TOP STORY: CHRISTIAN NUMBER CRUNCHER: Profile George Barna: Tracking the nation’s `leading spi

c. 1997 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Blending a lifelong love of statistics with an ardent faith, pollster George Barna has carved out a career crunching numbers for an evangelical Christian clientele. And while he has conducted market research for corporate giants such as the Disney Channel and the Visa credit card company, the bulk […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Blending a lifelong love of statistics with an ardent faith, pollster George Barna has carved out a career crunching numbers for an evangelical Christian clientele.

And while he has conducted market research for corporate giants such as the Disney Channel and the Visa credit card company, the bulk of his work has been for high-profile Christian organizations such as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Focus on the Family, World Vision, the Christian Broadcasting Network and Campus Crusade for Christ.


But now Barna is taking his career in a new direction.”We’re working toward making Christianity real in the lives of more people,”Barna, a self-described”biblical Christian”who shuns the label evangelical as too vague, said in an interview.

By developing partnerships with individuals and Christian ministries, Barna plans to focus on the three elements he believes will help the church”get its act together to influence the way people think and behave,”he said. But the pollster, saying the plan remains a work in progress, acknowledges he has yet to flesh out all the details of how he expects to accomplish the task.

Still, his goals are ambitious, driven by the numbers and the somewhat pessimistic portrait they paint.

First, Barna wants to encourage Christians to develop a biblical worldview.”Fewer than 10 percent of evangelicals have a Christian worldview,”he said. Many lack the basics of the faith and there is”no indication that they live differently than the rest of the population.” Next, Barna said churches need to address what he believes is a leadership vacuum.”We are trying to move forward without leaders leading the charge,”he said.

Finally, he wants to see churches experiment with new forms. The congregational model, which is used almost exclusively in the United States, is outdated and”bears no relevance to the way we live today,”he said. Many Christians are looking for churches that are”more relational, more decentralized, much more flexible,”he said.

New media outlets, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web, offer new opportunities for organized religion, Barna said, citing research that indicates from 10 percent to 20 percent of Americans will have an on-line spiritual experience through the Internet.”What is working well are the interactive sites where people plug into areas that help them to further their spiritual development,”Barna said.

And house churches _ small, often tightly knit congregations that may or may not have a formal relationship with a denomination _ also might evolve into workable alternatives, he said.”I think you are going to see less allegiance to denominations and individual churches and more of an ecumenical situation, where people are going to come together for common worship experience without allegiance to the group that puts it on,”he said.


Barna, 42, knows how to use the mass media to proclaim his ideas. His books, audiotapes, videotapes and monthly newsletter help pastors and lay leaders better understand the impact of a rapidly changing culture on both the churched and the unchurched.

His books _ he has written 20 _ have such plucky titles as”User Friendly Churches”(Regal Books);”Marketing the Church: What They Never Taught You About Church Growth”(NavPress); and”Turning Vision into Action”(Regal Books).

His latest effort,”The Index of Leading Spiritual Indicators”(Word), offers a variety of concise statistical snapshots of beliefs, trends in morality, and church involvement. In the introduction, Barna kiddingly writes that he wanted to name his terse volume”Cliff Notes Guide to Spirituality _ McFaith.” Ever since he was a kid, George Barna has been fascinated with numbers.”I used to collect baseball cards. And I used to spend all day memorizing and recalculating the numbers,”Barna recalled about his statistical hobby that began at age 6.”Numbers have always been part of where I was at.” Raised a Roman Catholic _ he once served as an altar boy and attended catechism classes _ Barna was educated in the public schools of Princeton, N.J. But his interest in things spiritual bloomed during the 1970s while attending Jesuit-run Boston College, where he majored in sociology.”I was one of the few that would regularly attend church services,”he said.

After moving back to New Jersey to attend graduate school at Rutgers University, Barna’s fledgling faith deepened as he and his wife-to-be, Nancy, prepared for their Catholic wedding in 1978.”Some of the interactions with the priests caused us to think more deeply about what we wanted in a church and what Christianity is all about,”he said.”After we got married, we went on a search for God.” While sampling the spiritual landscape, the newlyweds visited a”black, charismatic Baptist church … a fundamentalist Baptist church that met in a gym … and a liberal Presbyterian church,”Barna said.

But it was at a”small, independent Baptist church”that Barna first heard a sermon that offered a practical message from the Bible.”I was intrigued by the concept that the Bible could be a useful tool in our daily existence,”he said.

During a follow-up visit to Barna’s home, the Baptist preacher stressed to the couple their need to make a spiritual commitment. George decided to”give God a 30-day trial period.””I was in graduate school and they taught me that the only things that are real are the types of things you can tear apart and put back together,”said Barna, who has double masters’ degrees in political science and urban planning.”So I said, `I’m not ready to make a commitment but if this God of yours is as powerful and wonderful as you claim he is, I’ll give him 30 days to prove himself to me.'” At the end of that time _ during which the Barnas read the Bible, prayed, and attended church regularly _”there was such a change in our perceptions and feelings”that the pair committed their lives to Jesus, Barna said.


Barna moved in 1981 to the West Coast to take a job with one of the nation’s largest market research firms. There he gained his first opportunity to merge his math skills with his new-found faith.

He still remembers the day a ministry leader hired the California firm to research audience reaction to the TV shows of various televangelists. Barna got the account because he is a Christian.

Barna had found his niche: A love for polling and writing combined with a desire to help the church better understand contemporary culture resulted in the founding of the Barna Research Group in 1984.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)”As a market researcher, I think he does a really good job,”said John Green of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, a research and teaching institute at the University of Akron in Ohio.”No doubt he serves his clients very well.” However, as an academic, Green is mildly critical of Barna’s methodology.”From a social science point of view, his conceptual understanding of religion is somewhat limited. … It’s not that his data is wrong, but scholars have a difficult time trying to understand what it is he’s measuring.” As an example, Green cited Barna’s use of the label evangelical, which Green said sometimes varies from poll to poll.

Barna said such a reading of his work is a”misunderstanding”and that confusion may result because people’s self-description sometimes clashes with how Barna characterizes them.”We use exactly the same measurement,”he said.”We try to be very consistent.” (END OPTIONAL TRIM)

Last summer, Barna moved his family and the Barna Research Group, which has an annual budget of $1 million and employs 5 full-time and about three dozen part-time workers, from Glendale, Calif., 60 miles up the coast to Oxnard.


Before the move, Barna was a teaching pastor at a large, nondenominational church in Glendale.”There are no denominations in the Bible,”said Barna.”What we are called is to be loyal to Christ. What I’m trying to do is fit in with the larger community of saints.”

AMB END PAQUETTE

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!