Intentional Faith

A stagnant organization is a dying organization. Change means growth and growth means change.

Our criterion for change is never the latest “church growth” fad or the newest innovation of that church down the street. Change must be from the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Change for the sake of change is never appropriate. “This isn’t working; let’s try something different” is a blueprint for failure.

How does the wise pastor facilitate change? The Lord will normally give you the vision and direction He would have your people go before He gives it to them. This is not to say only you hear the voice of God. It’s not to say that good ideas never come up “through the ranks.” It is to say that the job of leaders is to lead, and that means getting out in front.

The key elements of change are information and patience

If a person says to me, “God told me,” I am going to walk away. If they say, “God told me to tell you,” I am going to run. If they say, “I sense the Lord is leading me,” I will listen.

Before introducing a bold new program to win the world, spend some Sundays preaching about Jesus’ compassion for the lost. Before you introduce that million-dollar building program for a new youth recreation building, preach about the needs of a dying generation of teenagers and the responsibility of the church to reach them.

Remind your people that the message never changes, but the means must be ever changing. The telegraph has been outdated by radio, radio by television, television by the Internet, and the end is not yet. Take your time, give adequate information, instill the vision, and try to get everyone on board.

Provide a forum in which to allow questions. What will happen if we do this? What will we lose if we don’t? What are the risks? What is the cost? Are there other options? Will there be a committee? Will this be done at the sacrifice of other programs in the church? God’s people are good people, and they can handle the truth.

When you begin a new ministry, don’t be afraid to experiment. Everything doesn’t have to be forever. While this is true, make every effort to see it through. Give new ministries time. Even the best will often struggle at first. The most common things that tear up Baptist churches are deacon-pastor conflict, worship wars, and changing too quickly.

In a new pastorate, members have enough of an adjustment to look up every Sunday and see a new face in the pulpit. It takes time to adjust to you before they’re ready to adjust to your changes. Reverse the order and you are doomed to failure. Don’t change anything quickly!

I could write a book on modern-day churches that lost hundreds, even thousands of members, in a few months. All were good churches with good pastors who had good ideas but bad timing. Too much too fast. Don’t!

Then John’s disciples came to Him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?” Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests be sad while the groom is with them? The days will come when the groom will be taken from them, and then they will fast. No one patches an old garment with unshrunk cloth, because the patch pulls away from the garment and makes the tear worse. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. But they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matt. 9:14–17)

Excerpts taken from Pastor’s Handbook by John Bisagno, B&H Publishing Group, copyright 2011. Used by permission.

Every Branch in me that Beareth Not Fruit, He taketh It away—John 15:2
Here we have one of the chief words of the parable—branch.
A vine needs branches: without branches it can do nothing, can bear no fruit. As important as it is to know about the Vine, and the Husbandman, it is to realize what the branch is. Before we listen to what Christ has to say about it, let us first of all take in what a branch is, and what it teaches us of our life in Christ. A branch is simply a bit of wood, brought forth by the vine for the one purpose of serving it in bearing its fruit. It is of the very same nature as the vine, and has one life and one spirit with it. Just think a moment of the lessons this suggests.
There is the lesson of entire consecration. The branch has but one object for which it exists, one purpose to which it is entirely given up. That is, to bear the fruit the vine wishes to bring forth. And so the believer has but one reason for his being a branch—but one reason for his existence on earth —that the heavenly Vine may through him bring forth His fruit. Happy the soul that knows this, that has consented to it, and that says, I have been redeemed and I live for one thing—as exclusively as the natural branch exists only to bring forth fruit, I too; as exclusively as the heavenly Vine exists to bring forth fruit, I too. As I have been planted by God into Christ, I have wholly given myself to bear the fruit the Vine desires to bring forth.
There is the lesson of perfect conformity. The branch is exactly like the vine in every aspect—the same nature, the same life, the same place, the same work. In all this they are inseparably one. And so the believer needs to know that he is partaker of the divine nature, and has the very nature and spirit of Christ in him, and that his one calling is to yield himself to a perfect conformity to Christ. The branch is a perfect likeness of the vine; the only difference is, the one is great and strong, and the source of strength, the other little and feeble, ever needing and receiving strength. Even so the believer is, and is to be, the perfect likeness of Christ.
There is the lesson of absolute dependence. The vine has its stores of life and sap and strength, not for itself, but for the branches. The branches are and have nothing but what the vine provides and imparts. The believer is called to, and it is his highest blessedness to enter upon, a life of entire and unceasing dependence upon Christ. Day and night, every moment, Christ is to work in him all he needs.
And then the lesson of undoubting confidence. The branch has no cure; the vine provides all; it has but to yield itself and receive. It is the sight of this truth that leads to the blessed rest of faith, the true secret of growth and strength: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” What a life would come to us if we only consented to be branches! Dear child of God, learn the lesson. You have but one thing to do: Only be a branch—nothing more, nothing less!
Just be a branch; Christ will be the Vine that gives all. And the Husbandman, the mighty God, who made the Vine what it is, will as surely make the branch what it ought to be. Lord Jesus, I pray Thee, reveal to me the heavenly mystery of the branch, in its living union with the Vine, in its claim on all its fullness. And let Thy all-sufficiency, holding and filling Thy branches, lead me to the rest of faith that knows that Thou workest all.

