What I am going to share below may be shocking to some. Others may shake their head and say, "oh, no, it isn't that bad." It must be difficult to shake your head when it is stuck...
I was captured by Christ when I was 26...totally ignorant of any doctrine etc. My first four years were spent incarcerated. I've been in vocational youth/prison/camp/church/etc ministry since 1978.
I've seen the steady decline...or avalanche...of Biblical knowledge. The epidemic of Biblical illiteracy is no longer staggering.
We who are Christ-followers must fight! We must pray against and work against the current situation.
Oh, I know I'll be labeled judgmental - but our "evangelical" churches are loaded with baptized pagans - most of whom don't even know they are lost...because, after all, they "went forward," they prayed "the prayer," they jumped through some other all-too-easy hoop instead of recognizing their sin, repenting from that, and trusting the Lord Jesus.
That's why I maintain Matthew 7.21-23 is the scariest passage of scripture (look it up).
All that to preface this...which I'll close with...
This is from the February 10 "Breakpoint." Host John Stonestreet is recommending Natasha Crain's new book, Faithfully Different.
Here is the portion that may shock or cause to shake (with emphasis added in bold):
"In her interview with my colleague Shane Morris on the Upstream podcast, Natasha pointed to the recent results of the American Worldview Inventory, conducted by George Barna and Arizona Christian University. According to that survey, just 6% of Americans hold a “functional biblical worldview,” meaning they gave recognizably Christian answers to questions like, Who is God? and What are human beings? and Is there absolute truth? Among respondents between the ages of 18 and 29, only 2% had a functional biblical worldview."
Yes...we need to send missionaries to overseas fields. Yes, we need to send missionaries (like me, by the way) to the fields-ripe-for-harvest in America...and - YES - we need to BE missionaries in our own churches.