In his recent interview with The Christian Post, George Barna of Arizona Christian University's Cultural Research Center said most of the markers of health for the Church in America are pointing the wrong way.
"People have become more selfish, churches have become less influential, pastors have become less Bible-centric," he observes. "The media now influences the Church more than the Church influences the media – or the culture for that matter."
He said it does not help that many churches are more concerned with the color of the carpet than with the souls of their neighbors.
"The Christian Body tends to get off track arguing about a lot of things that really don't matter," Barna lamented.
And the fact that few Christians who attend church regularly, including pastors, have a biblical worldview has rendered the church impotent.
"We've reached a time of Christian invisibility in our culture," Barna told The Christian Post.
The glimmer of hope, he added, is found in the home, specifically with children's worldview development, "helping children to develop into spiritual champions for the purpose of becoming cultural transformation agents – understanding that's why we become disciples of Jesus."
For the purposes of the research, the Barna Group defines a biblical worldview as believing that absolute moral truths exist; that such truth is defined by the Bible; and firm belief in six specific religious views.
Those views aere that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life; God is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe who stills rules it today; salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned; Satan is real; a Christian has a responsibility to share their faith in Christ with other people; and the Bible is accurate in all of its teachings.
The denominations found to produce the highest proportions of adults with a biblical worldview were non-denominational Protestant churches (13%), Pentecostal churches (10%), and Baptist churches (8%).
