Pursuing Concord - The Augsburg Confession: Sin and Free Will

But, uh, we get to talk about something fun today, something that, uh, believe it or not, if you Google, uh, [laughs] Barna Research, 'cause I always...

You know, there's two research groups that I usually trust.

There's Barna Research and there's Pew Research, and, uh, they're trustworthy.

And, uh, you know, it's not, not hard to find an article like this one.

This was written, um, Christian Post.

I don't know how reputable Christian Post is.

I see articles for Christian news on my... not Christian News, uh, as in... that's a different organization, but there's Christian news articles on my Facebook from Christianity Today, and, uh, I don't think that's...

That seems like people trying to sell newspapers kinda, kinda articles.

So I don't know how reputable this, uh, website is, but I do know that the Barna Research is reputable so, um, I will slide out of the way a little bit.

But yeah, just, just so we begin our discussion, as a introduction into what we're gonna be talking about in the, um, Augsburg Confession today, I put it up if you wanna follow along.

But, uh, it says, "Churches failing to preach about sin is just a, is a body blow as many Christians reject basic teachings," and it's from Barna.

So right off the bat, what I was looking for when I Googled, [laughs] uh, you know, "Do churches in America, do they talk about sin?" So could you say, does Zion Lutheran Church talk about sin on Sunday? Yes.

[laughs] You better hope so.

[laughs] Like, if I wasn't or, you know, Pastor Brown or, you know, any LCMS Lutheran pastor that's not talking about sin on Sunday, they wouldn't be doing their job.

I mean, we've got law and gospel.

Uh, the law is to show your sin, show our sin.

Uh, so if we're not talking about sin, uh, we are falling short.

So here's just...

It's kinda quick.

So it says, "Only two-thirds of self-identified Christians think everyone sins." [laughs] Like, well, that's, that's a pathetic number.

[laughs] Two-thirds think people sin? All right.

It says, "A significant number of Christians reject basic teachings about sin according to a new survey," this is from, uh, 2025, by the way, so just last year, "uh, which one prominent evangelical researcher views as a body blow stemming from American churches' failure to address the topic.

The Cultural Research Center in Arizona Christian University released the eighth installment of its 2025 American Worldview Inventory on Thursday, which features," yeah, "from 2,000, um, US adults in May of 2025.

An overwhelming majority of respondents, so 84%, agree that sin exists and it is real." So 85% say sin is real and exists.

Is that an okay number? I would say no.