Episode 409: Are Your Children Integrated Disciples or Emergent Followers? | Dr. George Barna Interview

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worldview helps you to make every decision that you make every moment of every day. But a person's worldview begins developing somewhere around 15 to 18 months of age and is almost completely formed by the age of 13.

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Most Americans will die still believing almost all of the things they believed at the age of 13.

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Welcome to Truth. Love. Parent. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, A .M. Brewster. Hey everyone, I really enjoyed this interview. There is so much to learn.

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Seriously, I was learning new things as I prepared for it, and as I recorded it, and as I edited it, and as I listened to the final product again.

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This interview may be worth a couple listens to glean all of the wisdom from today's guest. And don't forget that you can watch our interviews on YouTube or on the episode post at takingbackthefamily .com

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or from the special guest page at truthloveparent .com. Enjoy. Welcome to Truth.

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Love. Parent. I'm your host, A .M. Brewster. And I'm very happy to have Dr. George Barna on the show with me today.

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Now, if that name is potentially not familiar to you, I don't know under which rock you have been living.

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But Dr. Barna founded the Barna Group in 1984 and helped to become a leading marketing research firm focused on the intersection of faith and culture before selling it in 2009.

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He currently serves as the executive director of the American Culture and Faith Institute and is president of MetaFormation, a faith development organization.

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He's written more than 50 books, mostly addressing cultural trends, leadership, spiritual development, and church dynamics, though he also has some parenting books in there as well.

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And his work is so frequently cited as an authoritative source by the media that he's been hailed as the most quoted person in the

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Christian church today. And he's also been named as one of the nation's most influential Christian leaders.

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He and his wife, Nancy, have three adopted daughters and one grandchild, and they live on the central

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California coast. Dr. Barna, thank you so much for spending time with us today. Aaron, it's great to be with you.

02:09

Thanks. Now, our topic today is a personal one for all of us listening because we plan to talk about your kids, my kids, that's right, our kids.

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But it's also going to be weighty as we consider whether our children are what the

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American worldview inventory calls an integrated disciple or an emergent follower.

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Now, there are three things there that potentially didn't sound right to you or you're not familiar with them. The American worldview inventory, integrated disciple, and emergent follower.

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And we're going to talk about all of these today. But the difference between those last two is so incredibly important.

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However, in order to set the tone for today's discussion, I want to ask you, Dr. Barna, what made you get into research, surveys, and statistics in the first place?

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You know, the odd thing is, is I think back, it really had to do with baseball cards.

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When I was a kid, I used to collect baseball cards, and all my friends loved them because of the great pictures of the athletes on the front of the cards, you know, swinging a bat, throwing a pitch.

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I always focused on the back of the cards, which had all that tiny print, all those statistics about how the players had performed.

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And eventually, I, you know, memorized them. I recalculated them. I did all kinds of stuff with that numbers.

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Because to me, those numbers spoke to me. And so I think that was really the thing that got me on the pathway of feeling very comfortable with statistics and numbers, trying to tell stories through those numbers.

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And eventually, that evolved into me being a political campaign manager doing polling and campaigns for people running for Congress, governor, mayor, etc.

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And, you know, later on, that evolved into other things where I was studying the faith of Americans, and trying to figure out how can we quantify that?

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And what does that quantification say to us about whether or not we're actually producing disciples throughout the church?

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So it's been a long journey. But for me, a fun one, I know I've made many people's eyes glaze over over the years.

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But, you know, I think statistics are an important element to help us measure how well we're doing. Well, I personally love statistics, but I cannot say that I was nearly ever that passionate about them as you are.

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Because man, the back of the baseball cards was always like, what? That's awesome.

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God clearly gifted you for that. And that's amazing that you've been using that gifting. Some people run from it, you definitely embraced it.

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Now, one of my favorite verses when I'm counseling is Proverbs 22 .5. It says that a plan in the heart of a man is like a deep water, but a man of understanding draws it out.

