I know the plans I have for you … plans to prosper you … to give you a hope and a future.

(Jeremiah 29:11)

Many of us have lost the vision of who God saved us to be. Our cultural environment has become so toxic to a Kingdom perspective that many Christians are ignorant of their true high calling.

According to George Barna’s research:

• Most first-time decisions for Christ do not last beyond eight weeks.
• Most new believers never move from decision to conversion.
• Almost half the adults in this country are functionally illiterate and so cannot receive much of the teaching of the church.
• Because of the influence of media, people today have a six-to eight-minute attention span.
• Linear thinking has been replaced with mosaic thinking: People are synthesizing their own faith from pieces of numerous religions.
• They fashion a personal faith that revolves around themselves rather than God.
• God is consulted solely for their utility and benefit.1

The church’s greatest fault, says Barna, is in not applying what it believes in compelling ways, and in failing to address the fears and anxieties of the people.2 His solution is:

• a rekindling of our passion for God,
• a rethinking of our strategies to reach the world,
• and the recapturing of an urgency to do so.3

There is a problem inside so-called “believing” churches as well.

• Twenty percent of all churchgoers attend multiple churches on a rotating basis.
• The really committed ones give only two blocks of their time to church per week (down from four, 20 years ago).
• We see religion as a commodity that we consume, rather than one in which we invest ourselves. (e.g., “Oh, I loved the worship today,” or “That sermon didn’t move me.”)
• We see religion as a source to draw on rather th