Episode 270 - Understanding the Times with Barna Group’s David Kinnaman

Entrepreneurs are deeply rooted in data and research.

And one of the best Christian sources for what’s going on in the world is the Barna Group.

On today’s podcast, we’re talking with Barna’s President David Kinnaman about what it means for us to understand the times.

All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.

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Episode Transcript

Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.

Rusty Rueff: Hey there. And welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Today's guest, David Kinnaman, has been an incredible leader and a researcher in the church for decades. He's the CEO of the Barna Group, a researching and communication organization that helps Christians understand the times and then know what to do. In this episode, he joins us to talk about how the church has changed drastically in recent years and how entrepreneurs find themselves in a very unique position to actually help. It's a great episode. Let's just dive right in.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the faith driven entrepreneur. I am here with my buddies Rusty and William. Rusty, William. Greetings.

Rusty Rueff: Hey, Henry. Howdy.

William Norvell: Good day

Henry Kaestner: Indeed. So we are a couple of days removed from the watch party, and just super cool to hear the stories coming in from around the world of those that dialed in. I think probably the best two and a half hours of content that we've had thus far. And David Kinnaman is not a stranger to thinking really deeply about what's going on in the church. I found out about him maybe later than many, but maybe before, we wrote the book in 2007 on Christian. He's done work on looking at people in the marketplace. He, for one, found out that faith driven entrepreneurs tend not to be able to hold a tune as well as other Christians, but we tend to be 20% better looking than other Christians. And that's all work that David has done with his team. And David is awesome to have you on. And I just there's so many different ideas we're going to ask a little bit about. And obviously I made up those statistics, but we are going to ask you.

David Kinnaman: I think it is accurate. So I think it's good.

Henry Kaestner: At least with this group, right? At least with us. Okay. So we're going to talk about the work that you have done, and that's going to be the meat of what we do, because you've been very, very thoughtful about this space, and yet you represent a different type of entrepreneur than we've ever interviewed before. And I want you to just walk us through the story a little bit and what this has meant. You are an entrepreneur in an organization that does not bear your name. You're standing on the shoulders of somebody else, and yet you have and everybody knows you and knows the work that you done have absolutely left your imprint on it. And this organization has become yours. It's your reflections about what's going on in the body of Christ right now. So it is very much your organization and everybody just absolutely they think. Barna and they think David Kinnaman And yet it wasn't always that way. So how are you able to take over from an entrepreneur and instead of a race in his name off the door and putting years on able to work off of that legacy and yet very much make it your own because it is very much your own. Talk about that a little.

David Kinnaman: Yeah, Thanks a lot for the set up on that. And it's fun to reflect back on all the ways that God has taken me from, you know, an intern here at this company and then the vice president and then George Barna, who is the founder of the company, named me president a couple of years before I acquired the business from him. And yeah, it's a fun and somewhat circuitous path. I didn't expect to be the leader of Barna. I actually thought I'd be a pastor. My dad was a very effective pastor in the Phoenix, Arizona area, and I went to school, majored in psychology, figured I'd go to seminary, and when I got a job at Barna straight out of university, I actually thought, Great, this will just be two, three years, four years, maybe max, and then I'll go back into ministry. But the Lord has had this as a mission driven business for me to work at. It's a for profit company. And, you know, it wasn't easy. There were times where I wanted to quit, times where I, I think George and others around the team wanted to fire me. I sort of made it through some of the gauntlet of the early years. And then it's a pretty small company, but a really well-known brand. And more than nine out of ten Christian leaders, faith leaders know a Barna and many, many millions of Americans, especially evangelicals and other Christians, know of Barna. And I had to do a lot of soul searching. Some of my friends and advisors said, Oh, you just go start your own thing. And others. Few people said I should rename it the Kinnaman company. But I was very clear that this was a great brand. It was sort of a brand in search of a business model because founders like George did a great job of establishing a clear brand presence, but not really an economic engine per se. That wasn't just a sort of like a partner, junior partner model. And so it's been a lot of fun. Boy, we've really taken hits in different ways during different seasons. Trying to tell people the truth through the research has not always been easy, but it has been a lot of fun. And I think I had a really realized that I was a really good second generation leader. I could take this on and really take it into some new places and build on the great work that George and his wife Nancy had done. But acquiring the business as some of the entrepreneurs who are listening will know acquiring a business from a founder is a little bit like buying one of their children, except they love their business more. And so we had some interesting negotiations, all in good faith and good spirits. But there were some interesting times in that path for sort of being a protege to taking on the business. And some of those transitions of leadership weren't easy, but George did a fantastic job almost at every turn and really appreciate his counsel through those years.

Henry Kaestner: Okay, So you're very gracious with all of that. And George was a great partner and that said some really complimentary things. And yet I want to actually push in that a little bit. Some number of the people that are listening right now can identify with you and some number can identify with George and that they're older. They want to hand off to the next person. They want to do that. And yet they're hearing like, how do I love my business more of my love, my kids, That can't be true. And then they just really think about the heart and they're like, Oh my goodness, maybe I would have a real problem letting go of my business. So. You've been very gracious about George, but maybe to talk from your specific experience or then just generally what some counsel you'd give to somebody that's thinking about handling the business after their protege. Well.

