#239 | The State of the Bible: A Deep Dive into America’s Faith Crisis with John Plake

There is something in the black church. Not to say there's no homogeneous black church, there's no homogeneous white church. There are churches, right?

But what we notice is that when we look at the church by race and ethnicity, we notice that black Americans are more deeply connecting with scripture and they're doing this really important thing. They're recognizing that the Bible wasn't written to them, it was written for them.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's time for Apollos Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host. And today on our show we're having another one of our deep conversations.

Stats tell stories, but what stories do they tell? It depends on the stat, of course. And I mean, what about the stats?

When we look in regards to faith, what can we learn about the faith of so many Christians in the United States today if we were to really measure that out? Mean there are so many factors to think about to look at. What about Bible reading?

I think that's probably one of the best indicators of the spiritual health of Christians church. And in some respects, especially in the United States of a nation, how does a Christian engage the scriptures?

How often and who are those who are engaging the scriptures? What can this tell us about the state of the church, the future generations, and about American society as a whole?

Today we're honored to have Reverend Dr. John Plake with us again. He is the Chief Program Officer at the American Bible Society. Dr.

Plake is the author and editor of several books and articles for both scholarly and popular media.

As Editor in Chief of American Bible Society's annual State of the Bible Research series, his work has been featured in numerous media outlets including cbn, the Christian Post, Christianity Today, Outreach Magazine, Philanthropy Daily, Relevant Magazine, and Washington Watch. He served over 34 years in full time ministry as a pastor, missionary, professor and researcher.

He's an ordained Minister with a PhD in Intercultural Studies and lives with his family in Wilmington, Delaware. And today he is back on Apollos Watered. John, welcome back to Apollos Watered.

Thank you, Travis. It is a real honor to be with you again and always enjoy our conversations. Thanks for having me.

Well, I'm looking forward to the conversation as we jump into the state of the Bible Report. But before we we get into that, you know the drill. You've been here before. You are not a rookie to Apollo's Watered. So are you ready for the Fast5?

Lay it on Me, the best thing.

About living in Delaware is what, five.

Things approximately to Philadelphia, which is just amazing. It's an amazing old city. It's wonderful to see the history of this country. Proximity to the Atlantic Ocean.

I grew up in the Midwest, and we didn't have an ocean. And so being able to drive to the Delaware, Delaware beaches is just a ton of fun. No sales tax.

Yes, it is a sales tax haven and other kinds of tax haven, which is why all of your credit card companies are headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware. Number three, lower property taxes than any other place around.

And so you can go to Pennsylvania, a mile north of me, or to New Jersey, five miles to the east of me, and pay a whole lot more to live there. And I guess, number five, it's home, you know, so home is where the heart is. My kids love it here. My wife loves it here, and I love being with them.

How long have you been in Delaware?

It'll be seven years this summer.

Oh, okay.

All right. Well, being close to Philly, and this is the second question, because my son and I got to take a trip up there this summer.

And it was my first time really trying to sample the difference between the cheesesteaks. So here we go. Pat's or Gino's?

I gotta tell you, I live in Delaware for another reason. I don't like cheesesteaks.

What?

I don't like cheesesteaks. They're a heart attack on a plate.

So, you know, I'll eat them when we have guests in town because everybody wants to come in and eat cheesesteaks, and that's fine, but I don't care.

You know, it's funny is, we ended up. I can't remember which one we got. We were going to try one of each, but only one took credit cards. The other one only took cash.

So we had a credit card and. Or, you know, debit card. And so we used that and then had it.

And it was delicious when we first had it, but my son couldn't finish it, so he let it set for 30 minutes. That's a mistake.

Definite mistake. Gotta eat it hot.

Something happens with the cheese. It's just like, I don't know, it goes back to its true form. I'm not quite sure.

And then after you eat it, you start regretting your life choices after that.

Okay, you understand my life a little better.

Number three. You go into Barnes and Noble. What section are you going to and why?

Oh, my goodness. I love Barnes and Noble.

Of course, you're a researcher. It's why I Asked the question.

I don't know. I like them all so much, I'm probably going to go to recent novels.

Really?

Yeah. People who don't read fiction need to get over themselves and develop an imagination.

And I find I work so much in the realm of facts and history and culture and research that stepping back and taking an imaginative view of the world and indulging in particularly historical fiction, which I like a lot, those sort of plausibility structures that you can put in a historical setting, those are a lot of fun.

All right, then that leads to another question. Who's your favorite historical fiction author?

I don't have a favorite historical fiction author. Now I'm going to contradict myself or book.

How about that pick that?

I love the three part series on Winston Churchill and it starts with the Last lion. And that was William Manchester, William Manchester's three part series.

It wasn't completed until after Manchester died, so someone took his manuscript and polished it and wrote the third in the series. But it takes Churchill from his childhood through kind of his glory days and then his fall from grace.

He ends up leaving politics and then kind of coming back into things during World War II. And then after World War II, it picks up the third volume. I find Churchill to be a really fascinating character.

That's not historical fiction, that's just straight up biography.

It's not, it's just straight up history. So that's why I said I was going to contradict myself.

Okay, okay.

I've read a little bit of that trilogy. I do want to delve in further. He is a fascinating character and filled with great quotes and stories.

Man, I love the stories you hear about Churchill because that dude, he just, I mean, he's funny, witty, that typical British kind of sarcasm.

You know, it's larger than life kind of a character. And really interesting how a guy who wasn't that savvy. I mean, he, in many ways he wasn't a politically savvy person at all.

He was, he wasn't even right all the time. But when he was right, when his moral certitude matched the conditions of the world around him, he was perfectly positioned to transform the world.

And nobody else really could have done it. So yeah, he's an interesting character.

Well, then let's get to the last question. As we're talking about a little bit about history and knowing you love intercultural studies, how about this? Let's put two together.

What if we take you to travel in any place around the world to see a historical site in a different Country. What historical site do you want to see? And why.

So many of them? I think I would travel to Turkey, to eastern Turkey, to the site that has been identified as possibly being Noah's Ark.

