Certainly there are many needs and challenges facing the Church today. I am convinced, however, that one of the most important, if not THE most important, is the foundational issue of helping local congregations recover the complete Christian story, her comprehensive, holistic biblical worldview.

If recovered, this biblical worldview and story will serve as the larger theological framework that, I believe, has the potential to revolutionize Christian experience, deepen and enrich parish life and ministry, and empower the kingdom role of churches in mission and cultural renewal, all to the greater glory of God.

Just think what could and would happen if the Church retrieved the amazing wealth of her narrative resources and began to fulfill her divine vocation in the world as the people of God within the context of an all-encompassing vision of life rooted and grounded in the whole counsel of God!

The question, of course, is how are we doing in this area? What kind of progress is being made, or not being made, in terms of recovering the total Christian story and communicating a biblical worldview in evangelical churches today?

Well, quite honestly, in this situation, the news really isn’t very good. Recent polling in America by the Barna Research Group among born-again, Bible-believing Christians paints a pretty dismal worldview picture in the churches. According to Barna’s criteria, only 9% of born again adults and 2% of born again teenagers have a Christian worldview. This means that 91% of born again adults and 98% of born again teenagers lack a Christian view of faith, life and the world.[1] I wonder if the situation in Indonesia isn’t similar?

What makes these statistics even more distressing is the very simple, very elementary way Barna measured worldview comprehension among born again Christians (that is, his criteria).[2] The questions he asked to determine worldview comprehension were so simple I think my dog could have answered most of them successfully.  One can only imagine how distressing the results would be if the tests he used to measure worldview in the evangelical churches were raised to an intermediate, much less an advanced level.[3]

This lack of understand the Bible’s big picture and world view go along way in explaining why born again Christians are living just like the rest of the world in such areas as divorce, materialism, neglect of the poor, sexual immorality, racism, and spousal abuse, generating what Ronald J. Sider in a new book has called The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience.[4] How distinctive are Indonesian Christians from the rest of society? Are they truly Christ’s salt and light?

Therefore, a crucial need today, as I have already mentioned, is for the recovery of the total biblical story and worldview vision in the preaching, teaching, and ministries of evangelical churches. I think this would apply to Indonesian churches as well.