David Kinnaman: Yeah, Well, I think some of the things we learned to that was I had to learn sort of how to think about the business. I mean, it was a real education for me. You know, in some ways, actually, I was trying to negotiate for just a minority position in the business to try to help him transition. And I actually would say that I believe God had me buy 80% of the company or none of the company. In other words, I was sort of like, hey, could I get ten, 20% over a period of time? And I would be a minority stakeholder. And I actually don't think that would have worked because there was a reason why there was almost like a mantle of leadership, at least for this business, because of the way it actually works as a sort of a public brand and a, you know, sort of as you sort of said in the intro, How do you interpret the day? How do you think about the data? What does it mean? And actually, George Barna, it took him a few years to say this in this clear way, but we had lunch maybe five years after the transition has been 14 years now since I bought the business from him. And it's been a lot, like I said, a really interesting road. And, you know, we've grown significantly since I purchased the business and it's been a real pleasure. And you know, all those lessons you learn about what to do, what not to do and how do you keep business from going into the ditch. But about five years after I bought the business, he said, you know, I was realizing that pastors and leaders and some of our audience was responding to you, David, as they had to me in the past. And I felt like for the company to move forward, it needed a new voice. And that was, I think, really, really significant. And and again, I think we both did some things that were not great. I mean, I think there was moments where I felt like a young leader sort of ready to take over, you know, for him. And it took us almost two years to really figure that out. And it almost died on the vine because the transition took too long as I was negotiating for the business. But one of the best things that he did was he really stepped off the stage of Barna. He's been very active in other things. He still has written and been engaged in other organizations, but he did a good job of not offering suggestions, critiques, advice. If anything, there were times where say, Hey, give me a little more input, but I was having to learn to trust my own instincts in that time and not sort of trust, you know, going back to my mentor for, you know, well, what would you do? And right away was like the first time I had to make payroll after the transition was like, Oh, wow, the weight of the responsibility of the business. And then it felt pretty heavy. It felt like, wow, this is something. And and then because of the work we do, it's such a privilege. We consider it the tribe of Issachar in the pages of Scripture First chronicles 12:32 people who understood the times and knew what the people of God should do. And we sort of draw inspiration from that mission statement, from that verse. And I have felt that burden as well. And I've been doing a better and better through the number of years of sharing that load with others on my team and advisors and prayer partners. But this notion of how do we sort of provide eyes and ears to leaders, to entrepreneurs, to Christian leaders, and how do we do so in a way that reflects God's intent and an accurate reflection of what's really happening in our society? And, you know, you want your researchers to have good data and also good instincts to ask the right questions and to give really solid advice and input about what it means. So we learned so many lessons and boy, it's a privilege. And again, I really appreciate your kind words about all that. It has been a really fun, fun season and looking back on now, you know, like it is funny because sometimes people would introduce me at sporting events as David Barna, and so that's all fine by me. But yeah, it's been fun. And now I'm actually in a season of life where the business is going well. It's, you know, businesses are fragile and there's always ups and downs, but we're in a season now where we're really picturing some new it's a car related businesses that can be connected to Barna and orbit Barna and support Barna and do some new things. So we're excited about that as well as we sort of imagine what God's calling us to do next.

Henry Kaestner: And it's awesome. Okay, so Rusty and William are going to ask you some questions about how the work that you've been doing and that you might be thinking about doing are going to impact what we as entrepreneurs look at in the marketplace. But before we do that, give us a fly over some of the trends that you've seen in the church over the last ten years that may or may not have anything to do with faith driven entrepreneurship but impact us as believers more broadly.

