Allen Jackson NOW

Allen Jackson: I'm delighted today. I have somebody I have respected for a long time. Read a lot of books and we've had the chance to visit from time to time. Dr. George Barna, welcome back, sir.

Dr. George Barna: Alan, great to be with you again.

Allen Jackson: I have been reading Barna's polls and research. You're kind of the Christian version of Gallup. I think Gallup's now the secular version of Barna. I mean, I know you've had some twists and turns in the career, but thank you. For decades, you have been a voice for truth. Well, for the two or three people that may not know you, you've been a researcher and author, a professor, but the slice I've been I most depended upon was the research to give us an understanding of Christian thought and its influence in our broader culture and sometimes pretty discouraging, but it's all I've used it a lot of times to help me form action plans and responses to the culture.

So, you have a new book, How to Think Like Jesus, which kind of spoiler alert. If you think it's just to help you form a systematic theology, not primarily, which I loved it. It's really about a biblical worldview. And you know, my lifetime, formal theological training, we've been all arguing about Pauline theology and the the power of myth and the formation of scripture and a bunch of other trivia that really wasn't impacting culture. I I think the root of this is a biblical worldview. So, thank you for this. What made you decide to do it?

Dr. George Barna: Alan, as you know, for decades now, I've been trying to figure out what do Americans believe, why do they believe it, how do they come to that conclusion, what are they doing about it? And what we've discovered essentially is that they're not thinking much of anything. They have a whole series of beliefs, but it hasn't really been formed by family. It hasn't been formed by the church. It's been formed by the culture. And so, the additional research we did was to try to figure out, well, what's that decision-making filter that they're using to make these wild choices that have driven our culture, you know, off the cliff basically.

And came to understand that everybody's got a worldview. It forms really early. And there are many different options that you can choose. A biblical worldview is one of only several dozen different worldviews you can choose. And came to recognize, but that's what we need people to go for. So, we've been trying to help people understand what a worldview is, the fact that they have one, the fact that if it 's not biblical in its entirety, they're going to be making bad choices, choices that will hurt them, choices that will offend God, choices that will undermine the culture.

And so, the more we can move people to a biblical worldview, the better it will be. And in doing that research, realized that if you don't have a strong foundation to build on, doesn't matter how many great sermons you hear, how many wonderful Christian books you read, it's going to be diverted by that bad filter that you've got, that decision-making filter that doesn't buy the basic precepts of the sermon or the books or whatever. So, this is an attempt to help people say, let's go back to the beginning. Let's figure out, do you have a good foundation?

Because if you don't have the right foundation, it's all going to crumble.

Allen Jackson: Okay. Sometimes your data is not encouraging. Majority of Americans identify as Christian. So, what percentage of those have you found have a biblical worldview? I'm seated, so I can take this. Can I read ahead?

Dr. George Barna: Yeah. Currently, it's 4%.

Allen Jackson: 4% of people who say they're Christians actually embrace a biblical

Dr. George Barna: 4% of adults in America among people who call themselves Christian at 6%.

Allen Jackson: 4% of adults. Okay. Okay. Well, there's a whopping shift. Yeah.

Dr. George Barna: We're bumping that baby up.

Allen Jackson: Through the roof. So, a small percentage of people who have some alignment with the Christian faith hold the biblical worldview.

Dr. George Barna: And even among people who are in a category that I call theologically identified born again Christians, it's only 11% among those people. What does that mean? These are the people who say that when I die, I know I'm going to heaven, but only because I know I 'm a sinner. I've confessed my sins to God. I'm I'm doing the best I can to repent. And after I die, Jesus is going to stand up for me and say now he's with me. But that's the only reason that they're going to heaven. It's not because they were good enough.

They tried harder than anybody else. They went to the right church. It's about Jesus. But even among that group, which is 33% of adults in America, only 11% have a biblical worldview.

Allen Jackson: So, I've spent my professional life in the church. And data like that suggests we are failing miserably. I mean, we're collecting people, but in actually shaping making disciples, people who live according to the perspective of scripture. We we have lots of opportunity.

Dr. George Barna: The way that I talk about it when I'm with pastors and they all they'll ask me all kinds of questions. I say, look, we've gotten really good at marketing. And so, we know how to draw a crowd. The problem is once we have the crowd, we haven't figured out what to do with them that will please Jesus. Now, we can please the world. We can please the crowd. We can please the denomination. But are we doing what Jesus called us to do? What did he call us to do? Make disciples. That's the bottom line.

Allen Jackson: I agree.

