12 Trends to Shape Faith & Culture in 2025
Feb. 21, 2025
Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer
Guest: George Barna
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 2/21/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Sam Rohrer:
Hello and welcome to this Friday edition of Stand In the Gap Today. And it’s also our monthly focus on culture and values with Dr. George Barna, director of the Cultural Research Center, Arizona Christian University. They have a website@culturalresearchcenter.com. Now, when those of us, us in this category, when those of us who are baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964, that’s the age range. When we look back on our lives, if we were to use a one or a two word phrase to describe the difference between our nation and our culture then and now, the one word that I would use and I think many would use would be change. The two word phrase might well be enormous change. Well, for full disclosure, I am a 1955 born boomer, so you can figure out how old I am where fellow boomers born in 1946. Frankly, they seem old to me.
And those born in 1964 seem young. It’s amazing, isn’t it? But even those millennials born from the 1980s to the early two thousands, most of them would agree too that change. Most of my children are in that age range, would accurately describe their description of their area as well. Change on today’s program entitled 12 Trends to Shape Faith and Culture. In 2025, Dr. George Barna, who’s been measuring cultural norms and values for over 40 years now, has compiled a report from where he has applied his experienced research over decades to identify trends in faith and cultural changes, and to project based on that data what 2025 may likely bring. Now, his latest report entitled 2025 Trends, outlook with a Release Date if you go on their website and find January 20 of this year, contains his analysis and projection and the foundation for today’s conversation between him and I. Dr. Crockett was supposed to be with me today, but had some issues come up with some folks in his church, and so he’s not here. But again, that report of George’s research we’re discussing can be found at the cultural research center.com. And with that, George, thank you for carving out time from your very, very busy schedule to be with us.
George Barna:
Oh, I always look forward to it, Sam. Thanks for having me back.
Sam Rohrer:
You’re welcome, George. From the standpoint of our stand in the gap today, listeners, can I ask you to provide just a little explanation, some basic research and reporting assumptions? A lot of people just look at research and they don’t even think much about it, but there’s a lot that goes into this. I want them to be able to more fully appreciate. And it’s also lay the foundation for here because in your latest report, you highlight what you referred to as trends, and then you make projections into 2025 based on them. So here’s my first question to you today. That’s this. What is the science behind determining what is a trend? How many years worth of research or data points, for example, of information is required to determine a reliable trend that is capable of basing, for instance, reasonable projections upon which you have done in this report?
George Barna:
Well, it’s interesting to say because what we’re so used to seeing in news reports and online and quoted by public leaders and so forth are single surveys, which really amount to a snapshot in time. And so when we look at this kind of trend data or trend analysis, what we’ve done is essentially we’ve done a whole series of surveys over time. Hopefully the best ones use the same questions time after time so that you’re comparing apples to apples. Any kind of changes can’t be attributed to differences in question wording, question sequencing, sampling differences, those types of things. You want to have the same surveys replicated as often and as faithfully as possible so that over the course of time you really get a sense of what might be changing. That kind of trend analysis gives you context for understanding. If I come out with a survey today and I say, oh look, it’s 42% who believe this?
Well, okay, that’s really good. That’s helpful to know, but how does that compare to how many people believe that 10 years ago or what trend lines might help us to think might be the case 10 years from now? So that’s how trend analysis can be useful. Really what we’re trying to do is give leaders, thinkers, influencers, parents, teachers, pastors, all of these people who make a difference in the culture and help shape the direction the culture is going. Greater insight into where have we been, where are we, where does it appear we’re going. And if you don’t like that, then you know what needs to be on your action agenda. But I will tell you that this kind of research incorporates probably as much art as science. You mentioned the science of it. Yes, there is science to it, but there’s also an art to it of being able to listen to people, understand the language, understand the connections between the key ideals and values that they hold. All of those kinds of things are all part of it. But for this particular study, I’m looking primarily at the last 30 years, I went back to my data from 19 94, 19 95 and tracked it out through today. And so we’ve got projection lines looking at, yeah, where are things going and how are things changing based on at least that duration of study of the culture.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, therefore highly accurate. So let me just ask you this quick question, the remaining few minutes here. Have you ever made projections in the areas of faith and culture, which is the focus of this based on prior research? Have you ever done that like this report in the past? If so, how accurate were those projections when you looked back? And if you have not done what you actually did in this report before, what prompted you to decide to do this? Now looking forward into 2025,
George Barna:
Actually, Sam, when I first started working almost full time in the Christian community, this is something that I’ve been doing on a regular basis. And so the first, I don’t know what you want to call it, big book. The first major bestselling book I had was back in 1990, something called The Frog in the Kettle. And the idea was that what we were seeing was the pace of culture was accelerating change in our culture. And so we wanted church leaders, whether those were heads of families, heads of households, heads of congregations, heads of domination, heads of Parachurch ministries. We wanted them to really understand, you know what, we’re in a different kind of existence now than our forefathers where things change very slowly, particularly in the religious realm for them. For us, things are changing very quickly. So going back to that first book, the Frog and the Kettle, I think it was published in 1990, about 15 years later, a team of us at the company sat down and went through everything in the book 250 page book or so, listed every trend and looked at, okay, did what George said was going to happen, happen.