And that's sort of a fascinating bit of archeology. But I have literally, I've never visited the Holy Land, and I've never visited northern Egypt.

So all of those areas around the ancient near east would be way on my bucket list. And I could spend a lifetime.

I love all of those places. I've not been to Turkey. That's one place I've not been. But I've been to northern Egypt, Alexandria. Oh, the temples that are there, just.

I mean, the temples in Egypt, traveling to Alexandria, Lebanon, Israel, those are wonderful places. But Turkey, I've become so. I'm not a normally Instagram person, but my wife has got me, you know, looking at Instagram now, and I'm.

It's funny because she hears my newsfeed and she's like, what are you watching or listening to? And it's all these Middle Eastern things. It's all these Turkey and. And Egypt and cultural things and music in the background.

And I'm like, down the neighborhood with that turned up all the way when I'm walking my dog. And I think my whole neighborhood thinks I'm nuts. Like, you know, something like that. It's a lot of fun.

But we have, I mean, before we get into the particulars, what has the research found in the last two years?

As the pandemic started, people really began to reach for the Bible. They began to reengage their faith.

I think in times of disruption, and we can talk about that more later, but in times of disruption, people really do revisit their faith and reach for Scripture. And that's a great thing.

But I think in this sort of post Covid retrenchment, people have found their new normal, and they've largely found that new normal without God and without the Bible and without the church. They found that those things for many people were quite optional. And that's not true across the board.

There is a very significant, very deeply committed group of followers of Jesus all Across America, and they are doing great. They're even more vibrant than they've ever been before.

There's great signs of hope in the next generation, but across America, big hundred thousand foot view of things, it's not better.

Well, then let's talk about the bad news, because as you said, it's not good. What are some of the particulars that we can see in the report that shows that it's not doing well?

One of the things that we track that I think is easy for people to understand is how many people actually use the Bible at all. And we say use because we recognize some people are maybe visually impaired or maybe they're not particularly literate.

So they might listen to the Bible or they might be deaf and they might be viewing sign language Bible or something like that.

So we're not trying to be cute when we say Bible users, but we're just trying to make room for the fact that not everybody interacts with scripture in the same way that maybe I do or you do.

So that means that for the first time on record, fewer than 100 million American adults say that they are reading the Bible at least two or three times a year. And that's a really low bar. But it's just an indicator of like, is the Bible even part of the conversation for most people?

We also look at a more granular view of things where we look at scripture engagement. Scripture engagement is more than just how frequently do you read the Bible, but it's what difference is it making in your inner life?

What difference is it making in the way you live your life? And so if you put those things together, we have three big buckets of people. We have a group that we call the Scripture engaged or the Bible Engaged.

That group of people, they're consistently interacting with the Bible. It's shaping their choices. It's really transforming their relationships, the way they see themselves, see others, understand God, all of that.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have what we call the Bible disengaged. Bible disengaged. People, I would say, never use the Bible on purpose. They're not reaching for the Bible.

It was 100 million American adults, 39% of the population. Today it's 57% of the population, 151 million American adults. So it's more than three times the size of the Bible engaged population.

And then in the middle, we have a group of people that we call the movable middle. You could think of them as Bible test drivers. These people are interested in scripture, but they don't know it really well.

If you handed them a Bible, they might not be able to find what they were looking for. But they want to know more. And they're kind of leaning in.

They may be in church, they may be outside the church wondering if there's a place for them in church. And it's 65 million American adults right now. That's a sizable population of people.

And I think for us at the American Bible Society, it's the group of people that we're really focused on helping.

Because if we can help 65 million American adults who are open to the Bible to deepen their meaningful engagement with Scripture, that's a huge win for the Gospel, It's a huge win for the church, It's a huge win for the Bible cause. It's a huge win for America. And if we can't do that, then, you know, we need to rethink what.

We'Re doing, which I find that very few people are. I mean, everyone's talking about the stats, but very few people have solutions except to redouble the efforts of what they've tried to do before.

However, you have tried to create a way for people to engage. And we're going to get to that in just a moment.

But as we've talked about, this movable middle that is in some respect a positive because they are open to it. And you found some other positives and opportunities within the state of the Bible report. What are they?

Well, I think one of the kind of shining lights that we see is when we look at the church and we see the African American church, we noticed that they have Higher levels of Bible curiosity and higher levels of scripture engagement than the rest of the church. Now is it a lot more.

Well, among black Americans who engage with Scripture, 28% of black Americans are Scripture engaged, whereas only 16% of white Americans are Scripture engaged. 38% of black Americans are in the movable middle. Only 21% of white Americans are in the movable middle.

There is something in the black church, not to say there's no homogeneous black church, there's no homogeneous white church. There are churches, right.

But what we notice is that when we look at the church by race and ethnicity, we notice that black Americans are more deeply connecting with scripture. And they're doing this really important thing. They're recognizing that the Bible wasn't written to them, it was written for them.

And so that's the hard work of scripture. And I think it's the place where we trip up.

The message of scripture is for us today, but it does require some work and often a hermeneutical community, a group of people who can help us understand how does scripture that was written so long ago apply to the reality that I'm facing day to day today? And the black church does that really, really well. In addition, evangelical Protestants, largely evangelical Protestants, are scripture engaged.

46% of evangelical Protestants score scripture engaged compared to only 25% of mainline Protestants, 26 of historically black Protestants and 11% of Catholics. And so, you know, you can see that there's something going on with the way we interact with scripture and the impact that it's having in our lives.

I mean, among people who identify as evangelical Protestants, only 22% of them are Bible disengaged.

So there's hope there because I think in many cases those churches are doing their best to begin with scripture and unpack it and help people to understand it.

And the better job they do of that of taking scripture and helping people understand it in their day to day lives, the healthier those churches and those people tend to be.

It's amazing how simple that truth is, that of course if you're reading the Bible and you're applying it, you're going to be healthy, healthier. Hopefully that should be the, the overwhelming characteristic as we go through this one thing, though, you talked about that I'm very curious about.