My basic premise of leadership development is leaders raise up other leaders. Leaders who do not reproduce other leaders are shortsighted and ultimately damage the long-term health of their organization or department. If leaders do not produce leaders, where will the future leaders come from? I’ve heard John Maxwell say on several occasions, “It takes one to know one, it takes one to show one, and it takes one to grow one.” Leaders produce leaders.

Every organization has a natural hierarchical structure that people advance through as they gain greater leadership responsibility. This has become known as the leadership pipeline. If there is a shortage of leaders at various levels, if the same old people are doing the same old jobs year after year, if growth is hampered because of a shortage of leadership, then this is a clear indication that your leadership pipeline is clogged. So what can you do? Here are a few suggestions.
1. Make leadership development an expectation of all the leaders in your organization.

You can do this by talking about it frequently and by making it one of the factors that you measure in your organizational scorecard. (Ex: How many new leaders are being developed in each department?)
2. Inspect your leadership pipeline regularly.

I would recommend a regular inspection of the condition of your leadership pipeline. Take at least an hour a quarter and look at the leaders at every level of your organization. Your organization’s database should be able to print a report that would show the names of those at each level. Discuss these level by level by level, name by name. Ask the following questions: Where do we have leadership gaps? Who are the potential leaders to fill those gaps? Who has the potential to move up to the next level? What is their next step, and how can we help them take it? Who is in process of being developed for the next level?
3. Build on what’s working.

Find those in your organization that are already mentoring new leaders. Recognize them, reward them, and challenge them to reproduce more mentoring leaders in your organization. If you only have 20% of your current leaders mentoring new leaders, it will have an exponential impact on the multiplication of leaders in your organization.

Mac Lake

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, millions of Americans flocked to churches and houses of worship. But, for most, the shift in spiritual behavior was short lived. According to tracking research by the Barna Group, within a few months the spiritual lives of the nation’s population were back to pre-attack levels.

As the tenth anniversary of America’s largest terrorist event approaches, a new analysis of Barna Group tracking data examines the long-term spiritual profile at one of the epicenters of the attacks—New York City and the surrounding media market. Based on analysis of research conducted over the last 14 years, the study shows that the faith profile of residents of the New York market has changed significantly over the last decade and a half, but many of these shifts may not be attributable to 9-11.

Changes in Faith Behaviors
Residents of the New York City media market are more spiritually active today than they were in the late 1990s – and more so than they were in 2001. Reported weekly church attendance, for instance, was lowest in 1999 and 2000 (31%), but has since grown to represent 46% of the market’s residents. (Note: Although the vast majority of church attendance stems from Protestant churches and Catholic parishes, Barna Group’s religious attendance measure does not exclude those of other faith groups who participate in other weekly religious events.)

