the best degree, where they can make the most money?” And so, they don’t even consider maybe a Christian education.

So, Dr. Munsil, I’d like to ask you, can you explain to parents why is it important not to think, okay, my child is done with high school, maybe they’ve even given them a Christian education up until then.

Now, they’re ready to go off to college, I’m going to send them to a secular college to learn how to make a living in the “secular world.” Why should they stop thinking that way if I could say it like that, what would you tell parents who maybe say that?

Len Munsil:

Well, I would say first and foremost that the college years are incredibly formative. And not just setting you up for your future career, but spiritually. And not just spiritually, but in terms of your family, your future family circumstances. We have so many weddings that come out of this place and often while students are still undergraduates, but often after they graduate.

But the reality is they’re just incredibly critical years. We all know people. We all know families that poured into their kids these truths from scripture. And the hardest thing as a parent that you realize at some point, sometimes it takes us longer than other others to realize, that the same God that gave us free will gives it to our children.

And so, ultimately, they have to choose whether they’re going to believe and follow the things that we’ve been pouring into them. But I will tell you, I have seen over and over again families that have done everything they can to give their children biblical truth and an understanding of God’s word.

And even kids that have professed faith that they go off into these incredibly formative years at 17 or 18 years old and they come back at 21 or 22 if they go particularly to a secular institution, but like I said, even some historically Christian colleges.

And they don’t recognize their children, they don’t recognize how they talk, what they believe, how they live, and it really matters. The college years really, really matter. And so, I put it this way one time with a family where a student had started grounded, homeschooled, started off a year at a public university and was really struggling and basically said, “How important is your soul?”

For the sake of your soul, you need to figure out a way to come to Arizona Christian University, to a place where you’re… the things that you know that are true that you’re struggling with in that environment will be reaffirmed. It’s not like the kids that come to Arizona Christian University are outside the world’s influence.

I mean, it’s as far away as their phones. So, it’s not that we’ve created this bubble, it’s that we’ve created a community where you’re constantly being reminded of the truths of scripture in your classes, in your extracurricular activities, on your athletic teams, through our chapels, through the bible studies that are going on.

Through the ministry opportunities and service opportunities, constantly being reminded that God is your creator and that he’s given us a way to help us flourish in the way that we live. And so, that is constantly being poured into these students, even though we know the pull of the world and the culture is in their pocket, in their phone, on their laptop, certainly out in the community.

So, we’re not under any illusions about the influence of the world, but it’s incredibly powerful. And I think many Christian parents have been surprised that the things they poured into their kids were over. Usually, it takes three or four years if they’ve done a good job. But eventually, that their kids get pulled away by the constant indoctrination of the culture in a secular setting.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, Len, that’s great because you dealt with a very, very key element there. I as a grandparent and a parent of children, we walked through that same thing. And what you just laid out, I’m glad you did. And that is that no matter the strength of the child, no matter the upbringing, college years can make or break sometimes even the very best of students.

So, you dealt with that one, deal with another one that parents have to consider, even children who go to school and that is the cost. I’ve heard so many say, “Well, my child just got to go to this secular school down the road because it’s going to cost less and I don’t want them getting out of college with $100,000 in debt or something like that.”

And they say Christian schools are going to cost more money. So, they walk through the dollars and cents part, which you have to consider that, but deal with that aspect of cost perhaps as a reason for not going to a Christian school, Christian college.

Len Munsil:

I couldn’t agree with you more, Sam. I hear that constantly. So, I’d start off just to reiterate what I said before, what’s the cost of a child’s soul, student’s soul? I mean, how much are you willing to pay to make sure that they have every opportunity to live a life where they flourish and get married and have children and love God?

And so, number one, whatever the cost is, I think we should be willing to pay it. Number two, I would just say that in terms of the difference even economically that it makes… to go to a Christian institution is still extraordinary. One of the things people think is, well, if we go to a Christian college is the education inferior?

And 20, 30 years ago, I might have been able to see that, but I will tell you at Arizona Christian University, a small orthodox conservative Christian college, one of our students just graduated at the top of his class from Harvard Law School where a kid with a strong biblical worldview.