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So as a biblical counselor, I like to ask a lot of questions. And I assume the research that you do involves asking far more questions than even

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I do. So let me ask you, is there a formula for asking the right questions that can draw out the purposes in someone's heart?

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And I'm asking this not just because of some morbid interest, which I definitely have. But also because, you know, we're talking with parents, and I'm constantly encouraging them to learn to ask questions.

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So is there some type of a formula that's really good for asking the right questions? Really, I mean, you have to figure out how to do research, how to craft questions, how to sequence them, you know, how to think through what you might get from them and determine, is that going to give you what you want?

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So I mean, there are a lot of different questions that I have to ask myself, related to each question that I wind up asking other people.

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I wouldn't say there's a formula. But ultimately, I think maybe the most important question

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I've discovered is the question, so what? Let's say I ask you a question in a survey,

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I'll get an answer. I do it with 1000 people. Now I've got data I can work with.

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And let's say it shows that 46 % of the people that we interviewed say something. The question really that's important to me isn't so much how many people said it, but why?

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And what do I do with it? The so what is that I'm always trying to figure out? But what difference could this possibly make?

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How does this propel us into a different way of thinking or behaving or believing?

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So what? You've got to be able to answer that question. Otherwise, you shouldn't be asking the question. Yeah, I hear two really important things there.

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Number one, I hear potential motivation, you know, the why behind the answer. But number two,

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I hear a trajectory, we need to do something with this information. It's amazing how many times as parents, we ask questions.

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And I don't really think that we know why we're asking them. But yeah, so those are two really significant things.

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Thank you for sharing that. As I mentioned earlier, I personally enjoy surveys and statistics, because I found that you know, when they're conducted well, aka not like recent pollsters, they give us a fantastic insight into ourselves, as well as the general populace, which just so happens to include our children.

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So for example, in 2019, just a year ago, 65 % of Americans called themselves

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Christians. And yet, according to the American worldview inventory, which is a study that your group did recently, the inventory specifically for 2020, only 6 % of US adults today possess a biblical worldview.

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Only 6%. Now, when I see something like that, I wonder, I wonder if that statistic could be true of our churches?

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What about our families? Obviously, there are a lot of people out there who believe they're born again, even though they don't believe most of the

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Bible. So George, please talk to us about the American worldview inventory of 2020.

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It just came out last month, and try to frame for us what its findings say about Christianity in America, as well as what they might say about the people living in our homes.

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Yeah, maybe the first thing we need to touch on, Aaron, has to do with what is a worldview? Because it's not a concept that a lot of people think or talk about, certainly not one that many people research.

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A worldview is essentially the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual filter that you have that helps you to make sense of the world around you, helps you to figure out how you want to respond to that world, helps you determine who you want to be and how you want to live.

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It's almost completely formed by the age of 13. So it's something that our children develop, but then they'll carry with them through the rest of their life.

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Another thing I discovered from a longitudinal study that I've done indicated that most

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Americans will die still believing almost all of the things they believed at the age of 13.

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So that worldview doesn't change very much over the course of your life, unless there's some kind of extraordinary event, usually an extraordinary spiritual event, where God intervenes and really transforms you in a substantial way.

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But normally, what you believe by the age of 13 determines who you are, how you're going to live, and so forth.

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So in the course of this study, what we want to try to do is figure out what do Americans possess as their worldview.

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There are a lot of different choices. There are more than a dozen popular worldviews that are at play in American society today.

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A biblical worldview is just one of those choices. And all that means is that when you're making your decisions, you're trying to run all of the options that you have through your mental, emotional, and spiritual filter to figure out what's my best choice, what's my best option.

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And a biblical worldview is one that says choose the option that Jesus would have chosen. Choose to think like Jesus so that you can behave like Jesus.

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You know, think like Jesus to live like Jesus. And that's where we find only 6 % of Americans have a dominant, predominant biblical worldview.

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Now, we know that because our survey looked at 51 different beliefs and behaviors that deal with some of the key things in the scriptures to try to figure out, are these really the principles that drive you?

