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Me:  If a biblical worldview is a filter how we see the world, doesn’t a pastor need to have this?

God:  YES

In his recently released book Think Like Jesus, researcher George Barna made waves by citing statistics showing just 9% of all born again adults and just 7% of Protestants possess a biblical worldview.

He states, “There are a several troubling patterns.”

First, although most Americans consider themselves to be Christian and say they know the content of the Bible, less than one out of ten Americans demonstrate such knowledge through their actions.

Second, the generational pattern suggests that parents are not focused on guiding their children to have a biblical worldview. One of the challenges for parents, though, is that you cannot give what you do not have, and most parents do not possess such a perspective on life.

The information also showed a national survey on Protestant pastors do not have a Biblical world view.

Based on interviews with 601 Senior Pastors nationwide, representing a random cross-section of Protestant churches, Barna reports that only half of the country’s Protestant pastors

(51%) have a biblical worldview embracing these six core beliefs:

the accuracy of biblical teaching

the sinless nature of Jesus

the literal existence of Satan

the omnipotence and omniscience of God

salvation by grace alone

and the personal responsibility to evangelize

The low percentage of Christians who have a biblical worldview is a direct reflection of the fact that half of our primary religious teachers and leaders do not have one.

The research also points out that even in churches where the pastor has a biblical worldview, most of the congregants do not.

More than six out of every seven congregants in the typical church do not share the biblical worldview of their pastor even when he or she has one.

• BARNA stated that seven out of ten adults say that God is the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe who still rules today. That includes the 93% of born-again adults who hold that conviction. Great.
• And that half of all adults firmly believe that the Bible is accurate in all the principles it teaches. That proportion includes the four-fifths of born-again adults (79%) who concur.

BUT HERE IS WHERE IT CHANGES:

• Only slightly less than half of the born-again adults believe in absolute moral truth.
• And just one-quarter of adults are convinced that Satan is a real force.
• Nearly half of all born again Christians strongly reject the notion of earning salvation through their deeds – but what about the rest?

The research data also showed that one pattern emerged loud and clear: young adults rarely possess a biblical worldview

The current study found that less than one-half of one percent of adults aged 18 to 23 have a biblical worldview, compared to about one out of every nine older adults.

By helping to clarify what a person believes to be important, true and desirable, a worldview has a dramatic influence on a person’s choices in any given situation.

Barna’s research has discovered that there are unusually large differences in behavior related to matters such as media use, profanity, gambling, alcohol use, honesty, civility, and sexual choices.

A worldview serves as a person’s decision-making filter, enabling them to make sense of the complex and huge amount of information, experiences, relationships and opportunities they face in life.

The firm’s studies have also pointed out that a person’s worldview is primarily shaped and is firmly in place by the time someone reaches the age of 13; it is refined through experience during the teen and early adult years; and then it is passed on to others during their adult life.

Such studies underscore the necessity of parents and other influencers being intentional in how they help develop the worldview of children and all citizens in our world.

But no matter our age friends, the central element of being a Christian is to embrace basic biblical principles and incorporate them into our worldview and our actions.