I know you've already referred to the categories, and you said that the bar is low with that. What. What's the category that only reads it four times a year?

That's called Bible users. And if they read the Bible two or three times a year on their own, they're categorized as a Bible user.

Now, I know you're doing the state of the Bible, but you don't necessarily look at church, any church engagement, in the middle of that, do you? Or is that any part of this survey?

We do, actually. And in a subsequent chapter that we're going to be releasing, we'll be talking about some interesting shifts in how people engage with church.

And what was interesting, one of those challenging data interpretation moments was we looked at the level of scripture engagement for people who attend church in person versus people who attend church online, at least part of the time. And what we discovered was that online church attenders are more Bible engaged than physical church tenders.

Say that again, because that blows my mind.

So people who attend church either entirely online or partly online, are significantly more scripture engaged than people who attend church in person.

How is that?

So thank you for asking that question. It's really, really interesting. So here's what we've done.

We've done some deeper analysis on this, and what we've figured out is that just because you are in the garage, you're not a car. And that same analogy works with church. And there are a variety of reasons. I go to my garage.

I might go to my garage because I want to work at my workbench because I have a workbench in my garage. Or I might go to my gar. Garage because I need to get something out of the freezer. We have a freezer in the garage.

Or I might go to my garage because I'm taking the trash out. Or I might go to my garage because I'm getting in my car. So lots of reasons that you might go there.

And likewise, in the American church, there's a variety of reasons that people go to church, but they're really in two big buckets. The first bucket is they're going to church because they want to get closer to God.

They want to understand His Word more, and they're really pursuing a spiritual connection with God and with others. And that's great. And those people, by and large, are similar to those who attend church online.

However, there's another very large group of people in America that goes to church because it's a social thing to do. And so they're not going for the connection with God. They're going for the connection with their community.

And particularly in a presidential election year or a big, you know, congressional election year and that kind of thing, you're going to see folks coming to church to get votes. So you see politicians show up at church because people are gathered there and they want to make their case to them.

Are they there because they really are wanting to pursue their relationship with God? Some of them yes, but many of them no. And so it's not enough to just go to a church and even to attend church somewhat regularly.

It really has to do with what's the motive. Okay, so back out now and ask, why would you connect to a church online? There's no social incentive to do this. Nobody knows you did it.

The only real reason that you would connect with a church online is because you're pursuing knowing God better, worshiping God to the best of your ability. And so they are really, really different populations. And we think it has a lot to do with the motive for that kind of participation.

Do you think that geographical location plays any part with that? With the Great Migration? This is why I asked the question. With a Great Migration, I'm going to put it in radio terms.

When I first moved to Boston from Chicago years ago, over 20 years ago now, I listened to Boston radio stations because I'm driving in my car and it gets Boston radio stations. I moved to Florida.

I don't listen to Florida radio stations because now I have my cell phone and I can listen to all the Chicago stuff because that's home, is it, with the people that are moving in the migration, rather than do the work of trying to find a new community, because that's one of the hardest things, the grade to churching, that was the result that they found is that many people didn't go to church because they moved to a new place, they had a new rhythm, et cetera, et cetera. And people are watching the stuff that they're familiar with and they've already built a trust with, because that's easy.

Is that part of this or is that any way to measure that?

I bet there's a way to measure it, but I can't say that we've drilled down and actually have data to look at there. I'm kind of like you. I can look at this through my own personal lens.

And I think I, like you, move from the Midwest to the east coast and was not pastoring a church at the time. It was in a different kind of ministry.

And so finding a, a church that was a good fit for me and my family that was preaching scripture, that really was discipling people and was healthy and strong was, Was really quite difficult for us. And so we would fall in that category of a family that attends church fully online.

And that's because we do actually have a trust relationship with a church back home for us that we can connect with. We love the way that God's word is preached and it strengthens us and it helps us.

I think technology has sort of democratized things in, in a way, you know, pastors don't have to be the best preacher in the world anymore. And the reason they don't have to be the best preacher in the world anymore is, well, probably none of us are.

And the best preacher in the world is probably online and anybody can listen to them anytime they want. And so there is a real shift in this structuring of what is it that the church does now.

I'll tell you, attending an online church has some downsides, and one of the big downsides is, well, where's that community and how do you intentionally connect with them and how do you serve your community and be a presence for God in the north east when you're not actually gathering people from around the neighborhood and around the community? And so that's part of this big shifting that's still taking place in the American church.

And I think that God cares more about that shift than even I do. And he's going to superintend it and work through the process and we'll come out at a healthier place.

But today we're in the midst of a lot of big shifting and a lot of transition. And so we're looking to see how we can just be cooperating with the Holy Spirit in that process.

What did the research find?

As we're talking about the subject of technology and our digital lives, which continually are morphing and changing, You've already talked about it in your personal experience and what we're seeing with other people. But in your research, as you're looking at the digital, digital technology, what did you find in regards to the state of the Bible?

So next month in May, we're going to release a chapter that will cover some more things around AI in the Bible, around technology and the Bible and church. So there's going to be more data kind of coming.

One of the things that we found is that While print Bible engagement is still people's overall preference across all generations, the younger you skew, the more likely people are to want to engage with scripture through some kind of a digital means, an app or online or something like that. And there are really two different groups of people that love to do digital Bible engagement. The first group is the choir, right?

The Jesus, little brother and sister. The most spiritually healthy, deeply engaged people because they use digital tools as portability. I have the Bible with me wherever I want.

They can search it and do theme searches and word searches and things. We used to have to use concordances for and whatever. We have a search engine that does that.

Now we can look up a passage in an interlinear Bible just by Google searching that passage and pull up interlinear and look at it in the original language and the language that you prefer to read in. So there's a lot of Bible study tool that comes with digital space.

On the other end of the spectrum, though, there's this Bible test driver group, the movable Middle. They probably know Jesus said something that has touched their heart, or they might think maybe the Bible talks about this or talks about that.