In addition to worship attendance, several other measures of faith also showed increases in the New York market, including Bible reading (growing from 29% to 35%) and those who qualify as having an active faith. Active-faith adults, a multiple-activity indicator that represents those who pray, read the Bible and attend church in a typical week, has increased from 17% to 24%.

Also reflecting the overall rise in spiritual participation, the percentage of residents of the New York area who are unchurched – defined as those who have not attended a worship service in the last six months – declined from 42% to 34%.

For context, during the same period of time in the nation’s population, church attendance has declined and there has been a corresponding increase in the percentage of unchurched adults. Bible reading has been essentially flat nationally over the last decade.

David Kinnaman, the Barna Group president, directed the research study and pointed out that the most significant spiritual change in the New York market, the increase in church attendance, does not appear correlated to the 9-11 attacks. “Most of the change in spiritual behavior seems to have happened since the middle of the last decade. Church participation in the New York market especially has shifted most since 2004.”

Changes in Belief
While the New York metro market is more spiritually active than it was a decade ago, what it believes about God, Christ, and faith reflects a mixed set of results. The Barna study explored three measures of spiritual belief and commitment: overall importance of faith in a person’s life, the percentage of the market who are born again Christians, and the proportion who are evangelical Christians. (Note: in Barna Group studies neither evangelical nor born again Christians are based on a respondent’s self-identification with these terms. The definition of these groups is based on a person’s beliefs and commitment. Details appear below.)

The study revealed that religion declined in importance for many New Yorkers from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Then, following 2001-2002, this indicator rebounded, though it has softened again in recent years. Still, given the conventional characterization of the driven, secular nature of the New York market, it is striking that three out of every five residents of the New York market strongly agree that their religious faith is very important in their life (61%). Nationally, 72% of US adults say their religious faith is very important.

Looking at some of Barna Group’s proprietary faith measurements, the percentage of New York’s media market residents who qualify as born again Christians surged from 20% in the late 1990s to 32% today. This measure has been steadily increasing since 2001-2002. These are individuals who said they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in the life and who believe they will go to Heaven because they have accepted Christ and been forgiven of their sins. The surveys do not ask people if they call themselves “born again.” Currently, 40% of adults nationwide can be classified as born again.

Surprisingly, the growth in the born again population has not translated into an increased evangelical audience, at least in the way that Barna Group typically measures this population. The percentage of evangelical Christians in the New York metro area actually declined over the last 14 years, from 4% in the late Nineties to just 1% of the market in the most recent polling. This compares to 7% of the adult public who qualifies as an evangelical. In Barna Group studies, the evangelical segment is a subset of the born again population. In Barna studies, evangelicals meet the born again criteria and also embrace other aspects of evangelical teaching, such as the necessity of sharing one’s faith with others, rejecting works-based salvation, and accepting the accuracy of Scripture principles.

Kinnaman put the larger findings in context by pointing out that “the research suggests that faith and religion took on new urgency for many New Yorkers after 9-11, but the impact was neither immediate nor long-lived. While people’s born again commitment and religion’s importance did grow in the years after 9-11, church attendance and active faith measures did not really start increasing until after 2004.

“The research shows that spiritual change can and does happen, even in large population centers like the New York media market. What cannot be determined by survey research, however, is what exactly caused the change. There are many front-and-center factors, such as the terrorist attacks, the Wall Street crisis, and the weakening economy. But there are also below-the-radar factors, like immigration and people moving into and out of the city, personal factors such as marriage or health issues, as well as the work and coordination of local faith communities in the metropolis. Whatever the combination of causes, the residents of the New York City region are more spiritually active, more likely to be ‘churched,’ and more committed to Christ than they were a decade ago.”