And I don’t remember the exact number, but I know it was more than 90% of those predictions actually came true. So yeah, this is something that I’ve been doing for a long time.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, and with that ladies and gentlemen, I wanted that established first so you understand that as we go further into these trends and then the next segment, we’re going to move into the area of five trends that Dr. George Barna, my guest, has identified in those areas that are shaping faith. And then we’ll deal with culture things in the third segment. Very valuable information. Stay with us. We’ll be right back in just a moment. Well, if you’re just joining us in this program, thank you so very much to being a part of it. This theme today, here’s the title for the program. Our focus is 12 Trends to Shape Faith and Culture. In 2025, my special guest, recurring guest friend of this program and known I’m sure by most all of you who are listening right now, is Dr. George Barna. He is with Arizona Christian University director of research there, their website, cultural research center.com.
So George, let’s get right into this. In the first lines of your report, which I have and I’ve read through and I’ve marked it up and it’s available for anybody listening too, that’s why I gave the website in the first lines of the report, you say this quote with the return of Donald Trump to the White House and the Republican Party holding the majority in both chambers of Congress 2025 promises to be a year of significant political change, but the transitions will not emanate solely from Washington DC and the other change agents are of course the trends that you’ve identified and is the folks of discussion today. So in this segment, let’s focus on what you identify as the five trends shaping faith. Now for the sake of ladies and gentlemen, I’m just going to give you the five and then we’re going to go into it.
George, you identified these one reshaping God to our liking. Two, the syncretism train keeps rolling. Three discipleship drops off the radar. Four organized Christianity takes a hit in number five, signs of a backbone. So let’s start with number one, reshaping God to our liking, and then we’ll go as far as we can in here. Would you define what this means? And did you identify this as number one because it’s the strongest trend or perhaps maybe it represents the greatest threat to true faith in America and the greatest assurance of God’s judgment on America if the trend continues?
George Barna:
Well, I didn’t necessarily order these in priority, but I think one could easily argue that this may well be the most significant trend of all. When you look at the data, it’s kind of indisputable what’s happening. It doesn’t take a master analyst to figure this out. So we look at data such as how many people believe in the existence of a God, the God of the Bible. It’s dropped from 93% in 1995 to 40% today. And then if we look at the proportion of people who believe in the God of the Bible and they say that they worship or they follow in their life, the God of the Bible that’s dropped from 73%, 1995 to 34% today. And I mean that’s just a massive decline in the number of millions of Americans who are choosing to not only believe that the God of scripture exists, but that they’re giving their life to him.
They’re worshiping him, they’re following him, they’re trusting him. They believe that he is truth. He’s given us truth in his word. So I mean that’s massive shifts. More than 50% declines in both of those what’s taken their place, this segmentation group that I call the don’ts, people who don’t know if God exists, people who don’t believe that God exists, people who don’t care if God exists. And so that group now has risen to about a third of the population. What’s happening here is that people in America are deciding that in essence they are the God of their own life. There may be some other spiritual authorities, some supreme beings, some higher powers, et cetera. But really it all comes down to us. We’re the key decision maker in our own lives. We’re not really looking for guidance externally. We look internally into our feelings to get that. And so what we want, if we’re going to fashion a God, we essentially want that God to be more accepting, less demanding, and to have more kind of human attributes, things that we can relate to better. And so that’s kind of what’s happening in the world of divinity in America.
Sam Rohrer:
George, I hear that and I would say, boy, what you’re describing really in simple terms is idolatry. We are fashioning god’s in our own likeness or whatever, but serious from God’s perspective, particularly when it comes to nations. Now your second point, syncretism train keeps rolling. Well, that’s very similar. We’ve talked about that before on this program, but compare contrast this one, the syncretism train keeps rolling and connect that with reshaping Guidewire liking.
