Jesus said that He would build His Church, and His disciples, and early Christians had a clear sense of what He meant by that claim. It is this Church that we must rediscover today if we are to manifest God’s Presence as Church, and if each member is to grow up as a mature lover of God. 

Many would be shocked if they looked at the Church of early centuries and compare it to the Church of today. Christians then understood that the magnitude of God’s becoming flesh in Jesus not only demanded their awe, but a lifestyle that appropriately honored that supernatural Reality. 

Church used to be the gathering of Christians who shared a life together; a community who thought different, lived different and – above all– loved different then the society around them. The quality and depth of their love was supernatural. This otherworldly love drew many to Christ and to a Church dedicated to reveal the miracle by how they lived.

Unfortunately, over time, the politics, economics, and philosophies of the secular culture gradually pulled many Christians away from a radiant testimony into a way of living that was little different than the secular society around them.  Where Christ was THE love of their life, Christ became a (weak) love among many other “loves”.¹

This is the devastating reality with the Western Christian Church today. With each decade the Church continues to become a more distracted, compromised, and smaller piece of what it once lived and held as precious.

Demographers, and social scientists confirm this. Their research reveals the average Christian is ignorant of the Bible, rarely prays, and has the same relationship problems as everyone else. There is only a few percentage points difference between the morals, convictions, and life goals of those who confess Christ and those who deny Him.² The testimony of the American Church is woeful and horrendous. Many purported Christians have lost the unique vision of what it means to love, live and think as a Christ-follower. 

Consider the results from the 2020 Ligonier Ministries’ State of Theology survey conducted by LifeWay Research [A survey that “takes the theological temperature of the United States and reveals what Americans believe about God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, sin, worship, and ethics.”³ The Evangelical portion of the survey reveals…

• 46% believe the Holy Spirit was a force, but not God
• 30% of Evangelicals believe that Jesus was a great teacher but He was not God.
• 73% believe that “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God (only 27% disagree).⁴ i.e., Arianism
• God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam” (42 percent).
• One in five Evangelicals believe that gender is a matter of choice (22%).
• 23% think that “religious belief is a matter of personal opinion; it is not about objective truth.”
• More than one-in-three (39 percent) believe “worshiping alone or with one’s family is a valid replacement for regularly attending church,”
• One-in-four (26 percent) believe “churches must provide entertaining worship services if they want to be effective.”
• And then there is the comprehensive 2022-2023 study by George Barna…

Dr. George Barna is the Director of Arizona Christian University Christian Research Center, and Creator of the American Worldview Inventory confirms this assessment. Here is a sampling of some of his recent findings, based on the thousands interviews of those who claim they are Christians (2022-2023):⁵

• Among professing Christians of adults under 30, just 1% have a biblical worldview.⁶ The incidence rises to 3% among people in their 30s and 40s; 5% among those ages 50 to 64; and peaks at 8% among adults 65-plus.
• 4% of those who identified themselves as Christians hold a Biblical worldview, and only half of these read the Bible at least once a week.
• Only 37% of pastors have a biblical worldview (i.e., 63% do not have a biblical worldview).
• 43% believe that Jesus sinned during His time on the earth.⁷
• 52% of American Evangelicals do not believe there is such thing as objective moral truth.⁸
• 58% of Evangelicals believe the Holy Spirit is not a Divine Person, but merely a symbol.⁹
• 98% of professed born-again young people “believe in Christ” but show no signs of the confession in either their attitudes or way of life.¹⁰

Dr. Barna’s reflections regarding the above: 

…the family and the church look more like the world than ever before.… “The research shows that parents are in a state of spiritual distress. While the warning signs are identifiable and unmistakable, it appears that parents, as well as their support systems (i.e., church, extended family, and parachurch ministries), are too distracted or disinterested to acknowledge and address the parenting crises. It seems that a tragic crash is in store.

The above is exactly what unbelievers see when they look at today’s church. Here is an excerpt from one secular journalist that captures the sentiment…

I am not religious, so it is not my place to dictate to Christians what they should and should not believe. Still, if someone has a faith worth following, I feel that their beliefs should make me feel uncomfortable for not doing so. If they share 90 percent of my lifestyle and values, then there is nothing especially inspiring about them. Instead of making me want to become more like them, it looks very much as if they want to become more like me.¹¹

Ben Sixsmith

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1. Revelation 2:4; 2 Timothy 3:2; Matthew 24:12 ↩︎
2. See American Worldview Inventory 2022-23, George Barna (Arizona Christian University Press, 2023) Here is a dated clip of him presenting his findings of 11 years ago. Although his statistics are not recent the trend is clear, and it is worth watching for his comments, conclusions and prescriptions. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=How+God+Transforms…. You can find his complete up to date findings in his American Worldview Inventory (2022-2023), a few are quoted here. ↩︎
3. Survey Reveals Many Evangelicals Believe Unbiblical Beliefs, Joe Carter, Sept. 10, 2020, From the following study: The 2020 Ligonier Ministries’ State of Theology survey is a biennial survey conducted by LifeWay Research that “takes the theological temperature of the United States and reveals what Americans believe about God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, sin, worship, and ethics.” https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/survey-reveals-many… ↩︎
4. Top Five Heresies Among Evangelicals, Christianity Today, Stefani MacDade, Sept. 19, 2022; https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/september-web-only/state-of… ↩︎
5. https://www.georgebarna.com/research/90_american-worldview-inventory-2023—release- ↩︎
6. Dr. George Barna presents the following seven identifiers for what he understands as a Biblical worldview…
   An orthodox, biblical understanding of God.
   All human beings are sinful by nature; every choice we make has moral considerations and consequences.
   Knowing Jesus Christ is the only means to salvation, through our confession of sin and reliance on His forgiveness.
   The entire Bible is true, reliable, and relevant, making it the best moral guide for every person, in all situations.
   Absolute moral truth exists—and those truths are defined by God, described in the Bible, and are unchanging across time and cultures.
   The ultimate purpose of human life is to know, love, and serve God with all your heart, mind, strength, and soul.
   Success on earth is best understood as consistent obedience to God—in thoughts, words, and actions. ↩︎
7. “Barna: We’re Experiencing another Reformation, and not in a Good Way” ,Jessica Lea,  10/08/2020, https://churchleaders.com/news/383605-george-barna-another-reformation.html#:~:text=American…. ↩︎
8. “Barna: We’re Experiencing another Reformation, and not in a Good Way”, Jessica Lea, 10/08/2020, https://churchleaders.com/news/383605-george-barna-another-reformation.html#:~:text=American%20Christia…. ↩︎
9. Ibid ↩︎
10. J McDowell, Josh, The Last Christian Generation, Holiday, Fl.:  Green Key Books, 2006, p. 18, quoting George Barna, Think Like Jesus, (Minneapolis:  Baker Books, 2003), 26. See also J.D. Greear, “Should We Stop Asking Jesus into Our Hearts? https://research.lifeway.com/2013/07/05/should-we-stop-asking-jesus-into-our-hearts/
    A 2011 Barna study shows that nearly half of all adults in American have prayed such a prayer [“the sinners prayer”], and subsequently believe they are going to heaven, though many of them rarely, if ever, attend a church, read the Bible personally, or have lifestyles that differ in any significant way from those outside the church.”  ↩︎
11. Ben Sixsmith, “The Sad Irony of Celebrity Pastors”, The Spectator, https://thespectator.com/topic/sad-irony-celebrity-pastors-carl-lentz-hillsong, cited in, Revival or We Die, Michael L. Brown Phd. ↩︎