Stacey D. Wheeler | EFC-MAYM Director of Communications and Church Planting Support
The last weekend of July, Alan Amavisca joined us at Barclay College in Haviland, Kansas as our main speaker for Ministry Conference 2024: “Encountering Jesus, Engaging the World.” For many of us, both as individuals and as churches, we’ve recognized that engaging the world and spreading the gospel are not a part of our everyday lives in the way we desire it to be.
As a part of the conference, Amavisca encouraged us to find a person who lives near us to pray with and pursue the calling God has placed on each one of us to “. . . Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). As partners, we processed and prayed together in each session of the conference with this same person, and Alan encouraged us to continue to meet and encourage one another in our pursuit of Christ after the conference.
For those of you who attended the sessions, have you considered setting a time with your person to get together to pray and encourage each other? Or if you weren’t at the conference, would you consider asking someone who lives close to you to get together to seek God and encourage one another in your faith and beliefs?
As a staff at EFC-MAYM, we’ve recognized the need for training and encouragement in fulfilling the Great Commandment and Great Commission to GO out and meet new people, love on people, and engage the world. As Amavisca mentioned in one of his talks, and I paraphrase, to GO is a verb. It requires action and is a command not a suggestion.
This next week we will be meeting online with Alan and Nick Ward and North County Project (NCP) to set some dates for those under the EFC-MAYM umbrella who would prayerfully say “Yes” to this biblical command to engage with the lost in a deliberate and goal-oriented fashion through a program Alan has developed called Bible Dialoguing. We hope to gather through Zoom with those who also want to see people come to Christ and be set free. This will be open to pastors, lay-leaders, and members of our churches who would say, “Yes, I desire to be a part of the current movement God is doing in EFC-MAYM to see the lost find Jesus!”
Bible Dialoguing is a specific way of talking to people about God and the Bible to begin a relationship with them to spread the good news of Christ. Alan has already filmed some videos training people how to engage in a Bible Dialogue that we plan to offer to anyone interested in learning how to better evangelize and meet new people. It’s also possible we might have one day designated to meet with Alan in person. These details are being arranged. If you are already evangelizing and seeing the lost come into your sphere of influence, receiving Christ on a regular basis, this program might not be beneficial for you, but if you are like most of us, you might need some equipping in this area to get started.
The NCP website presents it well:
The research is in: North Orange County is full of people who are curious about Jesus, but . . . “how can they hear about Him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent?” (Rm 10:14b, 15 NLT)
If you are like many Christians, you may not feel competent to respond to their questions.
What would you think if we told you that “being competent” is not about having the right answers, but knowing how to ask the right questions?
What if we told you that “being qualified” has more to do with how well you listen rather than with how much you talk?
What if we told you we have found a loving and relational way to share the good news of Jesus . . . and that anybody can do it?
We call it Bible Dialoguing and we believe God wants to use you. (https://northcountyproject.org/bible-dialogues/ )
Dr. George Barna asks a good question in the document entitled “American Worldview Inventory 2024 (Release #4): New Research Reveals the Limitations of Christian Evangelicalism in American Society”: Barna asks, “What is an Evangelical?” How would you define an evangelical? Barna states “Evangelicals take the Bible seriously and believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The term ‘evangelical’ comes from the Greek word euangelion, meaning ‘the good news’ or the ‘gospel.’ Thus, the evangelical faith focuses on the ‘good news’ of salvation brought to sinners by Jesus Christ.”
Dr. Tracy Munsil, author of “Biblical Worldview Among U.S. Adults Drops 33% Since Start of COVID-19 Pandemic,” dissects the American Worldview Inventory 2023 (AWVI) conducted by Barna, the Director of Research at the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. Munsil states, “The report shows declines in biblical understanding throughout American society since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“People do not develop a biblical worldview randomly or by default,” explains Barna in the report. “The impact of arts and entertainment, government, and public schools is clearly apparent in the shift away from biblical perspectives to a more experiential and emotional form of decision-making. It will require parents, in particular, and cultural leaders who care about this matter to energetically and creatively persuade children and their influencers to embrace biblical principles as the foundation for personal decision-making,” Barna said.
The number of adults who don’t possess a biblical worldview, but still hold “a substantial number of beliefs and behaviors consistent with biblical principles,” has also fallen dramatically. Only one of every seven adults (14%) belong to the category of what Barna identifies as an “Emergent Follower.” That number was 25% only three years ago, according to Munsil citing Barna’s research.
“The research also found a decline in biblical worldview in almost every demographic subgroup in America. The most striking shifts in biblical worldview levels were recorded among born-again Christians (down 6 percentage points) and people from households earning $60,000 to $100,000 (down 5 points), according to the report,” Munsil states.
Barna, who has measured the worldview of American adults for more than 30 years, said these new lows among American adults could effectively spell the “extinction” of biblical beliefs in our nation. Facilitating a return to biblical thinking and living in America will take “an intentional, strategic and consistent effort by the remaining population that represents a biblical approach to life,” Barna said, according to Muncil.
What these statistics show is that the church in America is in great decline and that even Christians are not living by a biblical worldview in the same way that they did a few years ago, especially since the pandemic. To see any significant change in our behavior as Evangelicals and to spread the good news of Christ, we will need to take a deliberate step to declare we desire to learn and grow in the area of evangelism and discipleship.
More information concerning specific dates and times for this online course through Alan Amavisca and North County Project in Bible Dialoguing will be coming soon. God is moving in EFC-MAYM. Join us as we learn how to engage our world.
(The full report, AWVI 2023 Release #01: “Incidence of Biblical Worldview Shows Significant Change Since the Start of the Pandemic,” is available here.)
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