Consider the words of a wise funeral director:

A couple years ago my dad had this cheesy bumper sticker on the back end of his truck. It said, “Live So the Pastor Doesn’t Have to Lie At Your Funeral.”
There’s some truth to that bumper sticker.
I have worked about 3,000 funerals in my 10 years as a funeral director and I have never heard a pastor state conclusively that the person they are memorializing is going to hell, although I’ve heard thousands of messages that state CONCLUSIVELY that the deceased is in heaven!
There’s been some fancy preachwork done by pastors for those who lived less than clean, God honoring lives. I remember one pastor saying about a man who blatantly hated God, “This man didn’t like God, but he was a man who loved the outdoors. And anybody who loves the outdoors is like a lover of God because God created the outdoors.”

Honestly, contra my dad’s cheesy bumper sticker, I don’t think pastors are actually lying. I think pastors honestly have the hope that—despite evidence to the contrary—the deceased finds himself or herself in the presence of God.

I see two types of universalism: one that’s a doctrine and another that’s expressed as a hope: Hans Urs von Balthasar, the esteemed Catholic theologian, makes the distinction in his book, Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”? between the hope of universal salvation and the doctrine of universal salvation. The former wishes that all men would be saved, while the latter asserts that all men WILL be saved. For example, The New England Universalists (rebellious Calvinists) held the doctrine of universal salvation based on their causative assumptions of God’s salvific work, coupled with their strong assertion of the universality of God’s love. In other words, IF God can choose who will be saved and He loves all, then the doctrine arises that he will choose to save all.

I believe that God himself is a hopeful universalist when it states in both 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9 that he wishes all men to be saved and that none would perish. This isn’t a soteriological doctrine but an eschatological hope, which is the major distinction that—if not acknowledged — will cause you distress.

And when it comes down to it: when the rubber hits the road; when preachers show their cards; when they stand up before a grieving, hopeless family who has just lost their loved one to an overdose, suicide or alcohol, all the preachers I have ever heard, either imply or state the same thing as Rob Bell–they, too, hope that love wins.

Maybe if Rob had spoken his thoughts at a funeral, nobody would have had a problem with it.

This Christ within you is a living Person. He loves you with a personal love, and He looks every day for the personal response of your love. Look into His face with trust, till His love really shines into your heart. Make His heart glad by telling Him that you do love Him. He offers Himself to you as a personal Saviour and Keeper from the power of sin.

Do not ask, can I be kept from sinning, if I keep close to Him? But ask can I be kept from sinning, if He always keeps close to me? And you see at once how safe it is to trust Him.

We have not only Christ’s life in us as a power, and His presence with us as a person, but we have His likeness to be wrought into us. He is to be formed in us, so that His form or figure, His likeness, can be seen in us. Bow before God until you get some sense of the greatness and blessedness of the work to be carried on by God in you this day. Say to God, “Father, here am I for Thee to give as much in me of Christ’s likeness as I can receive.”

Then wait to hear Him say, “My child, I give you as much of Christ as your heart is open to receive.” The God who revealed Jesus in the flesh and perfected Him, will reveal Him in you and perfect you in Him. The Father loves the Son, and delights to work out His image and likeness in you. Count upon it that this blessed work will be done in you as you wait on thy God, and hold fellowship with Him.

Healthy and growing churches pay close attention to the people they count as members, as well as those people who are not yet a part of the flock. These churches know that new people are the lifeblood of a growing church. Like a spigot, they want to keep the valve open for the flow of new people, and most importantly, they want to ensure that nothing impairs or cuts off the flow of new people to the church.
With that in mind, pastors need to be aware of five significant facts about first-time guests looking for a church home.

1. Visitors make up their minds regarding a new church in the first ten minutes of their visit.
Often, before a first-time guest has sung an inspiring song or watched a compelling drama or viewed a well-produced video vignette or heard a well-crafted sermon, they have made up their mind whether or not to return. In fact, if you ask most church leaders, far more time and energy are spent on the plan and execution of the worship service, with only minimal time spent on preparing for the greeting and welcoming of the first-time guest, which is equally if not more important. Most pastors would rather not hear this: The church’s ability to connect with first-time guests is not dependent on you but on those first lines of people who represent your church.