But if you handed them a print Bible, they wouldn't know where to find it. Like, where's the story of David and Goliath? They wouldn't know where to start. Where's the story of Daniel? In the lion's den?

They might get close, they might get to the book of Daniel, but where in Daniel? And so a lot of this difficulty in locating the information that they're looking for is solved by a digital searchable Bible.

And I think this is also an opportunity for the church because we really need to recognize that people in the movable Middle are looking for God's word, but they aren't necessarily looking for a Bible. I know that's tough to hear from a guy from the American Bible Society because we want everybody to engage fully with the Bible.

But it's not about the product that we've made of God's Word, where we put it between black leather covers and embossed it and had a gold edge and tab dividers and things like that in it. It's not about the form factor. It's actually about the message. It's about the things that are inside of it. And so we need to help people turn.

The Bible in its whole form is kind of like a commodity. You know, you and I both have history in Chicago, and the Chicago Board of Trade traded in commodities.

And so you could trade a train car Load of corn, field corn, you could.

And that has a certain value, but it only has value if you have the tools to mill it and turn it into something useful, like the corn flakes that you want to eat for breakfast in the morning. Well, similarly, the Bible in its traditional form is, for a lot of people, a commodity.

It's like, well, I know there's value there, but I don't know how to get at it because I'm not General Mills.

And so the church really needs to understand the needs of our audience, the movable middle, and really go about the process of distilling scripture responsibly and carefully into products that can be used by people who are wanting to take the next step in their journey with God.

So we're seeing then that churches need to have a greater focus on formation and Bible engagement. Is that what I'm hearing?

I think that's correct. But also a recognition that the way we normally segment people is just wrong. It has no basis in the data at all.

We tend to look at people from the outward appearance. We have a men's group and a women's group. Well, those things are sort of marginally helpful.

Maybe there are issues that men care about and that women care about distinctively from one another, but that tells you nothing about where they are in their journey with God.

For that, you either have to have a relationship where someone is fully known, or you have to have a really good set of tools to help someone figure out where they are on their journey and match them to the right resources and the right experiences to help them take their next step. And so it's either got to be relationally rich or data rich one way or the other to be able to help someone get what they really need.

Which shows the. The need to develop relationships within a body. I. I mean, that's what you're. You're showing.

There is transformation happens really, within a community and those who have to develop those relationships, that relational kind of infiltration, if you will, you know, Jesus, go and make disciples. But part of that go is the relationship infiltration to interact, to develop that type of relationship. You continually refer to the movable middle.

And you notice, though, that this movable middle has five basic characteristics. I mean, what are they and why are they important?

When we first identified the movable middle several years ago, we reached out to some focus group facilities in different places in America, and we asked them to recruit groups of people who qualified as being in the movable middle and just bring them into a room in one of These spaces, you know, fancy market research facilities. And let, let us sit down and have a conversation with them. Because we didn't know what we didn't know about the movable middle.

And out of that, we had five really big takeaways about the. The movable middle. And I think the first one is really important for church people. The movable middle is interested in the Bible.

Like, 97% of the movable middle is curious about the Bible and, or Jesus at some level, often quite curious, but they're interested in the Bible in their own terms. And what I mean by that is Bible people tend to say, hey, come to my book study in Hebrews.

Well, someone in the movable middle thinks that you're meeting in a coffee shop. They don't know what Hebrews are. They just, they're. They don't know that it's a book in the Bible.

They're interested in the Bible but not coming from the Bible side of things. They're interested in the Bible answering their questions.

So maybe to put some flesh on that, when I was in Bible college, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we were required to take a number of courses in what's called systematic theology. So systematic theology looks at classical thought categories and examines those thought categories through the lens of scripture.

So what's the nature of God? Well, what does the Bible say about the nature of God? What's the nature of humankind? What's the nature of sin? What's the nature of salvation?

What's the nature of this and that and the other thing.

And one of the things I noticed when I'd been a pastor for about 10 years was nobody ever asked me, pastor John, can you explain to me the nature of God? Nobody ever asked me that question.

In fact, there was not a single question I was ever asked that could be answered by systematic theology categories. I wrote papers about it. I thought very deeply about it. But that thinking didn't help me connect to my culture.

It helped me understand scripture, it helped me understand God, but it didn't help me understand the people that I was trying to serve in, say, Arlington Heights, Illinois. And so the way I think about this is we are all trying to be bridges. Every Christian is trying to be a bridge across a river.

And one side of the river is the text. It's the text of scripture, the message of God's word. And we have to be deeply moored into that.

We are responsible to know God's word, and we have the opportunity to do it. So let's do it with Gusto. But the other side of the river, the bank tends to shift quite a bit on the other side of the river.

And that is the culture. And if we do our jobs well, we, with our lives, bridge the text and the context.

But the challenge is, I think for a lot of really dedicated Bible people is that we're firmly moored into the text, but we've lost our connection with our context. And so we're the bridge to nowhere. Like, we know a lot of things about God that no one cares about, and that's not super helpful.

There are also people in America that are deeply moored into the context and they feel the hurts and the situations of the people around them, but in their deep connection with their context, they've lost their mooring to the text. And so they're the bridge from nowhere. Neither of those is a workable solution.

We have to be people who maintain our connection to both the text and the context.

And that brings us to the place of realizing that we are to answer scripturally and responsibly the questions that are being asked by the people in the movable middle. Hey, I'm going to become a dad. And I've never been a dad before and I don't have any good models of being a dad. Can the Bible help me be a good dad?

Answer that question, be ready always to give a reason for the hope that's within you.

Or hey, I'm moving to a new city and I don't know how to make a good decision about where to live or what job to accept, or should I go to college or should I go to trade school? Like, does the Bible help me have practical wisdom? And that's really where many people in the movable middle start.

Later they will come to understand that there is a metanarrative of scripture that can guide their lives in a really different way. And actually, in our current state of the Bible research, in chapter one, we put up a chart, it's on page 17.

And what it says is, what are my motivations for reading the Bible? And we looked at spiritual vitality categories.

