George Barna on leadership, modeling and family

George Barna on leadership, modeling and family (from his Homiletics Online interview).

Barna: We’re happy to take the label of Christian and not have to deal with the responsibility. Part of that is because of an absence of leadership in churches. You see, most of the churches in America have no God-given vision that they’re centered on. And so what do we wind up doing? We revert to playing the religious game. Let’s have more programs, let’s get more people in the seats, let’s build a bunch of buildings — all the things about which the world would say, “Ah, that’s success.” This has nothing to do with God’s equation of “Are you holy? Are you obedient? Are you serving? Do you want to be like Christ?” So we’ve missed the boat there. We’ve got to have the leadership component.

Secondly, people have to see it modeled. A lot of educational research has come out in the last five to seven years that shows that 60 — 70 percent of the behavioral change that takes place in a people’s lives in America is based upon finding someone that they know, and that they trust, watching what they do, and imitating their behavior. So modeling is huge. Where in the church do we see this being modeled for us by high-profile, trustworthy, credible individuals? So this is another missing component.

Then, we could get into the whole discussion about the family. Is there such a thing as a Christian family? We know that less than 10 percent of all Christian families ever spend time studying the Bible and praying together. Less than 10%. So what does that mean? It means that most Christian families are saying to the local church, “Here are my kids. You deal with them and I’ll do my best to get them there next week. That’s my contribution.” So that’s not enough.

Then we need to look at the whole element of “What is it that actually influences people’s thinking and behavior?” This is the focus of the research we’re doing right now. I don’t know the ultimate answers. But the preliminary insights would suggest that when we look at the major sources of influence in people’s lives, the church is not on the list. The major ones are movies, television, the Internet, publishing, public policy officials, parents and —

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