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And, you know, it's a real challenge for us in America today, particularly as parents, in my case a grandparent, to try to be working with young people to not only model that for them, but to have conversations with them that will be challenging them to think period of their life, those first 13 years of their life.

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They begin to think about, yeah, does the Bible matter? Does God have something to say about this?

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Do my perceptions about God, Jesus, and truth, and sin, and salvation, all these other matters, did they really pertain to this choice

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I'm about to make right now? So it's a very challenging area to not only research, but to try to develop in people's lives.

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But I would say, having been doing research across the country now for more than 40 years, as I look back at having interviewed over literally hundreds of surveys, more than a million people across the country, and trying to figure out what really makes a difference, the single most important thing to the future of America, to the future of the church, and to the future of every individual in our nation is their worldview.

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If we don't get that right, we're not going to get much else right. Amen. That's 100 % right. And another good word for worldview is belief system.

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I mean, they're just—they're synonymous, basically. Now, the survey—sorry,

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I just lost the word there—the inventory, excuse me, mentions five critical areas, and it breaks them down like this, the human nature and character, so what people believe about that, what people believe about the

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Bible, truth, and morality, what they believe about God, creation, and history, what they believe about family and value of life, and purpose and calling.

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Now, were those five specific areas that you guys mapped out that you wanted to fit these things into, or did that just kind of come through the research?

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Actually, this all came about—I'm a professor at Arizona Christian University, that's where we have the Cultural Research Center through which we do the research.

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And one of the distinctives of Arizona Christian is that everything we teach is taught through a biblical worldview.

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Every major that you take, the idea is to make sure that when you get into the world, you'll have influence for the kingdom of God through a biblical worldview.

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And so as I met with the faculty to put together the survey, and we talked for days and days and days about what goes into helping somebody to develop a biblical worldview.

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These are all professors who have been teaching this for years and years, and so it was an interesting exercise for us to try to tear it apart and figure out, yeah, but what are the foundations of everything we're trying to do?

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And we came up with eight different areas, the five that you mentioned, which are the five which

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Americans struggle with the most. There are three other areas of faith practices, also lifestyle, behavior, and relationships, and then sin, salvation, and relationship with God, three other areas where Americans are a little bit more comfortable with biblical principles, a little more likely to integrate that into their lifestyle.

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But when we look at all these areas, that's what we determined helps an individual to have what the

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Scriptures would call the full counsel of God, a really robust understanding of what biblical principles move us to become as God's creatures.

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You know, He never called us to go to church, but He did call us to be the church. So what does it mean to be the church?

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You know, embodying the mind, the heart, the soul of Jesus Christ in our own fallible and human ways, and that's what this biblical worldview helps us to do.

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Those are powerful categories, and obviously we're going through this quickly for you listeners. I would highly suggest that you either find the inventory online or you go to our blog post today, and you can look at the inventory there.

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Specifically, though, I mentioned earlier in the show this idea about integrated disciples and emergent followers, which is a concept that shows up a lot in the inventory.

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Will you please do us a favor and describe the differences between those two? You know,

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Aaron, one thing that I've discovered over the many years I've been researching this is that nobody has a pure worldview, no matter what your worldview is.

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You might be Marxist, you might be postmodern, you might be a nihilist, you might be someone with a biblical worldview.

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Whatever your worldview is, it's tainted by other worldviews. Nobody that I've yet researched—and

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I've interviewed tens and tens of thousands of people about their worldview— nobody has a pure worldview. So when it came time to determine, well, how many people have a biblical worldview, we had to establish some cutoffs, some boundaries for how we would measure these things.

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And the way that we go about doing it is by saying, look, if you understand that a worldview is not just what you believe, but it's also how you convert those beliefs into behavior, because you do what you believe.

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And so the way that you prove your beliefs is through your actions. So we try to measure both of those areas, both beliefs and behavior.

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And our cutoff was, if 80 % or more of your beliefs and your behavior conform to these core principles in the

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Scriptures, we'll classify you as having a biblical worldview. And therefore, we'll put you in this category that we call integrated disciples.