What was really interesting was the number one answer for why people read the Bible is because it brings me closer to God. But that's only true of people who are pretty spiritually healthy. For people who are brand new to Scripture, they're ailing or unhealthy.

It's actually not the number one reason.

Their number one reason is because I need comfort and they tend to over index for things like the Bible shows me how to treat Others, why do they need to know that? They're probably having a relationship conflict and they need to know, does the Bible have any wisdom for me here?

So I belabored that point a little too much. But that's the number one thing. They're interested in the Bible on their own terms.

Second, quickly, they struggle with the language and culture of the Bible. They don't understand the cultural and textual illusions.

One gentleman in a, in a focus group in Chicago was kind of hitting on this idea and he used some kind of spicy language in his answer when he said, you know, yeah, you know what, What? The blanks of mustard seed. He just couldn't. And everybody laughed. They were all movable middle people.

And they were like, yes, I don't understand what this means. So the language and culture, number three, they prefer modern language translations of the Bible.

You know, when the good news for modern man came out in the 60s and 70s, it was just revolutionary because it was one of the first modern language translations of the Bible that people could understand. They didn't have to be great readers to understand it. It wasn't the King James Version.

And now there are other modern language translations of the Bible that people really need. I love the King James Version. I love the poetry of it. I also like to read Shakespeare.

But for people who don't do those things, don't give somebody a King James Bible. I mean, I'm sorry, probably somebody's going to hate me for that, but they just aren't going to understand it.

Maybe give it to them as their second Bible. Number four. They need a guide.

They are really looking for someone to guide them through Scripture and they actually welcome the church, even for all our warts and struggles and difficulties. They recognize that churches have difficulties. We have people in the church and therefore we have difficulties. Right?

I'm in the church, so I'm sure I caused my share of difficulties. But they recognize that we aren't perfect.

But they also recognize that we're sort of the subject matter experts on what the Bible is and why it's important to them. So they're looking for us to help them. And then fifth, they often come from a heritage of faith.

Lots of them told us about a mom or a grandmother or a father who had honestly had passed away and had left them their Bible. And as they looked through this inheritance, they read the marginal notes.

One of the reasons I still like paper Bibles, you know, I want my kids to be able to take my paper Bible and see that I prayed for them on a certain date. And I, I said, you know, this is for Hannah. And I prayed it on this date because I knew facing an exam or something like that.

And, and so that heritage of faith, they're like, I, I long to be like this Bible person that was so cool in my life, but I don't really know how to do that. So those are just some starting points.

It is so interesting as we see the continued disintegration of familial structures that we've grown up with and people that are grasping for meaning, that no matter where the culture is headed, people are turning, they're looking, they're searching, and that's good news.

In the middle of all of this data, one of the things that I thought was interesting in reading the report, you were talking about the difference in shifts, generationally or actually over the last 50 to 60 years.

I mean, they're small little issues, but we've now entered a negative world where the dominant culture actually opposes the church. And of course, the state of the Bible data confirms a recent decline in Bible use, Scripture engagement.

We know about church attendance, Christian institutions. However, in all of that dire data, there is hope. And what is the hope for the signs of hope that you see amidst the rubble?

I'm glad you asked because it really isn't all bad news and it isn't unprecedented in the history of the church. Any of the things that we're seeing right now. One of the things that we see is a lot of hope in Gen Z, the, the youngest American adult generation.

When we look at them, you know, 21% of Gen Z adults say they've increased their Bible use in the past year. That's an increase over last year. But we just also see them really engaging with God and younger half Gen Z more than older half Gen Z.

So the older Gen Z gets, we're going to learn more about them. But as we look at these kids, they're having spiritual conversations, they're engaging in evangelism, and they want to know how to do that better.

They really want to share their faith with others. We documented this in a chapter on evangelism at the end of last year, and you can find that@stateofthebible.org, just go to the bottom of the page.

You can Download previous versions. But I think it's chapter eight or nine where we looked at evangelism in America and sharing our faith.

So there's a lot of hope, I think, in young adults who defy some of our caricatures of them.

So I think one of the places I see a big dichotomy is there are a lot of boomers who really feel like the culture at large is against the Gospel and against the Bible. And that's true to a certain degree. We've measured it. Between 10 and 15% of Americans are hostile to the Bible. They take a very negative view of it.

But actually what we see in Gen Z is a lot of undecidedness, which you can equate to openness. They're like, I don't know, I'm not sure. But they're not negatively not sure. Like I'm not sure and don't talk to me about it.

But they're like, I'm not sure. Tell me what you've experienced. They're looking for an authentic relationship with God.

They're looking for authentic faith and authentic spirituality. And if we have that, they're open to us sharing it with them. And that's great news.

What age does Gen Z? I mean, what are the, what are the age ranges of Gen Z?

Sure. So we, we basically use these categories. We look at elders. So elders would be 79 to 99.

In fact, there are so few elders now that we've had to combine them into a category we call boomers plus. So when we look at our boomers plus category, they are 60 to dead at whatever age. Right. And sorry, boomers and elders somewhere in there.

And then prior to age 11, 10 and younger is what we call Gen Alpha. So gen Z, these 11 to 27 year olds. In our study we only look at 18 to 27 year olds. So it's older half Gen Z, because our study is of American adults.

You've talked in there about white Americans, you've talked about black Americans, but of course we have the growing Hispanic community that's there. Are you able to measure the Hispanic community and their Bible engagement?

We are yeah, the Hispanic community is another real bright spot. Many Hispanics have recently migrated to the United States, and a lot of them come from deep backgrounds of faith.

I mean, you don't have to be much of a student of revival to realize that Brazil and Argentina have had some of the greatest revivals in the history of the world over the last 25 years or so. And not just in the far south of South America, but also in Central America.

For all their social and economic turmoil, there's been a lot of real revival taking place there. And so folks who have migrated to the United States have often brought with them a very vibrant faith.