George Barna:
Yeah, I mean, syncretism again is just the blending of beliefs and behaviors that have been advocated by competing well-defined worldviews. And that blending gives us a customized worldview, something that makes us feel comfortable, secure, happy, et cetera. And so it’s very different than let’s say a biblical worldview, which is not up to us to define, but it’s defined for us by God in his word. And he’s asked us to live according to those principles that constitute a biblical worldview. But what we find is that the biblical worldview has been declining with each succeeding generation. If you were to look at it today generationally, you’d find that the generation, oddly enough, with the highest incidents of biblical worldview or baby boomers, but that’s only 8% of boomers who have a biblical worldview. But then it continues to decline from there. Gen X, the baby busters 5%, millennials, 4% Gen Z, 2% we’re looking at our research with teenagers and preteens, and we’ve got in the order of one to 2% of them having a biblical worldview.
So everybody has a worldview. You need a worldview. It’s a vacuum that will be filled because you need a worldview to get through the day because it’s the basis of all the decisions you make. But right now, 92% of Americans are syncretists. We’re expecting that to continue to rise. And some of the popular drivers of that increase are things like people are saying, yeah, I just want to focus on the here and now. I don’t want to look at the big picture and be overwhelmed by it. I don’t want to worry about eternity. And that’s one of the reasons why another driver is reincarnation. It’s like, okay, well if I don’t get it right now, I’ll get another chance. So I’ll just try to learn some things along the way. And another popular driver of the move towards syncretism is happiness. It’s all about feelings. I want to feel happy. I want everything to make me feel good. And so that’s where America’s at today, that prior trend we talk about of people departing from their belief in the God of the scriptures, fits into this drive towards syncretism or away from buying into the God of the scriptures because then there are boundaries. There are absolute moral truths, and Americans don’t like to have to have the discipline to live with those kinds of realities.
Sam Rohrer:
George, I come back and I look at this and I say, yeah, the first one, we’re making God to our own liking. Again, I come back, I’m envisioning idol worship as God told Israel, you walked away from me forming in your own likening the gods of this world and the syncretism train you’re talking, but is almost seeming like it’s the reasons, the justification for why we can walk away for God for our happiness or whatever. So you didn’t put them in order for necessary reason, but I think they are in order for a reason. But anyways, we don’t have too much time left, but number three and four, if we can take those together, discipleship drops off the radar. Number three, number four, organized religion takes a hit. Now both of these, as I read them, are reshaping trends which further move biblically based true faith away from God, not to the God. Could you condense these two? Define them briefly, and what aspect of true faith and biblical worldview are most weakened by them?
George Barna:
I mean, essentially what we’re seeing is that Americans have less interest in and less loyalty to any kind of a local church, a congregation, a faith community. And so what the release is projecting, what our research is showing is that we’re going to have significant numbers of Christian churches closing over the next three to five years. We’re going to have a declining number of full-time pastors. And what’s happening to facilitate that is that people are reconceiving church as a place they go to receive benefits rather than it being a place where they belong in order to serve and to be part of a worshiping community. And this drift away from discipleship fits within that because what we’ve done is we’ve made discipleship into a program rather than a lifestyle or a commitment to God. And particularly when we look at those who are theologically identified, born again Christians, we’re finding that only about one out of every 10 of them, and remember, they’re only about one third of the population to start with, but only about one out of every 10 of the born again adults in this country, theologically defined, are actively discipling somebody else.
Why does that matter? Because you reproduce who you are, which means that the only people who can make disciples are disciples. And when we’ve got most of our disciples choosing not to replicate themselves, not to make new disciples of Jesus, that does not portend well for the future of the church in America.
Sam Rohrer:
Ladies and gentlemen, are you hearing this? I mean, one thing about this is not bad news you hear in the media because they make it up. But these are trends. These are facts that describe our generation. Now, my question to you, when I read the research and I asked you as you’re listening to it, where are you on this continuum? What percentage? Are you a part of the 2% or are you part of the 92%? Or we ought to be thinking ourselves? Where are we on this? Are we making God in our own image? Are we doing what we want to do because we want to be happy? Huh? Okay. That’s where the challenge comes down, and that’s what good research needs to do. Challenge us in our think. We’ll come back, we’re going to shift from the faith trends to culture, recalibrating trends. Well, thanks for being with us again.
