Surprisingly, a recent poll revealed that only a few percent of the pastors in the United States hold a biblical worldview, and it’s alarming to some Christians.
George Barna Pollster
In a report shared by Christian Headlines, George Barna conducted a survey about the U.S. pastors’ biblical worldview. And the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University revealed pretty alarming results. The data showed that only “37 percent of pastors in the U.S. hold a biblical worldview.” This percentage consists of senior pastors, associate pastors, teaching pastors, and youth or children’s pastors.

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Such a report truly shocked many Christians as the results could mean that pastors need “spiritual awakening.” The pollster’s research director wrote, “This is another strong piece of evidence that the culture is influencing the American church more than Christian churches are influencing the culture.” Moreover, it calls for a desperate need to address these concerns “in our pulpits as in the pews.”
Biblical Worldview Questions
Apparently, the George Barna pollster carefully crafted 54 questions from a biblical worldview. They could assess the pastor’s Christian beliefs and theology through these questions. Also, they ordered the questions into eight categories. And the results revealed as follows according to the report:
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Only 57 percent of the pastors’ perspectives about the “purpose and calling of life” are biblical. While “family and the value of life (47 percent); God, creation, and history (44 percent); personal faith practices (43 percent); sin, salvation and one’s relationship to God (43 percent); human character and human nature (40 percent); lifestyle, personal behavior and relationships (40 percent).”

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Disturbing Data
In addition, George stressed that youth pastors’ and children’s pastors’ Biblical worldview stats are disturbing.
“Keep in mind a person’s worldview primarily develops before the age of 13,” the director explained. “Then goes through a period of refinement during their teens and twenties. From a worldview perspective, a church’s most important ministers are the children’s pastor and the youth pastor. Discovering that seven out of every eight of those pastors lack a biblical worldview helps to explain why so few people in the nation’s youngest generations are developing a heart and mind for biblical principles and ways of life, and why our society seems to have run wild over the last decade, in particular.”
But despite the alarming survey results, George shared a brighter perspective about it. He highlights the hope amid the discouraging data.
“You cannot fix something unless you know it’s broken,” he pointed out. “God is in the transformation business. Pastors who are willing to allow Him to transform their thinking and behavior can emerge from that process as a powerful example of what can happen when one’s heart, mind and soul are surrendered to God. It certainly seems that if America is going to experience a spiritual revival, that awakening is needed just as desperately in our pulpits as in the pews.”
Let us pray for every Christian and not just pastors to always be aligned with God’s Word. That Holy Spirit would always open their eyes to interpret it in a right and Biblical perspective.
Reference | Christian Headlines