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Inside Out – Biblical Worldview – Barna Research – 11/01/23

By Family Life News | November 1, 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:34 — 22.8MB)

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We develop our way of looking at the world—our worldview—before we turn 13.

Remarkably, new research finds that fewer than one in ten parents think through how to guide their children spiritually during those critical years.

Dr. George Barna directs the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University and includes these findings in his new book Raising Spiritual Champions: Nurturing Your Child’s Heart, Mind and Soul. “Everybody has a worldview. You need a worldview to get through the day,” Barna says. “So children are going to develop a worldview whether their parents are involved in it or not. That is a vacuum that has to be filled.”

If parents don’t work toward developing their children’s spiritual life, other worldviews will fill that void. “Without their parents being there to help guide them, they’re just doing the best they can to make sense of it all.” Barna offers ways to help parents to live out their roles as disciple-makers. “The first of those is to recognize that God gave them these children to raise up to be disciples,” he says. So it’s important to be intentional and not outsource this critical part of parenting.

“They have to have not only a commitment, but a plan to take in these children during those formative 12 years, and do everything they can to lead them down the right path.” That begins by knowing what beliefs you as a parent want your children to embrace. “Why? Because we do what we believe. In essence, your worldview is based on your beliefs, that then gets translated into behavior,” he says.

“The only way that you can be Christlike is to think like Jesus so that you can live like Jesus.”

Children see when stated beliefs are not reflected in behavior. “Kids don’t trust their parents anymore because their parents say one thing and do another. You want to get to your kids? Model the beliefs that you’re trying to teach them. When they see you live it out, then they’re going to say, ‘Okay, I see it. It works. My parents believe it. I’m going to run with it.’”

Underlying all of this, Dr. George Barna recommends that Christian parents bear in mind the context of all of their parenting. “Parenting is a vital battle in the spiritual war in which we live,” he says. “We have to be aware of the nature of that battle if we’re going to fight it well.”

Follow-up links for more information and inspiration:

Specific recommendations and insights for parents and families about building their faith in young, preteen children
How deep and widespread the problem is: too many children are not being nurtured in how to understand and practice their faith
Solutions in George Barna’s new book Raising Spiritual Champions — his 60th!
A Biblical worldview makes cultural transformation possible
Learn more about the work of the Cultural Research Center here.

Inside Out – Finding Unity, We are Agents of Grace – 08/23/23

By Family Life News | August 23, 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:45 — 18.9MB)

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Bridging divides — and loving as Jesus loved — amid this era of conflict, in the church and in the culture:

“Strive actively for peace”

Conflict over presidential politics and pandemic precautions revealed the substantial divisions between Christians that we live with today. “The divisions that we’re seeing in the American church—the conversations—are not different than the ones that are happening in the world. Every institution is going through this,” says pastor and author Daniel Darling. “But as Christians we have an opportunity to model something different. That Jesus said that the world would know that we are His by the way we love each other.”

Darling writes about which things should divide us — and which things should not — in his new book Agents of Grace.

“I think part of that is understanding the things that we need to contend for, right?” he asks. “Paul says to Timothy ‘fight the good fight.’ And then there are other things that are important but not ultimate, right? He also tells Timothy, later in 2 Timothy, to avoid stupid and foolish questions.” We should be able to live in unity with believers who differ with us on the less important choices that are part of living as a Christian. If there’s going to be division, it should only be to defend what’s essential to the Gospel.

“I think we have that upside down a little bit,” Darling says, “and we’ve succumbed to the sort of divisiveness of the spirit of the age.”

So how do we learn to bridge divides and love as Jesus loved? One way, Darling suggests, is to choose not to assume bad motives on the part of believers we disagree with. Another way is to faithfully hold on to our friends, even when we disagree with them. “These are hard and tumultuous times, and the more that we hang on to our friendships, the more that we love our brothers and sisters, the more we can do together. I think the Enemy—Satan—really wants to divide Christians and get us distracted so that we can’t fulfill the mission of God,” Darling says.

That said, Darling sees many reasons to hold onto hope for the Church. “God is active and alive today. We should ask ourselves, ‘What is God up to? What is God doing? What is He about to do in the world? And how do we join Him?’”

Learn more about Daniel Darling here and here.