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And all that means is that they've been able to take the Word of God, God's core principles and commands, and integrate them into how they think and live.

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So it's not a compartmentalized faith like it is with most Americans, but it's the essence of who they are and how they choose to live.

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Now, an emergent follower is someone who has somewhere between 60 % to 79 % of the choices they make coming from scriptural admonitions.

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So really, they're not driven by it nearly as much as an integrated disciple would be.

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And then, of course, you've got the vast majority of Americans. You know, 6 % of people fit in that integrated disciples category.

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About 19 % fit into the emergent follower category. The other 75 % of Americans, three out of four, fit into the secularist category, where they're really not very concerned about biblical truths or principles or commands.

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They're not worried about trying to live like Jesus. They're trying to survive. They're trying to be happy.

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They're trying to make it through life on their own terms. And so that's a very different approach. That's where most

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Americans live these days. So, you know, my strategy with what we're doing is let's continue to uphold integrated disciples, encourage them, but then we want emerlers and try to move them upscale, move them up the ladder, so that they're more fully

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Christ -like. They're living a more Christ -like existence. They're having greater impact for the things of God through that kind of worldview.

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Yeah, and actually, my goal was to focus on the disciples and those emergent followers, but I want to say something quick about the secularists, as you mentioned them.

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A lot of them, as we saw from the earlier statistic from 2019, a lot of people will claim to be followers of Christ, Christians, being born again, right, saved, whatever terminology you want to use, and yet they're not following Christ as depicted in the scriptures, as outlined through the

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Bible. And yet they will refer to themselves as being born again, and that's the majority of the people out there, and especially in the

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United States. So, as parents, it's really important to understand the significance of this. Yes, your individual families might be a statistical anomaly, meaning, you know, it's very possible that 75 percent of your family isn't a secularist, and you've got, you know, one person in the family who's an integrated disciple and one who's an emergent follower.

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That's probably not the case. However, it's amazing to me, you know, when I look at a

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Christian school chapel, and I recognize the statistics of how many kids in this chapel are going to deny

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God once they get out of high school. It's significant, and you don't want to do that because you're seeing faces that you recognize and names that you know, but you have to say, statistically speaking, a huge percentage of these kids are going to walk away.

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We need to do that with our families, too. I think it's too easy for us to say, oh no, they're okay, especially with children who are comfortable living under our rules.

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But I counsel many parents who their kids leave the nest, and all of a sudden, they're making all these different choices, and the parents are so surprised because the parents never considered their children's worldview while they were living in the house.

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But specifically to focus in on this, the disciples and the followers, if I'm understanding correctly, okay, according to the inventory, it describes emergent followers as people who do not have a thoroughly biblical belief system, and obviously, you had to have the cutoff somewhere.

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I understand that. But they do hold to many biblical principles. This reminds me of a series that we did a while back called

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The Four Children. That series was all about, it was all rooted in Christ's parable of the soils as recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

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And what you're describing sounds a lot like a rocky -hearted or a thorny -hearted individual. They acknowledge, and they maybe even believe, certain truths from the scriptures and potentially consider themselves to be born again, but they don't truly believe everything

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God says. And in the cases where what they're not believing happens to be necessary for salvation, then they don't have that.

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Now, though that may sound distressing to a parent or a spouse, okay, you have a lot of hope for this group.

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This group, as was mentioned before, makes up nearly one out of five adults. Now, because you believe there's an opportunity for building and refining their biblical worldviews, that's the key thing about the emergent followers, is that there's more hope for them than there are for the secularists because they already make the

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Bible a relatively significant part of their lives. So, George, in your opinion, why are the emergent followers in a better position to come to Christ than the predominantly secular peers?

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And I want to be more specific. There might be emergent followers who truly are born again. Maybe they're just ignorant of the scriptures and so they don't live it out the way they should, but let's talk about the emergent followers who are not born again versus the secularists who are not born again.

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Why is this emergent follower in a better position to come to Christ than their secular peers? Well, first, they've had more exposure to religious teaching and training, biblical teaching and training, and so when you express these ideas from the scriptures to them, it's not a shock.