And if they are Catholic, as many of them are, they are vibrantly Catholic. I mean, they're really engaged with God in the Catholic Church. If they are Protestant, they are vibrantly Protestant.

And so what we see is that Hispanics are actually, by ethnicity, the next highest level of scripture engagement. So African Americans first, followed by Hispanics. 18% of them are scripture engaged, 32% of them are. Them are in the movable middle.

And that leaves half of Hispanics who are Bible disengaged.

When you're looking at Gen Z, does that take into consideration the ethnic diversity of Gen Z too?

We can cut that data. What we generally find is that the generational cohorts are a little bit more explanatory among younger generations than ethnicity is.

So we tend to look at them separately so we don't end up with such small groupings of people that we have. You know, researchers don't like really large confidence intervals. So we like to be able to report things that we can report reliably.

And if you look at a difference, it's a meaningful difference.

So then one of the. It seems like one of the fruits of the study is showing that these different ethnic groups are extremely engaged.

They have faith, a deep faith, it sounds like, for their coming. That actually is very good for the future of the American church. As we consider the diversity of the church as a strength.

Strength.

Would you agree with that?

I. I do. I think, you know, there's something that the traditional kind of.

If you think of a traditional white church in America, I think there's something that. I mean, I'm a white pastor, okay?

So I think there are things I can learn from my African American brothers and sisters and from my Hispanic brothers and sisters about how they do ministry within a community that could be instructive to me.

I think one of the things that, that my black pastor friends have taught me is that the church is really A center of all things that are needed in the community. It helps men understand how to be good fathers.

It's kind of an all in one holistic, spiritual and social service agency and deeply rooted in the community. And I think about Jesus.

Jesus was talking in the Sermon on the Mount about social issues because the Gospel has implications for the way we live our lives in community with others. And so that's what I mean by that. And so I think there's something that we can learn there.

Whereas many, many parts of the church have kind of dichotomized faith, they had what we sometimes call the excluded middle. We have this kind of top part of our worldview where we think, well, God's up there somewhere and one day I'll go to be with him.

And so my whole engagement, God in Scripture is kind of about having fire insurance for tomorrow. But it doesn't really, I put it on on Sunday and I really don't take it with me on Monday. And that's really not the message of a biblical gospel.

The Bible has a lot to say about how we live our lives Monday through Sunday. And it talks to us as integrated whole people who are influenced by the Spirit and by the message of the gospel.

And in some ways, I think the black church has done a great job of contextualizing scripture for the people that they most often serve.

I think that what you're saying is such an important truth that I, I find that many within the white church still fail to grasp is the depth and the need of a cross cultural community to be able to speak to one another because they offer a corrective to where our cultural blind spots are, as we do to some of their years.

It's just having that conversation that I find that as we continue to be more digital and more isolated, relationships become more difficult across the board, no matter what ethnicity you are, as we continue to live our lives more digitally. So it takes a lot of work to be able to figure that out.

As you're going through this though, and you're talking about these different generations, I came across something that I was very curious about. As one of your measurable kind of indexes, you mentioned the spiritual vitality gauge.

What is the spiritual vitality gauge for those that are listening?

So the spiritual vitality gauge is just a way of trying to get at how spiritually healthy or unhealthy somebody might be. So to wrap our heads around this, maybe we need to back up to the Bible and recognize that. But Jesus was asked this question.

He was asked, what's the greatest commandment. And he said, the greatest commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, mind and strength. And the second is like it.

He gave a bonus round, right? Love your neighbor as yourself. And then he was asked that great question, who's your neighbor? And he basically said, everybody's your neighbor.

And so we have this vertical component where we're trying to measure our self described closeness to Christ. How close are you to God? And then how close are you relationally to others? And you can think of this as a two dimensional matrix.

And spiritual health in that two dimensional matrix would be up and to the right on a graph. You want to love God more and love others more. You want to have healthy relationships with God and with others.

Another way to think about this is to look at, well, what are the components of a healthy spiritual life? And another way to get at that is to say, well, what people believe is part of it. But faith isn't just belief.

I mean, in fact, sometimes they're contrary to one another. What we think and what we are really convicted of and what we have faith in, those can be different. So what are people's spiritual beliefs?

What are their spiritual practices? Are they worshiping? Are they reading God's word? Are they serving others and then putting faith into action?

Are they having gospel conversations with anybody, spiritual conversations? Are they serving others in the name of Christ?

So we created a composite measure, not state of the Bible, but researchers created this composite measure of beliefs, practices and actions. It's nine questions that try and give, kind of throw a fence around a healthy spiritual life, if you will.

And it's somewhere in the middle of all of that. That. And what we did is we used the spiritual vitality gauge. You can get a score of 0 to 100 theoretically on the SVG.

And then we categorized those and said, well, is scripture engagement at all related to being healthy spiritually? And the answer was overwhelmingly yes, it is. And then this gives us another lens on understanding where is somebody in their journey with God? God.

Did you find, though, that there was ever a contradiction or how did you measure a contradiction between belief and action?

So all actions start with desire, and desires are rarely contrary to our beliefs, though they are sometimes.

And so when we look at the questions around faith and action, the most predictive faith and action questions, as far as spiritual health, are you talking to anybody about your faith? In other words, are you engaging in any kind of evangelism? And if so, at what frequency? And are you serving others in any way?

And so that's the faith in action component. Spiritual practices are more what we would think of as traditional spiritual disciplines.

And then beliefs are really biblical beliefs about God, about the church, about sin and salvation, those kinds of systematic theology categories that we were talking about earlier.

I wanted to change gears here just for a moment as you, you have talked about those who are healthy, those who are unhealthy, and you've talked about actions. But what have you found?

I mean, you said there's a direct correlation, but what have you found as the social impact that the Bible has upon people and their attitudes and social issues?

So it's kind of interesting. The church in America is often very much a reflection of American culture, whether it's socioeconomics or ethnicity or even political identity.