David Kinnaman: Yeah, well, I think it's sort of the best of times. It is the worst of times for Christians in the United States and in some ways around the world. If you look just at the United States, there has been significant downward pressure over the last number of decades on Christianity. Christian identification, a big, big story in there is the faith journey of millennials and Generation Z, and there really their disaffection with faith. And so the best of times, the worst of times in some ways, that idea that Christianity is in steady decline is true. There are all sorts of ways in which skepticism towards organized religion and faith and Christianity are, you know, continue their sort of steady march. And at the same time, there is signs of hope. And so we actually see in the data, for example, like a rise of spiritual openness and 44% of Americans, nearly half say that they're more open to God today than they were before the pandemic. That just last October was the data point for that. So those are two plus almost three years out from the pandemic, and 44% say that's true. Three out of four Americans say they believe in a god or higher power. Nearly six out of ten say they're Christian. So there's a lot of kind of vitality to faith and Christianity and sort of at the same time, younger Christians are dealing with a much more skeptical generation. So I describe, you know, our current context as digital Babylon, where the algorithm is disciple, where we get so much content through our screens, through the smartphones that are in our pockets. And that's really making it more difficult for people to be discipled in the way of Jesus because we're just inundated with so many other competing stories and just ways of thinking about what is real and what is true. And at the same time, we've really one of my critiques of local churches is that we've sort of watered down discipleship to be a sort of a generalized thing where we want you to come to church on Sunday. We want you to believe most of the good stuff of Christian orthodoxy, but we actually don't disciple people in their vocation and who they're meant to be in the world. We can talk a little bit about that. But as an example, I think a lot of young entrepreneurs lose their faith because Christianity, as they see it through the local church, doesn't seem to inspire them on that vocational journey, like God has made them to be different than what they sort of see as the leadership around them. That's actually been sort of my stories. Like I actually realized that I'm I have a pastoral kind of an apostolic calling, but I'm an entrepreneur in that way. And, you know, again, the church has done many, many good things by me, but it really hasn't known what to do with me as an entrepreneur, and it doesn't really know what to do with entrepreneurs generally and the next generation of entrepreneurs especially. So I think those are some of our concerns as we sort of try to help, you know, reconnect those visions between entrepreneurship and Christian expression.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I think it's fascinating. I mean, I see it right? We live in Silicon Valley, you know, we know enough faith driven entrepreneurs and their relationships with their church and their pastors. And it's really hard. I mean, I'm very fortunate because I have a longstanding relationship with my pastor. We just finished a book together that we wrote, took us eight years to do it, but we don't always speak the same language and we've learned from each other. And I think it's tough as an entrepreneur because you think, you know, we were kind of taught, let's go disrupt, let's go innovate, let's make this better. Right? And, you know, that may not be the fertile ground. You know, the church is not the place to go do that. The churches, yes, we should innovate, but maybe we shouldn't disrupt. Maybe there's a different way of getting that. And on a flip side, you know, a pastor has got to understand that, you know, there's this tendency that that tension that they're always working with when they're going, come on, make it bigger, better, faster. I have a question for you as it relates to, you know, the power of research to the churches. I'm reading through right now the letters that Paul wrote to the churches. And basically he was the research. Right. So, you know, I have a feeling that, you know, what he picked up from the church in Corinth and the Corinthians, he carried some of that over to the Galatians, then he carried it over to the Ephesians. You know, look, if I'm seeing immorality here, you're probably doing it there. And so he was a bit of the trend guy that carried one thing to the other receptivity of the church as it relates to trends and research and points, especially when it pushes them in a direction that they may not want to go to. How do you deal with that? Is that real, that this sort of reticence, you know, and just how open is the church to looking at real data and research to say, yeah, this should shape my vision?

David Kinnaman: Yeah, I mean, it's a great question and I think it's a mixed set of results that I see through nearly 30 years now, being a researcher and working, you know, to try to equip people with good data. First, I think God likes research so much. He's got a whole book called Numbers in the Scriptures. And there's also a number of places, as you sort of say, I think there's a lot of great insights in the Scriptures about how God actually wants us to be, you know, to have eyes and ears, to listen to what the spirit is saying. In fact, that is our best source of data is God's voice in our midst and in our leadership and how we respond to the data around us. And, you know, there's a great example in the book of Numbers where, you know, Moses sends out the spies. And if you go back and read that section, pretty sure it is numbers 13, there's basically a market research study. Moses commissions them to go figure out, you know, what's the land like, What are the cities fortified or not? You know, what's the condition of the crops? Tell us about the people and the inhabitants. It's a demographic study. And again, there are many, many other examples, I think in Scripture Paul being a good one of sort of, you know, has his finger on the pulse of these early Christian communities of the franchise, so to speak, of those early Christian communities. And I'm convinced that for all of us as leaders and this is I think in some ways the measure of our faithfulness in life is the degree to which we're willing to listen and respond to what God is putting in front of us. And the psychology of data and the psychology of research has been a fascinating one, as I've seen leaders respond well to research. It's so fascinating. You know, when we do a bit of work and it really confirms some things that people are feeling. I mean, Henry mentioned this book earlier. UnChristian were originally titled that the brand of Christianity, where we're looking at the negative perceptions of Christians among young non-Christians. And it really, I think, helped to confirm a lot of the reasons why for those of us at that time in our season, we're recognizing that the church was viewed as against things and known for all the things that it was against rather than the things it was for. And so that research was very confirmatory to our experience, and that was interesting to see how as that just as one example, how when people began to react to that data, if it didn't confirm their experiences, they went to this question of, well, how big was your sample size? How'd you ask the questions? This can't be true. How old are you guys anyway? Barna can't be trusted. And it was very interesting how the psychology of the confirmation bias, I think, works. One good example of that, actually, I think, is that a lot of Christian leaders should be very careful about describing their communities as sort of vastly unchurched. I mean, sometimes you'll hear only 2% of people are attending church in our community. And most of those numbers, at least in North America, are greatly exaggerated. The percentage of Americans who are Christians, the percentage of Americans who are churchgoers, is still a massive amount. Tens of millions of people in our country are still committed Christians, and we should take advantage of this open window of opportunity. And we should be very careful, I think, not to sort of describe the reality around us with these sort of, you know, doom and gloom perspectives, because I think it actually if we're being honest, sometimes we do that because it helps us sort of tell a good story and kind of talk about our mission. And, you know, we're pushing back the darkness and it's only, you know, 2% of the people in our church, in our community. And again, we just need to be very accurate and not just like by the numbers. There has to be, I think, real sense that we're driven by a godly view of what is real. And I love Jim Collins talks about the Stockdale paradox in his book Good to Great. And it's accepting the brutal reality of our present condition, for example, with Gen Z and young people, I think their way out of sync with what the church is doing and it's partly on them and the church is way out of sync with what I think is happening in the lives of Gen Z. In other words, I actually think the church is woefully unprepared for Gen Z. Many of our workplaces, we're not actually really prepared for the kinds of questions and engagement that I think this generation wants ask of us, rightly or wrongly. And so we have to be really clear on the brutal reality of what's true. And then at the same time, we have to have hope and Stockdale was a prisoner of war. And so he had to accept the brutal reality of his imprisonment. But he also had hope and was eventually released from prison. I think that's true for us as Christian leaders and as Christian entrepreneurs. As an entrepreneur, you know that when you're at your best, you're taking a really good, clear, hardheaded look at the numbers, at what's working, what's not working. And the best business leaders, you know, they make better decisions because they're more able to both hold some picture of a preferable future. Henry has got 100 million entrepreneurs around the world. He's trying to reach. I think that's a beautiful picture. You know, this big vision you have. And then at the same time, you know, we were like, okay, well, what's the truth about our current condition as a business? And the better we can be clear about that, I think the better God can use us in faithfulness and fruitfulness.