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It's not coming out of left field. They're things they've heard before, things they've thought about before, maybe things they've experienced through relationships with other believers, maybe even with integrated disciples whom they know.

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And so for them, it's not as big of a stretch to consider the possibility that God's Word ought to be the basis on which we're making our choices.

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They're more comfortable with that concept and therefore even more likely to go back and to read or to study the

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Bible and to say, I'm going to do this because I think it could actually add value to my life.

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See, with secularists, their idea is that really life is all about me.

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It's about what I think is truth. It's what gives me pleasure. It's what enables me to feel successful, as opposed to saying, what does

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God consider success to be? What does God want for my life? Why did God create me?

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I mean, two totally different perspectives about the reason for living, one that's self -centric, the other that's

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God, and so for possibility that they would at least consider the ways of God as a viable alternative to what the world is suggesting to them.

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It reminds me of how the difference between how Peter spoke to the Jews at the beginning of Acts versus how

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Paul spoke to the Greeks on top of the Acropolis. They approached it in very different terms because the

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Jews had that foundational understanding of the Old Testament. The Greeks were complete secularists, and they approached them very differently.

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Now, obviously, many Gentiles have come to know Christ. Amen. Praise God. I'm one of those Gentiles, but at the same time, we hear early on in Acts, so many of the

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Jews were coming to Christ. It makes me wonder if they, you know, being emergent followers to a degree, understanding and accepting certain parts of the

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Old Testament, allowed for that easy progression for them versus, you know, there were some people on the

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Acropolis who did believe. There were some who said, we'll hear you again, and there were some who said that he was crazy.

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So, I'm thinking that the statistical difference between the responses in both of those groups was different, in part due to the deeply rooted secularism of that Greek culture.

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And this is really important. Something I want to get back to here, and we're going to get to in a minute, but something that you said about how the emergent followers have been exposed to more scripture.

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They've known more integrated disciples versus potentially the secularists, and I think that's very important.

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That plays out in my experiences. That's going to be huge when it comes to our children, okay?

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But again, we're going to talk about that in a minute. I just wanted to pull that back out for us. And I do want to start bringing this home, okay?

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Really making it super practical for us. In the paper, okay, you mentioned that building a biblical worldview happens, and you even said it earlier in the show, it happens during childhood, and more specifically between the ages of 15 months and 13 years, okay?

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That's a, it's actually a relatively short span of time when you consider the length of our lives.

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Now, I believe our audience today falls into three different categories. One category is that there are those who have young children, and they need to understand the significance of their influence as parents.

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They also need to know how to engage in that biblical worldview training with their young children. Secondly, though, there are those whose children are older, and they would be considered integrated disciples.

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That group potentially needs to better understand how to continue that training as their children age, as their relationship with their parents starts to change, and as their influences fall less and less under the control of their parents.

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That's the second group. But then there's the third group, and this is the group that's really on my heart. The first group is really on my heart, because they're very interested in learning.

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They're fresh, they're new, they're ready. The third group, though, is the one that I've worked with the most in my ministry, and these are those whose children are older, but they did not receive the biblical worldview training during childhood.

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Now the parents aren't sure what to do. Well, in the paper, you posit,

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I'm going to quote here, quote, churches must help parents to understand that their highest priority in life is to raise devoted, integrated disciples of Christ.

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In order for them to do that, churches must help parents to develop the tools required to instill biblical thinking and behavioral choices in the minds and hearts of their children.

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Now here's the million -dollar question. What does this look like in our homes?

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That is the million -dollar question. I would say there are a number of elements that go into that. The first of those is that it's important to gain the trust of your children so that when you sit down to talk to them about these things, they're not thinking, eh, he or she's just doing the parental thing.

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This is like their job. They've got to understand that this is not just a job to you.

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This is life itself. This is really the core issue of why we're here on the planet, understanding ourselves in light of how and why

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God made us. So developing that relationship with them such that your children will trust you and listen to you.

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Now, they may not buy into it all as you impart this information to them, but why would they trust you?

