Addressing Today’s Worldview Crisis

 

Last week was a busy one to say the least.  Wednesday evening I had the privilege of presenting the second part of a seminar on Raising Kingdom Kids in an Anti-Christian Culture to adults at First Baptist Church Snellville in Georgia.  Saturday I participated in a Kingdom Parenting Summit at Spring Baptist Church in Texas.  Both of the these events reinforced my conviction that there must be an intentional effort to equip Christians with a biblical worldview and philosophy of education.

In preparing for these seminars, I was reminded of what Dr. George Barna presented at some recent worldview conferences at which we were both speaking.  His research on the worldview of adults in the country shows that there is a major worldview crisis facing us today.  This is especially true for Christian parents, church leaders and educators.

Dr. Barna found that the percentage of adults that have a biblical worldview has declined over the past few years.  Adults who possessed a biblical worldview dropped from 10% in 2016 to 9% in 2017 and 7% in 2018.  According to this trend, the percentage of adults who have a biblical worldview today is most likely less than 7%.  This is clear evidence that we have a worldview crisis today and this crisis will have disastrous effects on future generations.

There was one slide that Barna presented that really caught my attention.  This slide gave a profile of adults in the United States.

One of the findings in this profile is that 70% of adults still self-identified themselves as Christians.  I can remember reading Patrick Morely’s book, The Rest of Your Life.  He referred to similar statistics and asked a penetrating question.  Where are all these Christians?  If 70% of adults are Christians, why aren’t they impacting the culture in a meaningful way?

This is even more evident when it comes to another anomaly found in Barna’s research.  He found that 79 million adults believed that they possessed a biblical worldview.  However, when responding to 40 questions related to principles that form a biblical worldview only 18 million actually lived by such beliefs.

Over the years I have found that this is one of the most challenging problems facing the home, church and school.  Most Christians believe that they think and act biblically.  When faced with the findings of research such as Barna’s, they believe that the alarming results apply to others not to themselves.

I continually have Christians acknowledge that there is a crisis of belief within the body of Christ.  However, they tend to put qualifiers on the reality of the worldview crisis facing Christians today with statements such as:

• our church is different and we are making disciples of Jesus
• the secular schools (primarily public) in our area are “good” schools
• our Christian school is effective in biblical worldview integration because we have “strong” Christian teachers
• our homes (parents) are doing a good job raising their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord

As long as we shift the focus of such research from ourselves to others, the necessary changes that need to take place will never become a reality.  When we believe that “we” are the Christians that have a strong biblical worldview, we will never see the need to engage in biblical worldview formation activities or efforts to develop a biblical philosophy of education.  It will always be others who need this — not us.

God has allowed me to conduct two staff development seminars, one board training session and two parenting seminars in the past four weeks.  In each of these events, I have focused on the need to understand God’s ultimate purpose for education and the necessity to embrace a biblical worldview and philosophy of education.

The responses have been overwhelmingly positive.  I found Christian parents, church leaders and educators to be very hungry for the truths that were presented and they all wanted to learn more.

This is why I have made the commitment to put all of my energies into challenging as many Christians as possible to be intentional in their own biblical worldview formation and understanding of a biblical philosophy of education.

There are hundreds of Christian schools that need to become a KEM Prime Member and give their staff and board members access to key training resources in these areas.  If you are an administrator of a Christian school, I want to encourage you to have your school become a Prime Member today.  This membership is the most economical source of biblical professional development resources available today.

Simply click here to join now or email me at [email protected] to see if you and your school are eligible for a special school discount.

I am often amazed that so many Christian school leaders do not have an ongoing, intentional plan to make sure all of their teachers and board members have a biblical worldview and know, understand and are fully committed to a biblical philosophy of education.

Could it be that they believe that today’s worldview crisis is someone else’s fault?  Could it be that they are like Pogo in the comic strip where he said, We have met the enemy and he is us?

Barna’s research shows that every one of us needs to be determined to develop a biblical worldview so that we can effectively shape the worldview of our children and students.  If we are not successful at this one task, we are failures no matter what else we accomplish.

Please share your thoughts on today’s worldview crisis by leaving a comment below.