We have kids graduating from medical school, from other top law schools, and that’s not even… and we have a lot of kids going into ministry. But my point is it’s not really a limitation. If you’re an excellent student and you’re looking at a future graduate school, professional school, Christian college is… at least coming to Arizona Christian University is not limiting our students.

They’re doing amazing things when they graduate. And the fact of the return on investment even economically from a college degree is I think the last time I looked, it’s about a $1.2 million difference between getting a college degree versus not.

And so, because I do hear a lot of people say, “Well, you don’t necessarily need college. We’ll just go through some certificate program.” And the economics just don’t back that up. And those are averages, and there’s always exceptions, but it’s worth it economically, and it’s certainly worth it spiritually.

Isaac Crockett:

Well, thank you. Those are some really good points. And I think parents and those involved with their children or helping other folks, we try to take each child and see what is best for them, but we cannot forget the spiritual side like you brought up the worth of soul, it would never be worth it to see spiritual damage done. And so, this is great information.

We have a lot more questions for you. We’re going to take another brief time out. I’m going to come back and talk about the difference between a Christian college, a name in really a Christian college. We’ll be right back on Stand in the Gap Today.

 

Isaac Crockett:

Welcome back to this program, this Friday edition of Stand in the Gap Today. And Sam and I are talking with Dr. Len Munsil of Arizona Christian University, and we’ve had some good discussions about the importance of Christian education, the importance of discipleship, biblical worldview even after high school, even going into the college years and why that is so important.

But as everything in the Christian life, and I often tell this to people say there’s not one easy way as a parent or as a Christian living the Christian life, it’s not, “Oh, this is an easy way.” There’s the right way and there’s the wrong way.

But whether you’re a Christian who says, “Oh, I want to homeschool, or I want to put my kids in a Christian school, or I’m going to try to deprogram my children, I have to send them to public school, but I’m going to do all I can to deprogram them.

There’s never a time in your life where you could just say, “Okay, I don’t have to worry about my family. I don’t have to worry about my kids anymore.” In college, I think we could safely, same thing. We can’t just not think about it. We have to purposely choose as Christians, what is going to help me draw closer to God when it comes to where I go to college or where I send my kids to college.

So, some of you might be thinking, all right, so, you’ve convinced me I would like to send my children to Christian schools, to Christian college. Well, Dr. Munsil, I want to talk to you about that because not all Christian colleges that have that word Christian and their name are truly teaching a biblical worldview anymore.

Just like not all churches, not all pastors are really teaching the bible anymore. And we’ve learned that from Dr. George Barna with your Cultural Research Center there at Arizona Christian University, that there are many who claim to be Christians that don’t have a Christian worldview, many churches that don’t preach the Bible.

And so, can you help us look at the pitfalls, look at pitfalls of secular college, but maybe the pitfalls of even supposed Christian colleges. What should a Christian university really look like? Or maybe you could say for families considering Christian colleges, what should they be looking for in that college to be certain that it will help their children grow spiritually like you talked about?

Len Munsil:

Yeah, absolutely. Let me mention a few things that would be applicable to really evaluate when you’re looking at colleges and Christian colleges for your kids. And then, I’ll talk about specifically some things that we do at Arizona Christian. But first, I would start with what I shared in the last segment, the notion that the mission of the school is to educate believers in Christ.

Because the history of higher education in America is littered with the wreckage of institutions that were founded to teach biblical truth that have fallen away from it.

And going back to Harvard and Yale, and if you go back and look at the original founding documents and the things that were required of students and of faculty back then, in many ways it looks similar to what we do at Arizona Christian University today.

But nobody would say today that Harvard, Yale and Princeton are places to send your kids for a Christian discipleship education. So, it starts with… and the history would tell you that the issue isn’t so much when the board or the president or even the faculty changes, it’s when the student population changes.

When Christian universities begin admitting large numbers of non-Christian students, it’s the beginning of the end for it being able to maintain its Christian mission. It’s very difficult for institutions when the student population that’s unbelievers continues to grow.

Ultimately, they make demands on the administration and on the board for changes in behavioral standards, for changes in academic standards. And ultimately, as the late Reno Hoff, the former president of Corban University wrote in his autobiography.