Churches tend to organize themselves into more comfortable homogeneous units and not to get into Peter Wagner's homogeneous unit principle or anything like that, which was really more about how you begin to bring the Gospel into a community. The Bible though, does two things in bringing us the word of God. It finds an on ramp into our cultural predispositions and it confronts them.

And the challenge I think that the church sometimes has is we're comfortable with the ways that the Bible reads, reinforces what we already feel and believe.

That might be a bridge for the Gospel, to quote Richardson, but we struggle with allowing the Bible to confront, critique, or provide a prophetic alternative to the way our, our society or our group is already oriented. Okay, so this is kind of a long way around getting at the issue.

The more people are engaged with scripture, the more likely they are to engage in pro social behaviors, to want to serve their neighbors, to want to welcome the people around them, to build relationships with those who are different than they are. That's not necessarily the same thing as being a member of or a participant in a local church.

So there are people, as we said before, who go to church who aren't really being impacted by scripture. And in some cases that becomes an echo chamber, kind of a social engagement.

And the sad part about America today is that we tend to form relationships and groupings around shared hurts, rather than forming relationships and groupings around shared purpose. And the Bible calls us to join into the purpose of God in the world, which is much bigger than any of us or our groupings.

It's bigger than America, it's bigger than however I might identify myself. It calls us together under the banner of the King of Kings. And that's challenging for most people to wrap their heads around in day to.

Day life, which to me would Demand an entirely different survey. As you mentioned, how people are united around their hearts than they are the common purpose.

And that is probably one of the most keen observations that, I mean, I know this isn't in the data, but just to hear you say that and now to reflect on it, that's something I don't think many of us think about. But once we hear it, it we go, no, that's very, very true, because that's where we're living.

And I think this is one of the reasons why we're also seeing people disappear from church, because there's a lot of hurt, there's a lot of other issues that are going on, especially as you mentioned, culturally. I love how you mentioned the on ramp. And then the challenge.

One of the keys that we have found moving forward in the church to move forward is to find how within the culture there's an affirmation and a challenge and there's something that enables that bridge to the gospel as you've talked about, and then challenges, because it has to find root fruit within the culture by challenging some of the idolatries that are there.

You have not only talked about, I mean, just what the Bible report has said, but you've included within the state of the Bible report a pathway to move forward or scripture engagement. What is that pathway and how can people begin to apply this? Because I don't want to give just simple data.

I think we are all in agreement that we want to move to action and change. And that begins with, I mean, really starting with the Word of God.

How do we engage the Word of God and help people discover that pathway to Scripture engagement? What is that that American Bible Society has developed and what can we learn from that or how can we apply it?

So we're all on a journey, right? It doesn't matter where you are in your relationship with God or your knowledge of Scripture. There's always a next step to be taken.

And we many years ago sat down with some friends and just said, let's imagine an idealized user journey.

Let's take an imaginary person and see if we could help understand the different steps that they might go through, from being very far from God and very far from Scripture to very close to God and having their life changed by God and his work. And so we talked about the pathway of scripture engagement as having 10 or 11 steps.

I think the first thing that we have to look at is do we belong to a people group where the Bible is available in our heart language? There's still thousands of language groups Living languages in the world where the Bible has not yet been translated and made available to them.

And so we're working very hard with a lot of others to make sure that the Bible is available in everyone's heart language, whether that's sign language or it's an audio only, because they don't have a written language or whatever it is. We're working to do that.

You know, they like, you can't give somebody a gift they don't want. And earlier in the book, we highlight some key disruptions in people's lives that often create that openness.

You know, we can't create it ourselves, but what we can do is we can be ready as people of God to.

When we have a neighbor, we have a friend, we have a family member who is open to considering the Bible to know in advance, what am I going to do to meet that opportunity? How am I going to step into that space, not just let the chance go by? Then second, they receive the Bible by some appropriate delivery method.

It can be digital, it can be print, it can be a portion of Scripture. It can be something that they can consider a biblical guide to parenting. It can be anything like that.

And then they access the Bible in a language and format that they can can understand and afford. They're actually taking it now and saying, all right, I'm going to dig in.

They acknowledge that the Bible could be for them, that it's not just an ancient book of myths and stories, but it actually has something to say to me today. And then they begin to interact with it. And this is where I think most people think scripture engagement begins. Oh, I'm interacting with Scripture.

I'm reading or I'm listening to the Bible. But there's a lot that goes before that that creates an openness to the Bible in a particular form and form at.

And then I think as people interact, the next step is they reflect on the Bible's message. They begin to think about it, like, what is it saying to me today?

If they just read the Bible as a history book and never reflect on its possible implications for their lives, it's probably going to stop there.

But if they reflect and then begin to understand that the Bible is disclosing to them God's story and their part in it, that can really be transformational. They recognize that the Bible can change their life and then they experience this life changing reconciliation with God.

I think the great thing about the Bible is it was written to people who were hurting and it addressed the hurts that they had. They were captive in Israel and God set them free. They were under the thumb of Rome. They were being persecuted for their beliefs.

They were longing for a deliverer. And the Bible tells the story of that deliverer coming. They were alone and disenfranchised and God adopted them into his family and welcomed them.

They were powerless to overcome their sin and he overcame it for them. I mean, on and on and on. The story of scripture is huge and it's transformational.

And then out of that inner experience of transformation, then they begin to experience transformation and reconciliation with others. And I think, you know, that's step 10 for us, but there's also a step 11, which is they really become advocates for the Bible.

They recognize it changed me, me, and it can change you too. And they become people who are willing to, in their relational ways, advocate for. Would you consider Scripture?

We used to say, you know, the Bible contains an open invitation to a fuller life with God. Would you look inside it? Would you, would you check it out?

Not just what you've heard about it, but go ahead and open God's Word and see what you find there for yourself.

That's. That's a good word. As we finish up here today, where can people first of all access the state of the Bible?

And it's not very long, only 60 pages and not all of that is text. But where can they access that?

You can find state of the Bible@stateofthebible.org it is absolutely free and we will come out with a new chapter every month between now and the end of the year. And so that publication schedule is detailed on the webpage.