We’re midway into our program here today. If you’ve been with us from the beginning, thank you. If you’ve just joined us, you really must go back and pick up everything from the beginning. My guest today is Dr. George Barna, and the information that we are sharing based on a most recent report, the January 22nd report that he’s put out on 2025 outlook trends that we’re talking about where George has gone back over the last 30 years and looked at information, what has been found in a series ongoing of snapshots of time as explained in the first segment regarding trends, linked them all together. And when you do that over a period of time, the more stretched out it is, the more accurate frankly it becomes. So this is really very critically important information. And frankly, George, as we’re talking about this, the information, the research is very, very concerning.
As I look at it. To me, I look at it and I find the closest description is to where God was talking with Israel of old who knew who God was, and God manifested himself to them in tremendous ways, and they just continued to walk away and fashion god’s in their own hand and shed innocent blood and all that that we find in scripture. It reminds me just that the heart of man is deceitfully wicked, and humans are humans and things haven’t changed. That’s what stands out to me. But that’s not the direction you’re going. But here, according to the 2025 trends outlook you’ve put on page three, let me just read from it here, set it up, you say in page three, quote, while the religious environment of the United States continues to morph into a new landscape, American culture will also bloom in some new and unexpected ways.
This societal evolution is neither novel nor inexplicable. Every culture constantly recalibrates itself, altering its identity and conduct in ways that are both large and small. And then you go on to identify seven trends, recalibrating American culture and social identity. So we’re not going to have time in this segment, obviously. So I encourage all of you’re listening, go and get this report, which you can pull down very easily, cultural research center.com. It’s one from January. But in that, George, I can’t go everything. But would you do these two things? And that is this first, if possible, can you identify and explain the trend or maybe composite and put them together, the trends that you’ve determined to be the most significant of these seven trends? And secondly, would you identify the culture shaping significance that you believe it is make? I know that it’s hard to do, but do your best.
George Barna:
I know. And you want me to do it in one minute, right?
Sam Rohrer:
Oh, I know that’s, I’m asking for a miracle, but go ahead.
George Barna:
Yeah. So I mean asking which is most significant, it’s kind of all in the eye of the beholder, but I suppose in my eye, perhaps the most significant is the re-imagining of the family. And why that matters is because God established the family as a fundamental building block of every society. It matters to him and therefore it should matter to us. But what’s happening is that we’ve decided now we have a better way. And so I look at all the different trends that comprise the reshaping of family, declining family size, fewer marriages, serial cohabitation, the acceptance of divorce and of not getting married, having fewer children, being very comfortable with that, desiring fewer children, accepting pets as a substitute for children, turbulence over the role of parents, the continued importance of outsourcing as the primary parenting strategy, having single generation models for parenting. There are all of these kinds of things that are taking place that are saying, yeah, if you went back into the scriptures, you would not find these ideas there.
So to me, this is so critically important because it has to do with what society means, how our relationships are formed. Family is the most important component in the development of a person’s worldview. That is the first and primary responsibility of parents is to make sure that their children come to no love and serve Jesus with all their heart, mind, strength, and soul. And in order to do that, you’ve got to shape their worldview, their decision-making apparatus. And so I think that what we’re finding is that we are distancing ourselves from that biblical responsibility and distancing ourselves from the biblical approach to how we should embrace that responsibility. I
Sam Rohrer:
Find that interesting, George family, and I didn’t know which one you were going to pick, and I know that was hard. All of them, ladies and gentlemen, all seven of them are critical. But I thought interesting that you did not necessarily, well, you didn’t even mention, for instance, the way out Romans one type thing of, for instance, transgenderism and the homosexual lifestyle. You were onto the more basic things of do we get married and what is the purpose of marriage and children and how many and when, and you went there. So even if we change, which is happening now, thankfully under the Trump administration, are going to move out some of those things relative to the trans effort and all of that, the ones you went to were the more fundamental that affect every people in the world. I find that very, very interesting. So anyways, you may have another comment on that, but I’d like to shift if I could, because the seven that you pull out, there are generally things that are making changes in the culture that are away from God. But here’s a question I thought of. According to your research, are cultural trends, these seven and the one that you mentioned here with family, are they leading ahead of the faith trends or are the faith trends actually leading or shaping the culture?