Eventually, the institution, the unbelieving students evangelize the school away from its mission. And so, you hear institutions that say, “Well, we want to evangelize kids, so we’re going to bring them to this Christian school and give them some Bible.”

And the history tells us that the opposite is what occurs. Sometimes, it takes decades, but that’s the direction that schools are headed. So, start with the school that’s dedicated to admitting and discipling Christian kids. And by the way, we do evangelism at ACU, we just used our recruiting weekends.

We’ve had just in this year, in 2023, over 100 decisions for Christ occur on our campus, not just among prospective students, but their families that are coming for recruiting weekends. They hear the gospel, we share the gospel, we explain it in the context of who we are at ACU.

And many decisions for Christ are happening of people that are never going to end up coming to Arizona Christian University. So, we believe in evangelism, but we want it to happen outside with our students and our faculty and our staff not inside. So, I’d start with that.

Second, what does the curriculum look like? Is it dedicated to promoting a biblically integrated approach to every academic discipline that occurs? And also, what are the hiring standards for the institution? Do the president, the administrators, the board of trustees, certainly the faculty and adjunct faculty, do they all have to sign a statement of faith?

Look at the institution’s statement of faith, does it align with your own commitment to Christ? And who’s required to sign it? At ACU, everybody. As I mentioned before, our security team and our custodial staff and our grounds maintenance and grounds team all sign, any ACU employee signs our statement of faith.

And it’s because we consider this a community that is centered around these basic biblical beliefs. So, those are some really important things to look at. Is chapel voluntary? If they have it. Is there a chapel? If they have a chapel, is it required for students as part of their spiritual formation or is it optional?

What is required in the curriculum in terms of biblical studies? At ACU, whether you’re a pre-law, pre-med, education, business, every student graduates with a minor in biblical studies. That’s 18 hours going deeply through the Old and the New Testament and understanding apologetics and how to apply a biblical worldview.

So, what’s the level of many Christian colleges? They have one class, maybe three credit hours, maybe six. But at ACU we have 18 hours of required bible. And then, that is integrated in our curriculum with our humanities based, classics based, great ideas curriculum are called the Core.

And within the core, they’re learning the great ideas of western civilization and how they align with or conflict with biblical truth. So, we have a unique general education curriculum that all students take that teaches them really how to think and to communicate and to engage with the world.

Understanding the great ideas in the history of Western civilization, but also how to align their faith in biblical truth with those great ideas. So, curriculum, hiring standards, chapel.

And is the school about the business of training up Christians or is it about the business of trying to bring in a lot of people into the community that are not followers of Christ and that are going to be arguing the existence of God in the dorm rooms? That’s not what we’re about. And I would encourage any parent, grandparent to look at those factors.

Sam Rohrer:

And Len, I think what you just laid out there is excellent because it has application, in my opinion, in my experience in Christian education for a long time, for not just Christian colleges, but also frankly K to 12 education. There are a lot of schools that put out themselves as evangelistic tools, but the same thing happens to them.

So, everything that you said was just excellent. Let me just take you into this area. When you’re talking about effectively everyone graduates with a minor in bible. All right, that’s good. There are those who consider today, Prince. And when I went to school, liberal arts education was the thing.

But things have become more specialized it seems over the year, everybody’s got their own little specialty. Make a case if you can for a liberal arts, a Christian liberal arts university, and why that approach is really still usable and practical for today?

Len Munsil:

Oh, absolutely. And basically, Sam and the ability to think and to communicate clearly and to have a background of knowledge and understanding that enables you to be adaptable in the employment world is absolutely vital. In fact, if you can just Google it and look up the interest level in liberal arts, graduates of liberal arts institutions even in the STEM fields is hugely significant.

Because these are good… these are people who are able to adapt to changing circumstances. One of the craziest things that you see right now is people focused in on specialized training in certain areas of technology that may be completely different a year from now or five years or 10 years from now.

In fact, the job they’re training for may not even exist then. The kids who are going to do well in their careers have the ability to adapt to the changes that are happening so rapidly in that world. And we do have STEM areas of study at Arizona Christian University.