Dr. George Barna: And the only reason that you would want a biblical worldview is because without it, you cannot be a disciple. Why not? What is a disciple? Look it up in the dictionary. It'll tell you it's an imitator of a master. And so, if we are going to be disciples of Jesus, we need to be imitating Jesus. How do you show that you're imitating somebody? By what you do. Great. But why do you do what you do? Well, I learned from our research, you do what you believe. And so, beliefs are critically important and this is where the church and the family come into play.

We can help shape those beliefs. But you've got to understand which beliefs, what they are, how to put them together, and most importantly, how to convert them into a lifestyle. And so, the problem that we have in our country is that people aren't thinking like Jesus. And if they don't think like Jesus, since you do what you believe, they're not going to act like Jesus. And if they don't act like Jesus, they're not going to be his disciples because they are not imitating him.

Allen Jackson: I'll get to the points in your book in a minute, but I want to wander around in the weeds just a second. You said our worldviews formed really early.

Dr. George Barna: Mhm.

Allen Jackson: You know, the statistics I'm not talking to you about statistics.

Dr. George Barna: Oh, come on. Come on. Try me.

Allen Jackson: I've been told repeatedly that if you make a decision for Christ, you're going to make it early in life or it's highly unlikely you ever do that.

Dr. George Barna: Right.

Allen Jackson: So, I'm assuming you're saying it's in that same window, pre-adolescence, something like that where your worldview really gets formed.

Dr. George Barna: What we discovered and this was a life-changing insight for me is that a person's worldview starts forming at 15 to 18 months of age. And it's fully formed for most people by the age of 13. And yet, you know, former pastor, I've worked in churches. I work with thousands of churches. Most of our resources, most of our energy, most of our attention, most of our ministry goes to adults. Now, most of those adults don't have a biblical worldview. Most of those adults are not disciples of Jesus. But we keep doing what we're doing and think, well, if it 's not working, we'll just put more resources into it.

That 'll fix it. It's not the point. We miss the window of opportunity to shape somebody's worldview when they were young. Now, is it possible that an adult, let's say, has an errant worldview, a non-biblical worldview? Can that change? Of course. Holy Spirit can do anything at any time with anybody. But I'm a numbers guy. And I'll tell you, the numbers show us that it's very rare that that happens. Most of the people who die in our country in any given year, and I've studied this, morbid maybe, but welcome to my world. There's numbers to be had.

Um most of the people who die this year will die with the same worldview they had at the age of 13.

Allen Jackson: Wow.

Dr. George Barna: They will have reshaped it a little bit. They'll articulate it better. They'll refine it slightly. But it's in essence the same worldview. And And why does that matter? Because a worldview is the decision-making filter that we take with us everywhere. Every decision we make flows through our worldview. That 's why this is so important. It 's not just about eternity and salvation. It's like every decision you make every day flows through your worldview. So, if we don't get it right when somebody's young, the chances are very very small it's ever going to change.

Allen Jackson: I guess the good news in that is if if we are fortunate enough to having an impact on young people, children and young people, it's incredibly durable.

Dr. George Barna: Yes. Yes. Most of them, not all of them, but most of them will keep it with them for the duration of their life because as you well know, when you follow Christ, the more you exercise that Christ muscle, the more you're impressed with the fact this this works. This is real. This is what it's all about.

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Allen Jackson: I I think for somebody that would be new to a conversation about worldview to to read your book, there's a bit of an opportunity for self-evaluation. You get a little bit of self-reflection along with your information. And this comes from a really broad sample. This wasn't like from two people. It was

Dr. George Barna: It's thousands of people

Allen Jackson: You did your homework and you give us seven cornerstones I think it was for building a biblical worldview.

Dr. George Barna: Yeah.

Allen Jackson: So, if somebody wasn't 12 years old and they said I'm in the weeds on this, you just start to do that one piece at a time?

Dr. George Barna: Absolutely. And And the way I tend to think about it is your worldview gets laid like cement where at 15 18 months of age, somebody or the world really starts pouring cement. And by the age of 13, that cement's hard. So, if you're after the age of 13, first thing you got to do is rent a jackhammer and get that cement out of there because it's not doing you any good. And you need to replace it with good cement, a good foundation. And that's going to take more than twice as much time as if we'd done it originally.

But it's so critically important to determining your identity in Christ, your purpose for living, all the the the morals by which you're going to live, the values that you're going to embrace, the kind of relationships that you're going to develop. It affects everything in your life. So, it's not easy. It's not quick. But it's worth it.

Allen Jackson: It's like maintaining your health. You know, you can't eat poorly for 6 months and then go to the gym and work out really hard today and be golden.

Dr. George Barna: I can attest to that.