George Barna:
Yeah, as best I can tell at this point, culture is shaping churches. Culture is shaping faith. The culture is a very powerful dynamic in our lives today. But I think some of the changes that are being ushered in by the Trump administration are actually showing that a large share of Americans have no idea what they believe in. They were against things before. They’re for them now. They’re not going to advocate strongly one way or the other. They just want to be happy. They just want to feel secure. They want to be able to get ahead in life. That’s what they’re thinking. And so are they incorporating faith into all of that? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But faith doesn’t seem to be a driving factor for so many of them. The core beliefs that are driving things are self-interest and happiness, more than biblical kinds of drivers like truth and justice and the sovereignty of God.
Sam Rohrer:
And George, that brings me to another point. I think that’s really significant. But when we look at what’s happening, that’s why I say at the beginning, what can we see over the last four weeks since the inauguration as an example, whatever would be change. But that change would be what I’ve seen as a baby boomer since the time I was born to now change, change, change. But your research is saying that the change is moving away from God, the reshaping of the view of God in our minds, reshaping of the institutions of family and government. So now we’ve got a government of change, but not necessarily a government of change that’s driven by biblical worldview, but more pragmatism and some change. Good. But George, absent a move where the standards of change are purposely back towards what God says they should be and God’s definition of morality and God’s purpose for government and God’s design for the family and adhering to it. Other than that, are we actually moving in a right direction culturally? I mean, it’s very interesting times.
George Barna:
It’s an interesting time. It’s a scary time. If you love God, you love his word, and you know that someday you’re going to stand before him and have to give an account for the choices that you made. So I think in a way, what you’re talking about is our culture moving toward a greater fear of God, which the Bible tells us is the beginning of wisdom. And that’s the way that we should always be operating, recognizing his greatness and his goodness in light of our puns and our evil leanings, if not more, are we showing greater fear of God today than we did previously? No, I’ve thought about that. I would say that there would be 10 signs of us having greater fear of God, and that would be that we’re more consistent and devoted to worshiping God. We’re more engaged in reading his word consistently and deeply, not just passing through it, but really diving in and studying it.
There’s consistent prayer, not just for ourselves, but for the people that we love, that we minister to, that we care about, people that are in need, et cetera. Others, we would be seeking God’s will every single day, all throughout the day, not making choices unless it lines up with that. We’re trying to avoid and confess sin on a regular basis. We’re embracing not only the concept but the application personally of absolute moral truth. We understand our purpose to be knowing, loving and serving God with all our life, strength, soul. I mean, the list goes on. But as I enumerate all these things, I do not see evidence that that’s what we’re moving toward. I think we’re moving away from fear of God to fear of not pleasing ourselves.
Sam Rohrer:
And ladies and gentlemen, you hear where George went? Who is he speaking to? Professing believers. That’s interesting. We’ll come back, we’ll conclude the program with some detailed follow on. Well, as we enter into our final segment, unless you’re just listening to us for the first time here on Stand in the Gap today, we try to take an issue, headline news, often cultural issue like today in doing with Dr. George Barna, and take that information, consider it from a biblical worldview perspective, and then make an application to it In reality. That is what we who fear God and keep his commandments are to do. We go to God’s word, we read it, and if we don’t walk away changed, we either didn’t read it or we don’t really have any fear of God, one or the other. So this part is very, very critical. And when there’s so much information such as what we have in this research, George, that you put together, it becomes either a hammer that can forge a change into a greater likeness of who Christ is, which is what we should do, or we can do something else with it.
But I view this part as one where we really need the wisdom of God. But when I look at what you’ve done, you’ve read, and all the time that you’ve been on this program and so forth, I know that research have honestly conducted as you’ve done for a full generation now over 40 years. It can be extraordinarily valuable if you do something with it. Analyzing and projecting what it means, which is what you’ve tried to do in these projections. And outlooks requires not just honesty, but skill and wisdom. And that’s the science and the art part of what we talked about in the early segment. But it also requires a biblical worldview understanding of now what do you do with this? And that’s what your research has proven that it’s almost non-existent anymore in America, a biblical worldview, and it’s getting smaller by the year.