Even though you’re getting a liberal arts education, as I indicated, we’ve got a very strong pre-med biology program and we’re going to be expanding those opportunities here in the years to come. But a lot of that specialization happens beyond undergraduate education.

And so, we want to prepare fully formed strong, well discipled, believing Christians. And we have a specific mission, and I don’t think we’ve mentioned this yet, to prepare students to go into the seven mountains of cultural influence.

And so, if you’re interested in going into business, into government, into education, into the media, into family counseling or if you’re interested, obviously in going into the church, every part of the seven mountains, we prepare students to go into those areas as leaders of influence and excellence.

That’s actually our mission. And so, there are lots of different career paths people can take out of a liberal arts institution, and it’s not really that limiting anymore.

Isaac Crockett:

Well, Dr. Len Munsil from Arizona Christian University, those are some fantastic points. Excellent response to that. And we’re going to take another time out and come back and I do want to talk about the cultural research center there at Arizona Christian University and about this Christian education.

And being able to go into the culture to win souls and disciple Christians, so many things that you’ve already touched on and we want to wrap that up in our final segment. But we’re going to take another time out and we’ll be right back on Stand in the Gap Today.

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Isaac Crockett:

 

Welcome back to the program, and Sam and I have been talking with Dr. Len Munsil from Arizona Christian University, a Christian liberal arts university, and also the home of the Cultural Research Center where our good friend, Dr. George Barna joins us on a regular basis, usually once a month or so to talk about different cultural research things going on.

And in talking with Dr. Munsil, it’s just amazing to see how God works in each one of our lives. So, he takes someone like Len Munsil, who his background is in journalism, has won awards for that, attorney, lawyer, constitutional law, a go-getter, a cultural warrior you could say, and leads him into Christian education.

Dr. Munsil said he thought it’d just be maybe a couple of years, now well over a decade, into him being President of the Arizona Christian University. And so, such a fascinating history there, as well as just the way you’ve thought through Christian education with your own children, your own eight children, you have 18 grandchildren.

But what that looks like for those out of high school, going into college and how to find a truly biblical worldview in a Christian college, not all Christian colleges actually will give that Christian worldview. But with that, I do want to talk about the Cultural Research Center.

I know our regular listeners are very familiar with Dr. George Barna and a lot of the work going on. But I would love to get it a little bit of a history, how it got started and what the purpose and what the call of the Cultural Research Center is there at Arizona Christian University.

Len Munsil:

Yeah, absolutely, Isaac, thank you. And thank you for the opportunity too, to talk about this really important topic and to even let your audience know about Arizona Christian University. And we birthed the Cultural Research Center three years ago.

I wanted to give… you’ve been great to let me talk about this. And for those that are interested, if I could just give the website for the university it’s arizonachristian, all one word, .edu. And you mentioned the fact that I’ve been here now in my 13th year and we’ve just seen extraordinary growth.

We have an amazing new campus through a miracle trade with a public university. So, we’ve gone from around 400 students to about 1,100 students. We’re a US News and World Report ranked best college, including number one undergraduate teaching institution.

And so, even the secular world’s acknowledging and recognizing the growth of the institution, the growth and excellence of what we’re doing academically. And I appreciate the chance to talk about ACU. But three years ago, we birthed the cultural research center.

And it really comes from, as you guys know, and we’ve talked about, I’ve been an activist in the conservative Christian pro-life marriage world. I founded Arizona’s Family Policy Council. And one of the speakers that we brought in the early 2000s, 21 years ago was Dr. George Barna.

And my wife Tracy and I got to know George and Nancy and visited them in California. And we just stayed in touch over the years as I ran for political office and did other things. And then, I came to the school and we were doing an event in 2019 and looking to bring in some speakers for it.

And one of the ones on the list was George. And I said, “Well, I know George, let’s invite him and it’ll give us a chance to catch up after a few years.” And God did an amazing thing. We ended up getting together outside the event, which was held in California.

Tracy and George and Nancy and I, and we just started to dream a little bit about what we could do together. And so, the website is culturalresearchcenter.com, but the purpose of the Cultural Research Center is to serve the body of Christ by providing current data.