Rusty Rueff: And that's really good. I know Henry's got a question. I'm gonna let him jump in here, but I know you couldn't. Nobody could have predicted what we went through with the pandemic, But, you know, just the seismic shift of church, right? That we all stepped away for a time frame. And as best I could see, it just hasn't come back yet, you know? And church isn't alone. You know, any place where people have to gather whether it's performing arts or anything like that. What do you tell pastors right now from the trends you're seeing and what you're, you know, feeling in the water? You know, give them some hope here?

David Kinnaman: Well, first of all, I think we talked about sort of general trends. Pastors really are overwhelmed and a huge percentage of them considered quitting Two out of every five as of our last tracking said that they had given real and serious consideration to quitting in the last year. And a lot of that was because of their, you know, their have been spiritual frontline workers. So first, to give you hope, it's like you're not alone in feeling pretty overwhelmed. I know a lot of us as entrepreneurs feel that way, too. So any leader who's had to respond to the massive amount of change, especially if you're in the people convening business, if you're in hospitality or theater going or concert going or live events, you know, travel has come mostly back. And in some places there's pent up demand for travel, etc.. But churches have faced a pretty tough time and pastors and leaders have as well. They're I actually think we're we're really at a ripe time for partnership between clergy and entrepreneurs, because clergy, more than ever, are admitting in our research that they are open to new models. They actually are saying, give us some new ideas. What could this look like? We realize that our discipleship efforts aren't quite cutting it in the way we thought they were, like the pandemic sort of peeled back the layers and said, Oh, I guess people weren't as into us as we thought. And I actually think that entrepreneurs are open to thinking about some new ways. And I do want to say that, you know, it's true that the gap between leading a nonprofit or leading a church I'm on the board of a Christian university, and like a lot of these business men and women on the board, they're like, Come on, just do this faster. Come on, be more entrepreneurial. And there's reasons why leading an institution of higher education, for example, it is different. You can be entrepreneurial within that setting, but it's different than leading an entrepreneurial organization and in a for profit place. But I do think there's some opportunities for real partnership that the church would be healthier for doing and that we need, for example, a participant oriented church, that we need to create and facilitate and grow participants in gospel mission, not just consumers of Christian content. And if we're being honest, a lot of pastors have actually been doing that because we're really good at it. And it turns out that just creating consumers of Christian content doesn't disciple people and doesn't disciple entrepreneurs. And, you know, you don't just give content to your young protege entrepreneurs. You've got to mentor them you got to shape and you got to like be in the trenches of business to shape them. And I think we're seeing some really good opportunities for some new expressions of church and effective models of ministry and partnership between clergy and entrepreneurs and some really cool way. So I'm actually very encouraged about our current moment and sort of the hunger that we have for new models and more deeply a hunger for God.

William Norvell: That's amazing. That's really interesting, David, to think about. I'm going to ask you to go deeper on one of those. You give us some hope. Like there were some bad things. The church doesn't get entrepreneurs. They never have. It's a tough journey. But then you said some new models, like what's working? What have you seen that's interesting to bring entrepreneurs alongside their pastor, to bring entrepreneurs deeper into the the obviously what we know beautiful and amazing work that God has given to the local church. Where can people that maybe feel lost go to their church and say, hey, I've heard this is where I'm supposed to help,.

David Kinnaman: Right? Well.

William Norvell: Can I help here.