I think you can give a 1% for the youngest that are coming up. It’s incredible. It’s almost like zero. But in reality, I look back during my time since I’ve been in the political and you’ve been in the research in so many areas, I’d look and I say, well, political involvement by evangelicals, which has really been a big push, and it’s not necessarily a bad push. But while political involvement by evangelicals became a vast movement under men like Jerry Falwell in the late seventies and early eighties, pat Robertson ran for office, the President in 1987. The goal was to gain political influence within our civil government or political system. Not a bad thing at all, but for many reasons as evangelicals they and much along the way focused on the Republican party. In reality, this effort, I think as I look back, became so successful that some years ago, many were actually making the two synonymous Republican parties, evangelicals.
Well under that evaluation, any evaluation, this strategy from a human perspective succeeded. I think I’m giving my perspective and evangelical influence as a movement matured. And it reached a zenith with the election, well, last November, Donald Trump. Yet when it comes to important cultural markers along the way, immorality in the nation, bribery, corruption in government, courts, redefining God’s definition of life, marriage and things we’ve talked about, human sexuality literally exploded as your research has documented. But also during this time, your research has also confirmed that while cultural markers were moving away from God, so was the quality and the quantity of true faith and a dominant worldview. It’s a real matter. So here’s my question, and then fill in the balance of the program with it based on your 40 year experience and better understanding of the research and trends than anybody I know, where must the emphasis really be placed in God’s remedy for our condition be emphasized since the emphasis for 40 years by so many good people, has really under any consideration, been shaped more by the culture, not bringing us closer to God or an understanding of a biblical worldview?
George Barna:
Yeah, so that’s the big question. I guess I would say let’s recognize that every revolution, every major cultural transformation movement starts with me, with you, with one person. And so we’ve got to start with ourselves. And toward that end, I would say, look, if you want to be an agent of positive cultural transformation for the kingdom of God, for the purposes or the glory of God, well make sure that you are right with God personally. You’ll never be perfect. Of course, none of us will. We’re all sinners in need of Christ. But get your act together, first of all, because remember, a couple expressions I try to leave with my students is you do what you believe. And therefore, if you want to behave in the right way, you’ve got to think in the right way first. So take an inventory of what you believe.
Recognize that you can’t give what you don’t have. So don’t go out into the world trying to reproduce yourself unless you’re worth reproducing, spiritually speaking. And that third phrase, you always reproduce who you are. So make sure that you’re ready to reproduce in that way. So think about is Jesus Christ really your savior? I’m working on a body of research right now that’s showing that a huge proportion of people who have said, what I’ve come to allude to is the magic prayer, the sinner’s prayer. They say that prayer and then they go on with the rest of their life as if nothing is different. Nothing changes. So there’s a difference between thinking, yeah, I said the prayer and actually repenting, which means changing who you are intentionally and strategically becoming more Christ-like is Jesus truly your Lord and Savior? And then secondly, have you developed a biblical worldview?
Because if you do what you believe, your worldview is going to determine your behavior, your lifestyle, your moment to moment choices. So make sure that your worldview is right. And as part of that, then consider what are your life priorities? The old thing, if we were look at your Daytimer, your schedule, we were look at your checkbook or your wallet and determine where you put your resources, what would we learn about you? Are you really committed to God or are you more so committed to your own happiness and security? And I think it’s helpful for each of us who wants to know, love and serve God that to remember that we’re neither called to nor competent to or capable of fully transforming American culture, the way that we can be part of that revolution, that spiritual transformation is one life at a time. So then the question becomes, whose life are you investing in?
How are you investing in that life? What kind of transformation are you seeing coming out of those efforts? How are you measuring that? How are you adjusting according to what you’re measuring? How do you define success in all of that? And to recognize that, again, the don’t necessarily call us to go to church. They call us to be the church. And so that then hopefully encourages us to be serving God in tandem with a community of Bible belief and disciples of Christ. That’s what the church is. It’s not an institution, it’s not a program. It’s not an organization. It’s the remnant of people who have completely sold out, but not to the world we’ve sold out to Jesus. It’s like, okay, whatever he wants, whenever he wants it, however he wants it, that’s my agenda for the day, and I want to discover that consistently. I want to be judged according to whether or not I’m really beholden to that. If that can be your set of marching orders for every day, you are going to be an agent of transformation in this world. If there are other things that are taking precedence, then we’ve got some issues.
Sam Rohrer:
Dr. George Barna, thank you so much. That’s excellent. Ladies and gentlemen that thought you personally, how do you change the world? You me, become more like Christ. We will influence those around us, salt and light individually. I give an account for myself. You will can’t blame my choices on anybody else except me. Think holy living, patterning your life after Christ. That’s how we make a difference and change the.
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