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Because they've seen you live it. You've modeled it, and so it's not inconsistent.

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It's not like you're reading from the parent manual. This is like you're really speaking from your heart and your soul.

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This means something to you. When you have those conversations, then, and it needs to be conversations, not just an information dump where you're telling kids, okay, memorize these six verses.

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Feed them back to me. What do they mean? It's really got to be an exchange, and over the years as I've studied this process, what

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I've learned is that the parents and pastors and other individuals who are seeking to help people become integrated disciples are most effective when it's more of a

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Socratic dialogue. That is, we're not telling somebody what to believe. First of all, you ask them what they believe, and then you have the opportunity to ask them why they believe that, and then you can get into a deeper, more meaningful conversation where without threatening them, without accusing them, without calling them idiots or criticizing, you have the opportunity to challenge their thinking, asking them to consider different ways if they're a little bit off -base, and giving them examples from your own life of maybe how you've gone down that same path and you had to be corrected, or maybe you weren't on the wrong path, but you know how going down the path has worked so well for you, and so having those kinds of opportunities to have biblical concepts, precepts, principles in mind, and initiate dialogue with your children about those things where you're not just trying to tell them what to do, but you're letting them be a viable, valuable part of that exchange.

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A lot of what has to happen as well is this process of encouraging them in the discovery process.

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I'm a big believer in this notion that, you know, you want to educate people, you want to motivate people, you want to activate people, you want to celebrate people, and so first of all what you want to do is educate them about the importance of their worldview, the fact that they have one, the fact that it can be intentionally shaped, and instigate them to be involved in that process, and to work with you as their parent, or maybe with somebody from their church, or it could even be a friend, or a sibling who is an integrated disciple.

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You know, Aaron, one of the interesting things I found in a big piece of research I did on how God transforms lives is that people tend not to be transformed by sermons, they tend not to be transformed by programs.

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They're transformed through relationships with somebody who they know, they trust, they respect, and who's a little bit more spiritually mature than they are, and that person has the opportunity to coach them in this process, and so it's that coaching relationship that enables the younger

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Christian, the less mature Christian, regardless of their age, to be able to make progress down this path toward Christlikeness, and so, you know, in the end you want there to be consistency in the activity and conversation that you're engaging them in, and then encouraging them in the end when they're doing things right, celebrating the fact that that's incredible that you made that leap.

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You're doing something that, by the way, in America today is countercultural, but you're doing something that brings joy to the heart of God.

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Oh, amen. Those are fantastic. I love the way you separated that out, and also reminded us of the fact that, you know, messages are fantastic, and they have their place, but too often we rely on, you know, our kids going to church and hearing the message, going to church, hearing

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Sunday school, going to a Christian school, going to a Christian camp, basically being preached at, and that's going to solve everything, when in reality it's a relationship with an integrated disciple, a relationship with a true follower of God that's going to have the greatest impact on their lives.

31:19

So, so powerful, and I appreciate you sharing that. One of the other things I think in this part of the discussion that was mentioned in the inventory was about the significance of certain influences on worldview training, and this is something else

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I think oftentimes our parents miss. You know, we want our kids to, you know, we want them to have their freedom.

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We want them to feel comfortable. We want them not to feel like we're controlling their lives, and of course this mentality in parents is growing, growing more often as we're, you know, people are fighting for their autonomy and throwing off authority, and we're being told from secular psychiatrists and whatnot that we need to parent this way, and so we're saying yes to our kids.

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Yes, listen to the music you want to listen to. Go, go hang out where you want to hang out. Here's a device, and it's completely, you know, you can do whatever you want on it.

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Just go ahead, you know, but be good. You know, as long as no one's dying or getting pregnant and no one's failing out of school, we're happy.

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There are so many issues with that, but in the paper, it specifically mentions that there are three dramatic influences when it comes to shaping people's worldview.

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Number one, media usage. That's the books, the music, the TV. Number two, political engagement, and number three, educational content, clearly talking about school, and then there are some wonderful paragraphs in there just talking about how each of these three categories have such influence on us, and I want to read one of these paragraphs about the arts and entertainment.