Allen Jackson: I I wish. Well, I I want to come back, but I So, maybe statistically it helps us because we have to define culture. If culture is shaping our worldview, it can't just be a bogeyman that's out there. When you say culture, you know, I describe it as I in my imagination, it's like this unending torrent of messaging that cascades over us that shapes how we think and how we should feel and how we should understand. But if I 'm listening to you and you're this your concept of it being formed early, those family of origins and those family systems are going to be huge in that worldview.

So, culture is secondary to that?

Dr. George Barna: No. Family is part of culture.

Allen Jackson: Okay.

Dr. George Barna: And so, when I've tried to figure out, and it's very difficult to research, but some of it wound up being qualitative research, some was quantitative. What we realized is that there are many different influences that make up a culture. And so, you've got media. You've got family. You've got schools. You've got government. You've got personal relationships. You've got business. You know, your peers, business. All of these things and and others are having an influence on all the things around them. And they become successful partly based on how much and what kind of influence they exert on the world around them.

So, that's all going on simultaneously to a child growing out of the crib, starting to crawl around, walking around the house, going to kindergarten, going to elementary school, and so forth. All these things are all around them all the time. And so, they're constantly bombarding them with messages, whether they're verbal messages, things they read, things they observe, or maybe they watch through movies or television or social media. All of those things are giving worldview messages. Nobody calls it that.

Allen Jackson: Right.

Dr. George Barna: But a movie is a worldview documentary. Nobody will say, well, this is a Marxist documentary, but the underlying message may well be Marxist. And so, that's what it's teaching its audience. That's what it's professing to its audience. It might be a biblical message. That's what it's teaching people, etc. So, we discovered that currently you ask, you know, what culture is. I would say it's all the the customs, the traditions, the habits, the core principles, the values that are being upheld by that society, that are being promoted by that society and demonstrated and celebrated by that society.

And as we look at American society, what we've discovered is that the single most impactful influence on people is media. In fact, the the most recent study I did of that, what we found is that media has more impact on people than all of the other influences combined.

Allen Jackson: Wow.

Dr. George Barna: And part of that is because Americans no longer trust other individuals. I did a book a couple of years ago, Raising Spiritual Champions, about how to teach children how to become a disciple of Jesus. You know, how do you build their worldview? How do you build their their desire, their passion to follow Jesus? And you know, one of the things that we found is that uh kids are being much more influenced by media than by their parents, their siblings, their peers, their school, the government and its laws and regulations. All of those things combined. So, I mean, that's something that we got to be very attentive to and the church, by the way.

I didn't put that in, but I I should.

Allen Jackson: I understood.

Dr. George Barna: If we don't change that, it doesn't matter how good our teaching about worldview is going to be. We cannot allow the media to have the biggest speakers in the auditorium, you know, the loudspeakers. I mean, we we've we've got to wrestle that away from the media, show what the media is doing, how it's doing it. And then we need to do it better.

Allen Jackson: And God is moving in the earth. I want to move with him. I'm asked frequently, what can we do? Well, I want to give you one way to respond to to what God is doing. Join us as a monthly ministry partner. It's a $25 monthly investment in the ministry and all the forms that it takes from broadcast to podcast to print and publishing and what we do with the church internationally. We're working with churches all over the world these days in Armenia, Iran, Ukraine, Israel, the Middle East. Uh we'll include you in the the routine conference calls that we do with our monthly ministry partners.

You can be a part of that for a $25 monthly ministry partner commitment. We'll stand together in this season in lifting up the name of Jesus. Will you pray with me? Father, you said when we lack wisdom, we could ask. I pray for every person listening. If this is the time and place for us to stand together, that you'll make that abundantly clear. I thank you for provision for your people in every season in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you and thank you. Truth matters. You know, I'm not talking about your truth or my truth, but the truth.

Well, on Alan Jackson now, I talk with top voices and insiders about what's happening today.

Dr. George Barna: It gives us ease to look away from evil. And when you do that, it gets worse and worse and worse.

Allen Jackson: Including the economy.

Guest (Male): I expect a very strong year in 2026.

Allen Jackson: Conflicts in the Middle East.

Guest (Male): And if there's something that is evil and you're silent and you don't speak out against it, you're agreeing with it.

Allen Jackson: Energy, political unrest.

Guest (Male): They're trying to thwart the law to benefit them politically.

Allen Jackson: You'll be surprised at how much isn't covered by the legacy media. Well, our goal is to equip you to help find a trustworthy perspective on what's happening around us. So, when you have conversations throughout your day, you can bring the truth you learn into those places. It's time to be salt and light. Our nation needs it. So, the obvious is we can't allow church to be something we do in a building for a few minutes a week or a devotional session or a one-on-one mentoring program. It has to be fully integrated across the breadth of our lives in every component, every conversation, every aspect.