David Kinnaman: First of all, I think I want to acknowledge sort of the brutal reality of our present condition, which is it's hard to change a Sunday morning oriented gathering business into a different kind of model. So first, we do need some new models, and I think there are some that are popping up. And at its best, I mean, local churches are doing really good. I mean, they pivoted really well during COVID. I think the church is stronger today because of their embracing certain modes of digital expression. I'm a fan of people going to church in person, but I also think the church is stronger if we acknowledge that there's also a very vital part of our digital expression a digital church and online, and not just because we could sort of like, you know, stand in our pjs and watch the church service. But because it actually, you know, as I travel, you know, I'm able to like, stay up to date with our local church and, you know, like there's really good things that happen from our church being digitally enabled. In fact, even before the pandemic, a lot of millennials and Gen Z were doing a kind of worship shifting. I mean, they're taking in a lot more spiritual content than is available just on that Sunday morning. So I think the church is number one. It's alive and well. There are tens of millions of Christians in this society. There seems to be some really cool moves of the Lord and student populations around the country. That's a really great, great sign of spiritual vitality and resurgence. I think people are open to some new questions and new models of what it means to build disciples and to grow people in their faith. I actually think there's a new generation of young leaders who are coming along, both young pastors and ministers, as well as young entrepreneurs who are saying, Is this all there is? Can we do this differently? And I think there's going to be sort of less barriers. I mean, even in some of our global data around teenagers, some of the age old questions between Catholics and Protestants, it's not that they are unimportant to young people, they just don't get the barriers. Like, why are we fighting about this stuff? You know, we did some stuff in Ireland with teenagers and young adults. And again, it's not to say that those deep divides that have cost people their very lives are gone. It's just that they're actually moving toward some new expressions. We did a huge global study on teenagers around the world. We interviewed nearly 25,000 teenagers, really high quality samples in 26 countries in 16 languages. And we ended up calling this the open generation because they're very open, they're open to Jesus, they're open to spirituality now. They're open to anything and everything, which is part of the problem. But they're actually really interested in being part of a solution to deep seated problems like corruption and climate change and, you know, mental health issues. So I think there's some really cool opportunities for us, this openness, this open moment. I feel like if you sort of look in a rearview mirror of sort of what's happened over the last five years, I think it has stripped away, covid a lot of the racial challenges, the fragmentation politically, some of the economic uncertainty, the rise of mental health challenges, some of the ups and downs of local churches and the challenges that leaders have faced. I think we're more open. I think that's a, you know, the best word that I would have. That means we're open to a lot of things. And some of those steps we might take aren't always the right ones. But at an open moment, at least, people are willing to take steps. They're willing to move. They're willing to take a pilgrimage. They're willing to go on a journey. They're willing to ask themselves some good questions. They're willing to think whether some of their presuppositions about the way life works are really right. And I think that open moment should be an open moment for all of us as entrepreneurs and as Christians.

William Norvell: I love that. I love that. And as entrepreneurs specifically, you may not have done any specific faith driven entrepreneur research which we may have to contract out later. We can talk about that after the show. But I'm curious if you have and the question for me that's coming up is like I loved when you said, hey, people are using the wrong stats. Right? And we find that all the time, right? Somebody quotes a study from 40 years ago that's been debunked, but it's just become common lexicon, right? Like, you know, 80% of your heat escapes from your feet in your head or something in it turns out that was a study done by like military people that, like, didn't have hats on. And it's like, well, that's why it happened. Right. But people still think that what are one or two just like fascinating insights that you feel like you are holding on to, that entrepreneurs need to know and say, hey, you have been equipped with that information. You need to know this about the current reality, and that should give you some hope and encouragement on your entrepreneurial journey.

David Kinnaman: Yeah, we actually have done quite a bit of work for entrepreneurs and about entrepreneurs. We did a study called Christians at Work, and that was a sort of a groundbreaking study where we looked at employ Christians. We've got some other studies that we've been working on, a study on the state of faith in work that's coming up. And I actually think, you know, the journey of entrepreneurs is so important. They are people who create abundance in and around them when they're working in their best giftedness and the best versions of themselves. They create abundance around them in resources and vision and, you know, a belief that there could be a better future for entrepreneurs are so critical in our culture and in our communities. And so one of the findings that we found in that was only about one in four Christians are what we call faith work integrators. And there was different definitions that we had, and it actually would apply even though we were looking at Christians at work, which represents the majority of Americans who are employed. Because so many people identified as Christians, we designed those questions to be useful in any kind of setting. So, you know, it's simply like we believe that my work has purpose in the world. You know, I have a desire to sort of improve things around me. I don't have them right in front of me. The definition of the faith work integrator. But there are pretty simple kind of low hanging fruit. In fact, the bar for it was actually pretty low. And we did another study about purpose oriented workers, and the same is actually a lower percentage. Only one in ten people are very purpose oriented in their work. But those who are purpose oriented or those who are faith work integrators and you don't have to be a person of faith to be a faith work integrator. They're more satisfied in their work, they're more productive in their work. You know, it's like when you focus in on purpose and integration in life, people are just they actually produce more, they're more happy at work, they're better employees. And it's exactly the kind of picture that you would imagine as an entrepreneur to see and a kind of business that we all want to have. We want our our teams to be bought in to what it is that we do as a company, what difference that makes in the lives of people around us, and then how that changes the employees around us. And we've had we've had great stories and great examples of people coming to faith because they work a faith driven entrepreneurial environment of people, you know, understanding what it means to be formed in terms of their character, in terms of a good, healthy entrepreneurial environment. And so there's just so many really cool findings that I think entrepreneurs can take to the bank as they're trying to help identify who should be working here, how should we inspire people, how do we talk about our own purpose as a leader? How do we help get people, you know, thinking about what it is that they're made to do and how can we be a great environment for them to grow in?