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It says, quote, through the power of attractive imagery, memorable sound, and captivating storytelling, it transmits ideas about what to believe and how to behave.

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I think too many of us look at it as just being entertainment. No, it's worldview training. Whether the director or the creator or the musician set out to do that specifically, they are doing it because each of those individuals has a worldview.

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Each of those individuals is working out that worldview. At best, they're modeling their worldview for our kids and our families.

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At worst, they're actually taking the step to force their worldview into those different facets of entertainment so that they do educate our children and how they should be living.

33:34

Same is true with the government, same is true with school. I wonder if you'd speak into that when it comes to parents and trying to have an influence over our children's influences, because we know we have to recognize that their influences are training them in worldview.

33:48

How do we go about that? Yeah, you know, one of the things that I encourage parents to think about is to be really on top of the media exposure that their kids have.

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I mean, we know that by the age of 18, the average child in America will have been exposed to more than 32 hours of media content.

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That's more time than they devote to anything else except for sleeping, and that's kind of a tight race at this point.

34:16

So clearly, I mean, all the time that they're spending with the media is going to leave a mark.

34:22

So what do we as parents or grandparents do? First thing I suggest is that my amount of time devoting to all these technologies and machines that are giving us all of these worldview messages.

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You know, we don't know where it's coming from often, we don't know what it's going to be, what impact it's going to have, but we know it's going to be big.

34:42

So given that we are kind of the victim, if you will, of that onslaught of messaging, we want to minimize it.

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But secondly, we want to mediate it. This is something that we and a bunch of other families got together, we said, we're going to do this with our kids, let's see how it works.

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So every movie they watched, every television program that they watched, every piece of music that they listened to, we did too.

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And then we talked to them about what the content coming out of that was.

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And then we compared it to what the biblical principles were, that either that media content supported or opposed.

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We want our kids to be well informed about that, so that they weren't just saying, wow,

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Snoop Dogg's got a cool rhyme there. No, I mean, there's a message that he's sending to you about how you should live.

35:35

And so that was important. So, you know, minimizing it, moderating it, and moralizing it.

35:42

That's what you're really doing there. When you take that content, and you try to put it into the context, is this right or wrong?

35:49

How do we know? We know only by comparing it to what the scriptures teach. And so that's a critical process as well, to try to get our kids to really be more aware of the fact that it's not just mindless entertainment, it's not just harmless exposure to information, it leaves a lasting imprint.

36:10

But Dr. Barna, that's too hard. I have to do something now.

36:17

You know, I gotta listen to my kids' music, and read their books, and watch their—oh, I'm so glad you said that, because it is so incredibly true.

36:26

Yes, that is parenting. That's being a loving individual. That's doing the job that God has given us to do.

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As we're walking by the way, and as we're lying down, as we're sitting down, as we're standing up, we're speaking God's truth to them.

36:39

And that has to have an impact on those various facets that you were just talking about. It's so incredibly true.

36:45

Now, I have to admit that, just for full transparency, something has gone wrong with my technology, and my teleprompter is no longer right there, it's right here.

36:55

So I'm going to look down a little bit more than I have recently. Everyone, it's okay, there's nothing wrong with my neck. But you've often said, and I love this, we did not lose our moral and spiritual foundations overnight, and we certainly won't restore them overnight either.

37:13

That is so important. You know, listen, if you are the parent of a new child, if you are the parent of an older child who has not gotten this worldview training, you have to embrace this.

37:23

Especially the older child who hasn't gotten this worldview training, and now you're concerned that they are going to, you know, they're going off the rails, and you feel very frantic,

37:31

I only have a little bit more time with them before they're 18, and they're on their own. You in particular need to understand this is not going to happen overnight.

37:39

Okay, so whether you're just starting out, or your kids are grown prodigals, okay, either way, we can't be seeking for the quick fix.