• Are parking attendants in place?
• Is there appropriate signage?
• Are your ushers and greeters performing the “right” job?
• Is the environment you take for granted user-friendly and accepting to guests?

2. Most church members aren’t friendly.
Churches claim to be friendly. In fact, many churches put that expression in their logo or tag line. But my experience in visiting churches as a first-time guest proves otherwise. The truth is that most church members are friendly to the people they already know, but not to guests.

• Observe to see if your members greet guests with the same intensity and concern before and after the worship service as they do during a formal time of greeting in the worship service. A lack of friendliness before and after the service sends a mixed, if not hypocritical, message to new people.
• The six most important minutes of a church service, in a visitor’s eyes, are the three minutes before the service and the three minutes after the service, when church members introduce themselves, seeking genuinely to get to know the visitors (not just obtain personal information like the market research data collectors at the mall), offer to answer any questions, introduce them to others who may have a connection (perhaps they live in the same neighborhood, are from the same hometown or state, or their children attend the same school), or any number of ways to demonstrate to the visitors that they as a church member care.
• A church would be wise to discover their most gregarious and welcoming members and deploy them as unofficial greeters before and after each service, in addition to designated parking-lot greeters, door greeters, ushers, and informational booth personnel.
• Don’t make promises the church can’t keep. My wife attended a church recently that calls itself “The Friendly _______ Baptist Church,” but no one spoke to her before the service, and when she sought information from the guest information booth, she was treated by the attendant as a bother. Mixed messages and unfulfilled promises do great harm in a church’s effectiveness in welcoming new people.

3. Church guests are highly consumer-oriented.
“If Target doesn’t have what I need, I just head to K-Mart.” “If the Delta airfare is too high, American might have a sale.” Capitalism has taught us that if we don’t find what we want, someone else down the street or at another Web site will have it. If your church building is too hard for newcomers to navigate, if they have to park in the “back 40,” if your people are unaccepting and unfriendly, another church down the street may have what they’re looking for. Or worse yet, they may decide getting into a church is not worth the effort and give up their search altogether.

• Pastors and church leaders need to look at their churches through the eyes of a first-time guest. Rick Warren says that the longer a pastor has been a pastor, the less he thinks like a non-pastor. That same thought would apply to thinking like a guest.
• The use of objective, yet trained, anonymous guests to give an honest appraisal is very important. Many retail outlets utilize the service of one or more “mystery guests” to provide helpful analysis of welcoming and responding to the consumer. Churches would be well served to utilize a similar service.

4. The church is in the hospitality business.
Though our ultimate purpose is spiritual, one of our first steps in the Kingdom business is attention to hospitality. Imagine the service that would be given to you in a first-class hotel or a five-star restaurant. Should the church offer anything less to those who have made the great effort to be our guests?

• Hospitality is almost a forgotten virtue in our society. When was the last time someone invited you to their home for a meal? But it needs to be reawakened.
• Church members can extend hospitality to guests by offering to sit with them during the church service, giving them a tour of the church facilities, inviting them to lunch after service, or connecting with them later in the week.

5. You only have one chance to make a good first impression.
More than a truism, first impressions are lasting ones. Little hope of correcting a bad first impression is possible. Your first-time guests have some simple desires and basic needs. They decide very quickly if you can meet those criteria. The decision to return for a second visit is often made before guests reach your front door.

• Are you creating the entire experience, beginning with your parking lot?
• Are you consciously working to remove barriers that make it difficult for guests to find their way around and to feel at home with your people?
• Do newcomers have all the information they need without having to ask any embarrassing questions?
• Are your greeters and ushers on the job, attending to details and anticipating needs before they are expressed?
• Does anything about your guests’ first experience make them say, “Wow!” and want to return?