Henry Kaestner: Okay, I have so many questions to ask you and you got me going with. I completely understand the men of Issachar who understood the times, and I'm fascinated by that. I don't know if I've ever been more interested in like what's going on around me and just bewildered by it all. So a whole bunch of different questions come up, some of which have to do with faith driven entrepreneurship. Many of them don't. I want to see if we can bring back something that we had done once before called Lightning Round because there's so many of them. I'm not going to fit them all in. Joey are just faithful producers going to probably say maybe this is a different episode, but maybe it's not going to see one get in here. And it's as follows I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to bring up an issue and then you have 30 to 45 seconds to respond to it. And if you don't like the issue, you can say pass. Okay, But we're going to go through them all. I am fascinated by, again, what's going on in the world right now. There's a guy, Peter Zion, as best I can tell, not motivated by his faith. He sends out an email once every day during the work week to say, Here's what's going on with Frank and here's what's going on with Israel. And he can't possibly be an expert in all of these things, but he nonetheless has opinions and all of them. But you and your team are experts on the things that I actually care about because it has all has this spiritual integration. So going to go right through them. Okay. And you can say pass if you want. Number one, from knowing you and your work. And there's a lot, by the way, for our audience, it's not just unchristian. I mean, it's this the latest one, maybe maybe it's not latest one, but the faith for exiles about, you know, the digital Babylon is amazing. And then you talk about you lost me and then there's a whole bunch of other ones. You can just talk about them if you want. You can go ahead and say, Hey, you want to know more about that? Get this book is is better than this. Okay, here we go. Number one, men of Issachar who understand the times, what kind of disciplines do you and the team have to ask God if indeed what you're hearing and seen is indeed what he is seeing and the message you want to tell.

David Kinnaman: Great question. I think first we have our statistical tools and we've got such an incredible team. The women and men of Barna are amazing colleagues and so they bring all of their background and I always try to commend them just for bringing their whole heart to the work. Sometimes that actually creates a bit of a traffic jam because we all care about every topic that we're interviewing on. And so what questions do we ask and how do we how do we interpret the data? But I mean, we start there with our core discipline of research and asking the right questions and letting the data speak for itself and then analyzing it and saying, here's some possible ways to interpret this. So, you know, and the we spend a lot of time in prayer and, you know, listening to our our audience and our customers try to interpret the data faithfully.

Henry Kaestner: Good, good. Okay. Thank you for any of that work. As you talk about Chronicles, I spend a lot of time in Chronicles, but Second Chronicles, you talk about the Good Kings of Judah and the mistakes they made by not seeking God out. So I love the fact that you're saying, okay, we can have this analysis guide. We think this is what this is telling us. People are going to ask us what our interpretation is. Smite us if we're wrong, right? Do you use those words? Smite us for wrong. Okay.

David Kinnaman: Could we do within within a range of sampling error, though?

Henry Kaestner: Okay. All right, good. All right. Number two, if I'm talking about faith in the workplace and I'm in Nashville, I said, what do you think is the Center for Faith in the marketplace in the United States? If I'm in Nashville, they'll say, I don't know Atlanta. And I say, no, If I'm in Atlanta, they'll say, Dallas. If I'm in Dallas, they'll say Dallas, right? Because it's all about Dallas, right? It's all about Texas. I'll say, no. I would smite to you that the Center for the Faith and Work movement in the United States is in Silicon Valley, where there are new a resurgent, faith driven employee resource groups like Google, Facebook and Apple into it. They're doing praise and worship apparently on Friday in the lunchroom at Dropbox. And Salesforce is called Faith Force. Are you seeing the same thing and is there something in Christian Trends? I remember when I was growing up, I grew up in Baltimore, but we would wear California fashion Quiksilver, Billabong, Ocean Pacific, all those things, right? Is there something to trends starting west and moving east, or is this just an aberration?