37:45

I'm in these Facebook groups on, these parenting Facebook groups, and parents, you know, it's the first time they've posted, and it's one post describing all of these issues with their children, with their marriage, with their home, all these issues, and they're looking for advice.

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Of course, in these advice, that's given maybe a few lines, maybe, you know, a paragraph, but they're so desperate, they don't know what to do.

38:08

They're looking for anything that they can. They're turning to Facebook to find it, but unfortunately, the answer is never going to be that easy.

38:15

You're not going to find it in a Facebook reply, even if the Facebook reply is fantastic. It's not going to give you everything you need that's going to help you to sustain the change that you need over the period of time necessary.

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So, most importantly, we have to understand this, okay? It's going to take consistent, accurate, biblical teaching, biblical reproving, correcting, and training, 2

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Timothy 3 16, and you're going to have to do this over a period of time, years even, if we hope to help our kids become, and consequently stay, integrated disciples.

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Now, this is, of course, why Truth, Love, Parent, and the Celebration of God exists, okay? We want to help you do this, whether you're a parent, whether you're somebody who works with children, like a pastor, whether you're a grandparent.

38:58

We want to help you and equip you to do this as much as humanly possible. That's why we exist, but we also want to equip everybody out there, okay?

39:07

There are people who, they don't have children. They don't even work with children, but they still follow the show because they see how this conversation we're having right now can be so influential to their own worldview thinking, and then the influence that they can have on their friends and the emergent followers in their lives.

39:25

Now, we've talked about this before, that the home and the church are God's greatest human institutions to bring men and women to Him.

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So today, there's gonna be a link in the description of the show that says, click here for more resources related to this discussion.

39:38

I encourage you to do that because we've created a number of resources, specifically, that will fit in line with the things we've talked about here, all right, and the things that you will find in the inventory, absolutely vital to worldview training, things in there about watching

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TV, about music, and a bunch more government, and so on and so forth. So if you, specifically, though, beyond that, would like some specific guidance for your unique family situation, please, again, don't ever hesitate to contact us at counselor at truthloveparent .com.

40:09

Now, Dr. Barnum, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your wisdom. Thank you for your years of integrity and collecting these statistics for us.

40:18

What's the best way for our audience to learn more about you, and your books, and your works, and your ministry, and everything you do?

40:24

You know, there are two places they can go. One is culturalresearchcenter .com, and today, we've been talking about the 12th of 12 reports that we've done based on that worldview research.

40:35

So they can download any of those reports that talk about different elements of how do you actually think biblically?

40:42

How do you develop a biblical worldview? So those are all available at culturalresearchcenter .com.

40:48

They could also go to georgebarna .com, and I've got a lot of my books available there, as well as other articles.

40:56

So hopefully, all of that will be available. And there's a book called Revolutionary Parenting that talks about what you were just alluding to about the importance of perseverance, but not just being diligent, but being consistent in what you teach.

41:10

We interviewed large national sample kids who grew up to be champions, asked them and their parents separately, what happened?

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How did you become this way? And we found out that the single most critical element that they identified was that their parents were consistent in their biblical teaching with them over the course of a long period of time, and it eventually wore them down, and they bought into it.

41:35

And amen for that. Now, obviously, if anyone's listening, you know that this is just a massive discussion.

41:42

This is a years and years and long discussion. So I recommend all of the listeners read at least the six -page

41:49

American Worldview Inventory 2020 that we've discussed today. Obviously, there are other parts and other things to read that you can go to that website to find.

41:56

It's obviously the more you inform yourself, the better equipped you are to do your job. But it's really important to see what people believe, and then understand how we can address the unbelief in our homes, because it is there.

42:07

We all sin because we don't believe God's word at that moment, and we need to be able to address that. So please share this episode with your pastors, with your church family, with your friends, so that all of God's people, all of his integrated disciples can shine even brighter in this ever -darkening world.

42:25

Now, because we want our children to be disciples of Christ, okay, obviously, you know what's coming. We have to parent them in truth and love.

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So to that end, please enjoy your Christmas celebration, and then join us in January as we look at how the world is going to try to influence your kids in 2021.