The number one reason churches plateau and decline is that they’ve lost their outward focus. Church can easily become about what the existing congregation wants, instead of thinking about and serving people beyond the church walls. To combat this, church members must remember what originally made their church great. Was it the music, the programs, the schedule, the dramas, the preaching, or the kids’ ministry that made their church great? Those things were inspiring, excellent, and fun, but they are not what made the church great.
The thing that made them truly remarkable was the mission.

The mission of the church can be summed up in two key parts:

1. Reaching people for Christ.

2. Leading them to be fully devoted to him.
Let us remember that our churches do not exist for us. Our churches exist for the lost. Our churches are not here to make us (the believers) happy, meet our needs, satisfy our desires, or affirm our opinions. Our churches are here to reach people who are desperately far from God.
As church members, we must all ask ourselves some tough questions. What do I not like about my church? What if the very thing I don’t like is the thing that will reach people for Jesus? What do I love most about my church? What if the very thing I like most is the thing that is a barrier to reaching people for Christ? Am I willing to support changes that I don’t like? Am I willing to lay down my preferences and opinions for the sake of people who are lost?
I’m not saying that our own desires automatically contradict our mission. I’m saying that we must be diligent to never allow our desires to supersede the mission. What should we want more than seeing people come to faith in Christ? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

There are many ways of categorizing people’s faith these days. In a new report from the Barna Group that is part of the State of the Church – 2011 annual tracking study, George Barna examines changes in 14 religious attributes in relation to some of those religious categories as they have unfolded since 1991. The four segments studied in the latest of the six newly-issued summaries are Catholics, Protestants, born again Christians, and self-identified Christians. Barna also offered commentary on the results in a new blog posting (www.georgebarna.org)

Self-Identified Christians
Most Americans – roughly four out of five – consider themselves to be Christians. For that majority, the past two decades have been a time of substantial religious change. Just as American society itself is in a state of substantial upheaval, so are those who declare themselves to be Christian redefining the core practices and beliefs of Christianity in America. Five of the six religious behaviors tracked underwent statistically significant changes since 1991, and five of the seven belief measures also changed notably.

The five transitions in religious behaviors included the following:

§ Attendance at a church service in any given week has declined among self-identified Christians by nine percentage points since 1991. Now only a minority of this group – 47% – can be found in church events during a typical week.

§ Adults from this segment are currently eight percentage points less likely to attend Sunday school in a typical week than was true twenty years ago. Less than one out of five (18%) now attend during a typical week.

§ Whereas 30% of the self-identified Christians volunteered at a church during a typical week back in 1991, that figure has declined to 22% today.

§ Bible reading dropped slightly over the last 20 years within this segment, going from 51% to 46%. This is another marker in which a majority of this group no longer participates.

§ Those who embrace the label “Christian” for themselves are now ten percentage points more likely to be unchurched than was true in 1991. The 31% who fit this profile have not attended any church service during the past six months, excluding special services such as weddings or funerals.

Among the belief measures tested, the following showed significant changes since 1991:

§ Three of the variables tracked reflected marginal change – five percentage points. There was a five-point increase in the self-identified Christians who claimed to have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ (up to 75% in 2011); a five-point drop in the proportion who contend that that “God is the all-knowing, all-powerful and perfect Creator of the universe who still rules the world today” (now down to 77%); and a similar decline among those who believe that Satan is a symbol of evil but not a living entity (now standing at 53%).

§ The largest change in beliefs was the ten-point decline in those who firmly believe that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches. Only 43% of self-identified Christians now have such a strong belief in the Bible.

§ The percentage of self-identified Christians who meet the “born again” criteria – that is, those who contend they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today, and who also believe they will enter Heaven solely because they have confessed their sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as their savior – jumped by seven percentage points, to 48%.

This group’s views about personal responsibility to evangelize and the importance of religious faith in their life did not budge over the past twenty years.

Born Again Christians
This category is comprised of people whose beliefs characterize them as born again; it is not based on people calling themselves “born again.” This segment, which now stands at 40% of all adults in the U.S., experienced significant changes in relation to all six religious behaviors tracked by the Barna Group.