If you'll just give us your name and your email address when each new chapter comes out, we'll send you an email and give you an opportunity to click in and see the new material. It's a really extensive study and all of the historical studies can also be found there.

And so we try to make it bite sized so every month or so you can dip into the data and you can consider, hey, what is God calling me to do to make a difference in someone's engagement with Scripture. Scripture.

And of course that's through the American Bible Society where you work and People can be find that pretty easily and I know that they can just google you find a little bit more about your research.

But as we finish up today's episode, what's one concluding water bottle that we can give to our people to really sip on one truth that they can really find nourishment on in this week to come?

I think what I'd like people to sip on is this question.

If the movable middle has 65 million people in it who are open to lear more about the gospel, what's my part and how do I find someone who's curious about scripture and help them walk with me in a journey to discover God's plan for my life?

I think that's encouraging, especially when you realize and I think you said this in the data, that's 1 out of 4 adults in America that are out there. So out of the four people that you meet, one of those people is open and really ready to hear and mean.

It's, it's really an opportunity that we have in front of us that we need to take advantage of because as you said, and I think the report says is the news isn't all dire. There's some great opportunities that are there for the gospel.

And as Malcolm Guy when he was on our show, he's like, you know, things are getting bad here in the UK, but Jesus got down to 11, we'll be just fine. So I think that's the idea that we need to keep in front of us is that though that the statistics are a little bit alarming, they're jarring.

But I think that God is still continuing to do a work in ways that we often find unexpected. But we need to be able to join him in that. John, I wanted to thank you for coming on Apollos Water.

Thank you for being our guest today and I would encourage everyone out there to check out the state of the Bible report. It is very informative.

It will open your eyes and also help you to be able to initiate these things at your church to help people to engage, give you confidence, give you the tools necessary to engage your.

World where you are.

But just John, thank you for coming on Apollos watered.

Thanks Travis.

We are a Bible believing people. Chances are if you listen to this podcast, you are also a Bible believing person.

And yet, as John and the statistics from the American Bible Society show us, perhaps many of us, many of the people we think of as Bible people aren't exactly that. You know, the numbers seem dire and worse than when we had John on a couple of years ago.

It's easy to get down when the numbers look bad, when the people that are like us suddenly aren't.

And yet, and this is what I love with God, there's hope. The hope may not come from the places we expect.

Churches whose people don't look like us, people who are younger than us. But I am grateful that God is doing a work.

I really do encourage people to read the report@stateofthebible.org the information is important, especially if you're a leader, because it helps you to understand where we are as a culture and where your people are, wherever you are. Understanding how people engage with the Bible is important. Too often we approach the current cultural.

Landscape as if we just did the.

Things we used to do better. New tech, new music, new whatever, but really the same old thing.

Then everything will be fixed.

You know, the problem is that the world has moved on. The landscape's different. The question needs are different than they were before. We need to recognize these things for what they are.

And sometimes when we look for the pockets of faithfulness and people who aren't us, we can find a way forward. And sometimes we see exactly what not to do as well. And if there are 65 million people in the movable middle, I mean, what's your part?

This is one of the big reasons.

We talk about rethinking, reimagining and redeploying. Because as John said, we are a bridge. Bridges have to be structurally sound, to be sure.

But if the bridge isn't where the people are, then it doesn't matter.

You don't want to have a bridge.

Out in the middle of nowhere that.

No one would ever use.

Some people are going to engage the Bible for all the wrong reasons. We know this. But if we aren't there to steer them in the right direction, well, they're.

Not going to try to find us.

They're simply going to walk away.

The question we have to ask ourselves is this.

What's our part? What is your part? See, that's what we want to figure out, how to help you engage your world. What do you want to do with this information?

Well, it means you need to really think hard about getting the people into the Word of God where you're at. It means preaching the Word of God in such a way that people want to read it themselves.

It means trying to find smaller ways for people to engage the Word, to teach them the Word. I mean, there's a whole host of.

Different things that can be done.

And I'm excited for you. I'M excited because I believe that you're the kind of person that doesn't just listen to this and get discouraged.

But you say to yourself, you know what?

We can do this, we can do this, this. We can find hope. We know that man might be down right now and the stats don't look great, but here is an opportunity for God to do a work.

Cultural Christianity is going away, that's for sure.

But we know that there is a real robust faith there with many Bible believing people who want to know the word of God and how to apply it to their lives.

That's why I am so excited about what we're doing here at Apollos Watered, because we have come together to help equip you where you are so that you might be able to fulfill the mission of God where you're at. I'm passionate about this because this is what I've done.

Everywhere I've gone, in every church that God has allowed us to serve in, he has brought revival. These churches were near death and when we left, they were diverse in age, in ethnicity, education, and in so many other ways as well.

But people were reading the word of God, they were applying it to their lives, they were sharing it with other people, they were inviting other people to hear the word of God. There were so many different changes that were being made.

That's why we want to be able to share the material that we've developed over several different years in ministries. We want to develop that so that you can take it and use it where you are. But we can't do this without, without your help.

At Apollos Watered, we want to take our next step in our evolution and that means developing further the Apollos Academy. Now, we've already got one class that has been awesome so far, and that is God's greatness, your mission.

And we have another class that's just waiting to go and that is called God's Story.

Now that might seem like a strange title, but it's actually there because if we don't structure the story of God right when we understand and go about our Christian walk, then that's going to have massive repercussions in how we live it out, how we share our faith, what we're getting people to respond to, and on and on and on. But we can't do this without your help. We need to raise an extra $8,000 a month to be able to reach this next step.

We're looking for difference makers like you, or perhaps you know, someone who can be a difference maker. Where they are. All you have to do is click the link in the show notes and we will take any amount.

Any amount helps whether you're you become one of our monthly givers or maybe it's a one time gift, but it will help us to be able to help other pastors and leaders around the world to water their worlds where they are. I want to thank you for listening to the show today and I want to thank our Apollo water team for helping us to water the world.

This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's water. Stay watered everybody.