David Kinnaman: No, I think there is some truth that I'll say a couple things. First of all, I am seeing the same thing. I've had a chance of interacting with a lot of believers in technology and in some of these other industries. I was located in Southern California for the last 30 years. I'm actually currently in Texas, moved a year ago for reasons that we're not getting to for the minute, but being in California. So it's a quick answer to the first question is yes, we're seeing a lot of really interesting and fascinating trends in the workplace, in mainstream businesses and even in some of the places where most people would sort of imagine they're, you know, dark as it could be, but Silicon Valley entertainment, you know, all sorts of really cool companies around the world, and many of them are headquartered in California. I'm a huge fan of California, was hard to leave. But also there were some reasons why I thought it was the right time for me to take a set of trust with what Laura was asking me to do. But California is an important area, and here's the way I would describe this. I believe that in the past you can look at sources of financial, military and political power being located on the East Coast. Those continue to this day. You know, New York City, Washington, D.C., the Pentagon, all the rest. But I actually think that some of the most important ways that people's lives are shaped, especially in digital Babylon, are technology, entertainment and design. The TED values, technology, entertainment and design that. There's a reason why on our Apple devices, as designed by Apple in California, why people sort of, you know, gravitate towards the West Coast. And I think those are significant shapers of how human beings they always have been in certain ways. But now more than ever, those industries shape how people experience the world. I mean, you go to any country and on smartphones, even in the bush, even in the jungles, even in, you know, sort of very hard to reach places, people are streaming mostly North American entertainment onto their devices. And I think those things end up shaping a lot of how people imagine the world ought to be and for good and for bad. But I am a firm believer that the west coast of North America, that California continues to be and will be a really critical place for entrepreneurs and for leaders and for faithful Christians to really make a difference.

Henry Kaestner: Okay, cool. Because a dozen years ago. So the Mozilla CEO was forced out because he gave money to a pro-life cause. And then I started seeing some of those reverberations five or six years later, Christian leaders throughout the country starting to feel some of those pressures. But now I'm fine in California, very faith friendly, and I'm hopeful that that trend will go from west to east. Am I right in being optimistic and hopeful?

David Kinnaman: I think it's both. I think there are ways that trends sort of travel west to east, but it's much more a better way of describing it is that trends bubble up in these sort of domains of the Internet and chat rooms and gaming communities. And if you look at issues like sexuality and gender, a lot of those terms and terminology and some of the questions that we're wrestling with today as a society come up in those venues and they bubbled up and they become, you know, sort of lightning rod issues. And so, you know, at the same time that I'm a huge fan of California and so many of the good things that come from the West Coast, you know, it's also it's a difficult environment to operate. And so you sort of imagine how can we as Christians make good sense of what it is God's calling us to do, to act with courage and faithfulness and character in the places where God is calling us? And I think it'll be a mixed bag. I think some of those trends might leak out to California, but also I think some of the challenges that come from some of the policies in that state.

Henry Kaestner: Okay, we can move on. We're going to get ourselves back on track with an easy, simple question. Ten years from now, will pastors still be wearing tight jeans and designer shoes?

David Kinnaman: No, they won't designer shoes. I think so. But the tight jeans are going out.

Henry Kaestner: Tight jeans are gone. Okay, good, good. Something to celebrate The next one, a little bit of a history buff. I love Bretton Woods and what it did in terms of bringing on board this global security, guaranteed safety of the seas and free markets and free trade. We're seeing some of that kind of pulled back. Is that a threat or an opportunity to the church as we love on the rest of the world and the Western based missions movement?

David Kinnaman: I think it's more of a threat. I think that nationalism and tribalism and fragmented politics are going to be a feature of the next number of years more than we would like to see. And that even though younger generations sort of feel very connected around the world to people that are their same age and the Internet and technology provides unprecedented sort of connection, I think the response of sort of more nationalism and xenophobia and fear of the other, those things are going to be features for a while, unfortunately.

Henry Kaestner: I was asked to speak on transformation once, and I decided right after the Ashbury revival to look into revivals. But I was never a great student. I never did great research. In fact, I did a lousy research, I am talking a guy who does great research and so, I want you to tell me how far off I am with the following. I looked at transformation. I thought the most important thing in transformational revivals. So I did some Wikipedia. So, you know, got to love my sources. I did some Wikipedia research on the origin of revivals, and the common trend I thought I saw was that it begins with a confession of sin. And so I got up in front of people and said, This is what the church has been missing. This is how it started in the Hebrides. This is how I started. Asbury Am I right or am I wrong?

David Kinnaman: That's a subject I have no knowledge about. I mean, I've listened to some really good podcasts from John Tyson and others who are looking at this sort of current moment of awakening. But what are the characteristics of a revival? I couldn't say. I will say that our data shows that there's some openness in our society that is surprising given how, at least in the first 6 to 12 months of the pandemic, you know, pastors were expecting their service revival to break out and it didn't happen. We were all sort of just like in shell shock. But I think there's some real openness now, and I think that's a good positive trend for people. But as to the like, the historical precedent of what makes for sort of the conditions of revival or how they break out, I don't think that's something I know enough about.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, it's fascinating. Okay, maybe for the future. Okay, Rusty, you've got a guest one bring it?

William Norvell: Yeah, it's generative AI roll in the church, friend or foe?