§ The largest shifts in behavior pertained to the 14-point decline in adult Sunday school attendance (now 26%) and the 12-point drop in volunteering at church (down to 29%).

§ Attendance at church services in any given week decreased by seven percentage points over the last two decades among born again Christians, falling from 66% to 59%.

§ The proportion of born again adults who read the Bible during a typical week, not including when they are at a church event, has decreased by nine percentage points since 1991. The weekly average now resides at 62%.

§ Two behavioral statistics increased since 1991, one for the worse and the other of little consequence. The unfortunate shift is the increase in the unchurched among born again adults, which has risen by five percentage points to 19%. The neutral transition is the eight-point increase in born again adults who attend a large church (600 or more people).

Only one of the seven religious beliefs measured among born agains shifted significantly in the last two decades. That was the nine-point drop in the percentage of those who firmly believe that the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches. In 1991, three-quarters of born again adults held that view, but it has declined to two-thirds of them today (65%).

Roman Catholics in the U.S.
Roman Catholics continue to represent the largest religious denomination in the United States, at about one-fifth of the adult population. The Catholic population has experienced three statistically meaningful changes in religious behaviors and three in religious beliefs since 1991.

§ Catholics are now 10 percentage points less likely to attend church services than they were in 1991 (down to 49%) and 10 points less likely to volunteer at their church (down to only 9%). They are also more likely to be unchurched now than they used to be, increasing in this behavior from 20% to 29%.

§ The beliefs that have shifted in the minds of Catholics include an eight-point decline in those who firmly believe the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches. That position has diminished among Catholics from one-third (34%) to one-quarter (26%). The other shifts were growth in the number who say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is important in their life today (up seven points to 60%) and an eight-point increase in the proportion of Catholics who meet the born again criteria (now up to 24%).

Changes among Protestants
Protestants are also redefining the nature of their faith, as seen in the fact that all six religious behaviors changed significantly, and five of the eight religious beliefs tracked followed suit.

§ The four major church-related behaviors have all suffered in the past two decades. Church attendance in a typical week has dropped by five percentage points (down to 52%); adult Sunday school attendance has declined 11 points, to 25%; volunteerism is off by 11 points (now standing at 26%); and being unchurched has risen from 17% to 24%.

§ The likelihood of attending a large church (600 or more people) grew by seven percentage points. Fourteen percent of Protestant adults now align with such a church. That’s double the proportion discovered in 1991, but unchanged from a decade ago.

§ Personal Bible reading undertaken apart from church events has dipped by seven percentage points since 1991, now down to 57%. The good news is that this represents a rebound from the 48% registered in 2001.

Perhaps surprisingly, four of the five changes in the religious beliefs of Protestants represent change for the better.

§ The number of Protestants who have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that they consider to still be important in their life today has risen by eight percentage points, to 86%.

§ Protestants are eight points less likely to agree that Satan is merely a symbol of evil, not a living entity, than they were in 1991. About half of them (47%) accept that characterization of Satan.

§ Adopting a personal responsibility for evangelism has increased slightly among Protestants, from 33% to 38% over the past 20 years.

§ The proportion of Protestant adults that meets the “born again” criteria has risen from 53% to 65%.

§ The notion that the Bible is completely accurate in all of the principles it teaches is less popular among Protestants today. In 1991, 61% strongly believed that notion; today, 56% hold that belief.

One nation under God? Perhaps, but new statistics released by the Barna Group, as part of its State of the Church – 2011 report, suggest that there is great variety of religious belief and behavior found across the country. The latest in a series of six reports that track changes in America’s religious nature since 1991 reveals that some of the old religious stereotypes no longer hold water. Deeper insight into those variations is accessible through a commentary by lead researcher George Barna at his blog site, georgebarna.com.

Changes in the Northeast
Oddly, there has been limited change in Northeast in the past 20 years. The only three significant transitions have been the following:

§ Church volunteerism in the Northeast has dropped by 11 percentage points, from 23% in 1991 to 12% in 2011.

