Did you see that new study?
"Did you see that new new study?" my friend asked me over the phone. I, in fact, hadn't so she summarized it as: "Less than 40% of American pastors have a Biblical worldview."
I was shocked and a bit skeptical. I didn't want to immediately throw my fellow minister colleagues under the bus without some research. So I went to trusty ole google and looked it up. Here is what I found:
"A new nationwide survey of America’s Christian pastors shows that a majority of pastors lack a biblical worldview. In fact, just slightly more than a third (37%) possess a biblical worldview and the majority—62%—hold a hybrid worldview known as Syncretism." https://www.arizonachristian.edu/2022/05/12/shocking-lack-of-biblical-worldview-among-american-pastors/
Of course, I wanted to see the actual survey and questions that made these expert conclusions possible. Apparently, the survey and questions aren't available.
However, I quickly decided that even if the numbers are off because they asked questions like, "Do you believe that the King James Version is the only inspired translation of the Bible?" we are in deep trouble, because I'm sure they also asked some legitimate questions like, "Do you believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God?" and they received bad answers, like "No, I don't," or "I'm not sure."
This is more than depressing, it would certainly qualify as the greatest American tragedy of all time.
If we are giving our congregants, fellow believers a fake palatable god, we are giving them no God at all. Meaning we are giving them no hope at all. We are giving them death instead of life.
For those of you who faithfully support our ministry, I want to give you assurances in how we combat this.
We study the Bible with our students in our weekly core groups. I give our core group leaders these parameters for what they can study. The Bible. That is it. There are many good books out there that we can reference and take a little detour in, but the core of what we study must be the Bible. Not a book about the Bible, not a Bible study, not videos about the Bible, but the Bible. I believe that every student must be adept at reading the Word of God, understanding it and applying it to their lives in a Biblical manner.
We study the Bible in our weekly one-on-ones with students. Again, we believe the answers to their problems are in that book, so we study it with them and teach them to find their answers in there.
We preach the Bible in our weekly large group gatherings. We take a deep dive into the word of God. Every semester, we methodically preach through a book of the Bible. Why? Because if we pick a different part of the Bible to preach every week, we will skip the non-appealing parts like Romans 1 and preach only what appeals to us and doesn't offend our listeners. So in our core groups and in our large group gatherings, we pick a book of the Bible and we plod through it together.
We have the hard conversations with our students. When they have an improper view of the Bible, we show them how it does not line up. We hold the line of the Bible as our guide book, even when it seems easier to believe otherwise.
I'm not sure if this is exhaustive, but I know it matters. You can invest your time and your prayers in many ministries. We can't thank you enough for choosing us. We know that we are not in the position to change the mind of American pastors, but we are in the position to change the minds of American University students, who will one day be our pastors.