It's I use the example of being married. If when I leave my house, I slip off my wedding ring because I don't want to be offensive to anyone else. But when I come home, I'm very faithful. I mean, we all laugh. We understand it's illegitimate. But I I think we've held something of that notion with our faith. And we've been told to do that that it isn't welcome in the corporate boardroom or isn't welcome in the public square or isn't welcome in government service. And for some reason, like sheep, we have complied with that. And we have to change, don't we?

Dr. George Barna: We do. You know, it's interesting you're bringing that up because just before I came in here, I was talking with a couple of the guys and we're talking about my wife who right now is in Uganda. She has a ministry over there and she goes over multiple times a year, spends weeks at a time there. And you know, they're ministering in multiple villages. And one of the things that we were told when we started that ministry is don't mess with the Muslims. They get very upset. They could get violent. So, you don't want you don't want to bring Jesus to them.

You know, if it if it comes up, fine, deal with it, but you don't want to be aggressive with that. You know, my wife's kind of like me. It's yeah, whatever. We're going to do what God calls us to do. You know. And so, she goes over there and they go to this one village that's Muslim. And they they uh during when COVID started in Uganda, it was a total mess. Nobody knew what to do. So, they fed the village for a while. They're not a feeding organization. They don't believe in giving out free stuff, but people were starving to death.

So, I mean, they they brought them food. And then then they started teaching them about healthcare because, you know, their teeth were falling. I mean, there are all kinds of issues. And the leader of the community said, why are you doing this? And then my wife looks at her and says, Jesus compelled me to be here. He loves you and because he loves you, why love you? And you know, I know we may not believe the same stuff, but he loves you. So, I want to do what I can to show his love to you.

And you know, she was kind of taken aback. I will tell you today, 2 years later, every person in that community is a Christian. Every Muslim in that community became Christian because of the demonstration of love and the faithfulness of going back and back and back. My wife hired a team of of Ugandans. They're there every week blessing those people, loving those people, living with those people. That's what it takes to make disciples of Jesus. Can't be the 1 hour on Sunday because then we've got 8 to 10 hours a day of media that we're ingesting.

Allen Jackson: I I've learned as a pastor, there's a tremendous difference in a crowd and a community of faith. When people decide to step out of the crowd and invest their time and their resources, they become a part of a community and it changes their lives. Well, I want to give you that invitation. I'm grateful you're a part of the crowd who watched the ministry. I want to ask you to consider becoming a monthly ministry partner. I believe if you'll make that regular commitment to what God is doing through this ministry, it'll bring momentum to your spiritual life and it will help us reach more people than we've ever reached with the gospel before.

Thank you.

Guest (Male): Ministry partners are at the heart of everything we do. Through their faithful monthly support, we're able to share biblical truth, encourage believers, and provide resources that help people become more fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ through radio, television, the internet, books, events, and other resources. Become a ministry partner today at alanjackson.com or call 800-880-5102.

Dr. George Barna: Think of all the government laws that are telling us what we can and cannot do that's around us 24/7. You look at all of these different things. They're just pounded on us. And we're trying to be these delicate little daisies out in the middle of the field. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want to bother you. Don't want to get in your way. Hey, Jesus wasn't a daisy. Okay.

Allen Jackson: Right.

Dr. George Barna: I mean, he brought it. He brought it and he wasn't shy about it and we shouldn't be.

Allen Jackson: You you said in the book, I don't I think I'm close that we don't deliberate Most of us don't deliberately choose our worldview. The

Dr. George Barna: It's worldview by default.

Allen Jackson: Right.

Dr. George Barna: Yeah. Why is that? Because scripturally, of course, family, parents are responsible for developing the worldview of their children. Multiple scriptures that don't use the word worldview, but they talk about how you're going to live, what you're going to believe, what you're going to devote yourself to. It's worldview. And And so, parents in America have no plan for their children other than I want them to be happy and successful and healthy. Those are the three things and secure, four things actually, that that parents are gearing all of their developmental activities with their children toward. But what about that relationship with Jesus?

Most theologically identified born again parents have no plan for how they're going to raise their children up to be disciples of Jesus Christ. And Alan, I would tell you that part of the problem there is that again through the research we've understood, you know what? You reproduce who you are. And if you're not a disciple, there's no way you're going to produce disciples in other people's lives. So, you've got to pull your life together through Christ first and then you bring that into the lives of others. Parents need to get their lives Christian parents need to stop pretending that they're Christian and really get on it.