And maybe you saw this, we just released yesterday the latest data post pandemic, the first post pandemic evaluation of the worldview of Americans. And when George started measuring biblical worldview in America, it was at 12% of Americans that had a biblical worldview, that was in the 1990s.

When we tested it at the first year of the CRC in 2020 pre-pandemic, it was at 6%, and today it’s at 4%. And the other thing of course that we’re tracking. So, it’s a one third decline just in the last three years. But the other thing is that we’re tracking is by generation.

And so, the incidents of biblical worldview among millennials is lower than among baby boomers and baby busters. And then, it’s even lower among Gen Z. Now, we’re talking about down to 1% of Americans in that generation that have a biblical worldview.

So, we’re going the wrong direction. We need another great awakening. We need revivals and we need awakening in our culture and I believe it’s going to begin with college students. And so, at Arizona Christian University, we’re trying to create an environment by which we can be part of that awakening.

But George has come here, he has really helped put ACU on the map nationally through his credibility and his research, the number of interviews that he does. And so, the goal of CRC is to actually give us the data.

And I’ll just mention one thing that is completely unique right now in America, although we’re going to make it more widely available, is that George devised a biblical worldview survey for our students, and they take it before they ever take a class at ACU, at the end of every year, and then when they graduate.

Because we want to know how we’re doing and we want to get better if there are weak areas and biblical worldview in the way that we’re doing our curriculum and our community now, we want to improve it. And you don’t improve it if you don’t know what it is. And so, we’re thrilled to have George here with us at ACU. He’s a key piece of what God is doing in this place.

Isaac Crockett:

That is wonderful. And when you go to your website there, arizonachristian.edu, that information, you can just click right on the homepage. It starts out right there with links to the Cultural Research Center and with that latest study showing the new biblical worldview among us adults post pandemic.

And we don’t want to just bury our heads in the sand like hostages hiding from what’s going on, we want to embrace it. And Sam, I know that you’ve been friends with Dr. George Barna for quite some time, and he has told us often that however much time God has given him in his life, he doesn’t just want to waste it just studying things.

He wants to be a part of the solutions, not just pointing out problems. And that’s why he has been so happy to join with the Cultural Research Center there at Arizona Christian University.

So, Sam, I want to give you time to close the program in prayer, but I just want to give you time to maybe talk about final thoughts and about the impact that the work there at the Cultural Research Center has had for us here at the American Pastors Network and Stand in the Gap media as we’ve been able to use that research to help pastors and Christians all over our nation.

Sam Rohrer:

Well, Isaac, I can. And Len, thank you so much for what you went over. I just want to, in the brief last moments, augment and support supplement and confirm what you were saying about the importance of research and why I think it’s so valuable to check the Worldview Values Association of those coming in and then when they exit.

And that’s because ladies and gentlemen, don’t be afraid to ask questions. One of the things I’ve found over my time is that people, if they’re afraid to actually have an independent evaluation of who they are, what they think of their ministry or of their church, something we talk about with George and the program a lot.

If you end up not measuring the right things, you’re going to get all the wrong results. So, Len, you’re driving an institution in everything that you said to answer to Isaac’s questions, what you are doing in the answer to my questions, you came back immediately with number one, number two, number three, number four, and you can support it from the research.

And that’s what I want to thank you for. And that’s something that we have parlayed across our network of radio and TV and refer often to what George says. It’s the data. We start with what the word of God says, it’s our standard, the authority of scripture.

And then, you go from there and you measure how am I doing in accordance with what God says, not what I think or the neighbor think, but what God says, that’s what gives you a biblical worldview. That’s what you are doing. Len, thank you so much, and that’s why we’re so glad to have you on the program today and to work with George. I’m glad he’s there with you.

Heavenly Father, we just asked you that you would take this information as we’ve laid it out. It may be encouragement to those who are listening and a fortification for those who already identify with the truth and let him go forward, Lord, with courage. And as we say here regularly, stand in the gap for truth. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Isaac Crockett:

Amen. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Dr. Len Munsil for being on this program. And thank you for listening. I hope that if you were able to listen to part or all this program that you might consider listening to it again, sharing it with a friend, getting the word out. And until next time, please stand in the gap for truth wherever you are today.