§ The proportion of unchurched adults in the Northeast climbed from 26% in 1991 to 41% in 2011.

§ Ironically, the likelihood of someone from the Northeast claiming to be a Christian rose by ten points during the 1991-2011 era, from 72% to 82%.

Changes in the South
Similar to the Northeast, there was not a lot of religious change in the South over the last 20 years. There were statistically significant changes identified in regard to just four of the 14 items tracked.

§ Adult Sunday school attendance dropped in the South by 10 percentage points, to 21%.

§ Attending a church of 600 people or more became somewhat more common in the southern states between 1991 and 2011, rising from 10% to 17%.

§ Qualifying as an unchurched person – i.e., someone who has not attended a church service during the past six months, other than a special service such as a wedding or funeral – increased from 20% to 31%.

§ The only belief that sustained significant change was the 10 percentage point decline in adults who strongly agreed that the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches. That dropped the figure to half of southerners (50%) who hold this point of view.

Changes in the Midwest
The region with the greatest degree of religious change since 1991 was definitely the Midwest. Of the 14 religious variables tracked, 10 experienced significant change. Among the six religious behaviors, five saw a serious shift take place.

§ The biggest behavioral change has been the large reduction in church attendance in the Midwest. Pegged at 55% in 1991, average weekly attendance at a church service now stands at 40% in the central states.

§ Given the drop in weekly attendance, it is not surprising to find growth in the number of unchurched adults in the Midwest. However, the magnitude is substantial: a 50% jump, from 24% in 1991 to 36% in 2011.

§ Adult Sunday school attendance has declined in the Midwest since 1991 by seven percentage points, from 20% to just 13%.

§ Church volunteerism declined by nine percentage points in the Midwest over the past two decades, dipping from 30% to 21%.

§ Bible reading undertaken other than when attending a church event declined by seven percentage points since 1991. The current average in a given week is for 42% of Midwestern adults to read the scriptures.

Of the eight religious beliefs studied, five experienced significant changes.

§ Midwestern adults are less likely to describe themselves as Christian these days than was the case in 1991. The proportion slumped from 88% to 81%.

§ The percentage of Midwestern adults who contend that Satan is not a living entity but is just a symbol of evil declined by seven points, from 64% to 57%.

§ Those who strongly believe that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches dropped from 45% to 38%.

§ People’s views of God changed substantially since 1991, with a 13 percentage point drop in the number of Midwestern adults who believe that “God is the all-knowing, all-powerful and perfect Creator of the universe who still rules the world today.” That view was held by two-thirds of adults in the central states (65%) in 2011.

§ Despite the other indicators of deterioration in people’s connection with Christianity, the only region that experienced a significant increase in the proportion of born again adults since 1991 was the Midwest. There was a 10-point increase, rising to 42% in 2011.

Changes in the West
Of the 14 religious measures followed by the Barna Group for this report, half of those showed statistically significant changes in the West since 1991. Among the six behavioral measures tracked, three saw meaningful shifts.

§ Church attendance among western adults dropped by 11 points, from 47% to 36% in 2011.

§ The proportion of unchurched adults rose from 29% to 46% in the West during the last 20 years.

§ Bible reading during an average week declined by nine points in the West, sliding to 34% in 2011.

The research concerning the state of the eight belief measures among people living in the West reflected significant change had taken place among half of those variables.

§ Adults in the West are now eight percentage points less likely to say their religious faith is very important in their life than was the case in 1991, when 57% made such a claim.

§ Since 1991, belief in an orthodox view of God has plummeted by 13 percentage points in the West, down to 58%.

§ The Bible is viewed less kindly in the West these days, as the research points to a 13 percentage point drop in those who firmly believe that the Bible is totally accurate in all the principles it teaches. Whereas four out of ten adults (39%) in the western states held that view in 1991, just one out of every four (26%) does today.

§ Fewer adults in the West now agree that Satan is just a symbol, not a living entity. There has been an eight percentage point drop in such a perspective, moving from 63% in 1991 to 55% today.