David Kinnaman: More foe than friend, but mostly because I think the church takes a while to sort of know how to sort out technology. I wouldn't say it's neutral. I think there's some really positive ways that AI can be used and it will be, you know, like it's going to massively disrupt education. But I also think it's a foe because we just we need a deeper theology of technology. We need to understand how we live faithfully in this context. And we're living in a sort of a real time experiment about what it means to be human with technology. So, you know, for the first time in human history, these technologies connect us in ways that are almost science fiction. And I've actually been talking to some friends that we need more of a theology of dystopian reality to understand, like even in the pages of scripture, sometimes society sort of like loses its way. Sometimes there's towers of Babel that are built. Sometimes we're sort of under the thumb of, you know, these occupying forces. So how do we deal with all that and how do we live faithfully in light of that? I think A.I. is sort of the latest wave, you know, sort of digital technology and the Internet and smartphones and social media. I think we're like lab rats. And so the best way we can be is to live very distinctively Christian lives in light of all that. So we need to be thinking well together and then actually living faithfully to those kinds of commitments that we make. But A.I. is going to represent, I think, a really interesting wave of our having as Christians to deal with those changes to be people of Issachar

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. Faith for Exiles is the book. Okay. Penultimate question before we hand it off to William for that. The ultimate question. You have been discipled, you disciple others. You've written on discipleship. But for you personally, what's the singular thing that you saw advance your discipleship the most?

David Kinnaman: There are a lot of things, but one of the things that was so helpful as I was a youngest in my thirties, I realized that there were places in my scripture reading and just meditation that felt really, really thin. And I remember asking my pastor to spend time with me about every two weeks to mentor me in Scripture, reading a man of deep faith and prayer and and just, like, immersed in the word. And so we met for about a year and a half, Pastor Larry Reichert. He would say, Hey, I want you to read through the book of Matthew and just look at all the places where Jesus has authority. I want you to read through the Book of Proverbs and says, What would this look like in terms of your, you know, your business space And even some of the transition that we talked about before between George Barna, me actually the spiritual work God was doing at that time was in part just immersing myself in Scripture and just letting the words wash me and sort of reshape some of my imagination. And the book of Ecclesiastes came alive in a powerful way for me during that time. And so that was a really formative time to sort of like humble myself and submit to somebody in a very particular way to say like, I don't actually think I'm as good at Scripture as I want to imagine myself to be. How could I grow? And that was the one thing that I think actually really shaped me and continues to to this day. But there's many other ways that, God, I got a spiritual director. My wife passed away three years ago to cancer and that's a huge story for, again, another time. But one of the responses I had was to go to counseling and therapy, but also to spiritual direction. And that person, Dwayne Groban, has been a dear friend and a wonderful counselor and sort of a spiritual guide through the ups and downs of, you know, diagnoses and moving and raising kids and entrepreneurship and all the rest. And so I couldn't be a bigger fan of spiritual direction.

William Norvell: Well, thank you for sharing that. And that's where we head towards the end of all of our episodes, is to bring it back to Scripture and God's Word. And we'd be honored if you were [....], to share where God has you in Scripture these days. And that could be something you've been meditating during seasons or it could be something you read this morning. But we just love to see how amazing it is that God's Word continues to be alive and moving every day.

David Kinnaman: It is a profound thing to be human and then to be read by this great book and these words of Scripture. And for me, I spent a lot of time the last year or two in the book on Second Corinthians, where Paul is something happened between first and Second Corinthians and he is a different person. He's had some near-death experiences and he's been deeply, deeply affected. And the very beginning of that he talks about the God of all comfort came to comfort us. And out of that comfort that we receive, we're able to offer you comfort. And he talks about his dispairs that we thought we would die. In fact, we despaired of life, but it taught us not to rely on ourselves and instead to trust God. And the whole book is profound. Paul writes that we have these treasures and earth and vessels, the beautiful sections on giving later in the book and eight nine. And so it sort of it sets the whole argument about like his authority isn't through, already knows or even his friendship or relationship with these people that he's writing to. But he comes to them out of the authority of the suffering he's endured and God showing up in faithfulness. And I feel like having lost my wife, Jill, to brain cancer in 2020, the Lord has walked very closely with me. And that and the God of all comfort times where I just despaired of life. You know, I've found something deeper and richer in the Lord. I would have despaired had I not believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 27. So I wouldn't be standing here today without these living words that have spoken deep into my heart. And he continues to do so. Thank you for asking. I think it's a great question.

Henry Kaestner: [....] Thank you for playing ball at the end. You're a great blessing to us, to the to the body Christ. And I think we're going to be increasingly looking to you because we need to find a signpost like what is going on here and where things are headed and then what role. You know, so men of Issachar, men who knew the times, but then also we know as a derivative that that God in his infinite sovereignty knew that this was going to be happening and that he'd have us all here now. So we can't just be spectators, you know, God didn't have us places on earth for this time to just watch what's going on. We're like, report back to him. He had us here for a mission and a purpose, and yet we need to make sense of it all so we know where to get involved. And you play such an incredibly important role and that in the body of Christ, thank you for your faithfulness, for getting out there and making it happen with excellence. Thank you for sharing some of the challenges that God walks you through. I mean, there's a lot for one podcast and we're just really grateful for your time.

David Kinnaman: Yes thanks so much, guys. Means a lot and happy to do it and can't wait to come back.

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