An assessment of Bible knowledge of Churches of Christ in West Virginia and related variables

Throughout history the church has placed tremendous emphasis on her members having Bible knowledge. Yet in recent decades there has been a documented decline in Bible knowledge in Christendom generally and among Evangelicals specifically. Due to the current decline of biblical literacy in American churches a closer study of Bible knowledge among adherents of Churches of Christ was warranted. The historical review of the use of the Bible in the educational program of the church and the review of related literature revealed that very little work has been done to determine the level of Bible knowledge among adult adherents of Churches of Christ. Therefore, the purpose of this research study was to determine the level of Bible knowledge among adult adherents of Churches of Christ in West Virginia and to investigate the relationships, if any, that exist between Bible knowledge and tested subject's personal demographics, selected acts of discipleship, church demographics, and Bible content delivery. In order to accomplish these stated objectives the researcher investigated Bible knowledge of adult adherents among randomly selected Churches of Christ in West Virginia using the Assessment of Bible Knowledge Test, a basic Bible inventory developed by the researcher.;The population studied was adult Bible class participants in selected Churches of Christ in West Virginia. The 2009 edition of Churches of Christ in the United States listed 290 congregations of Churches of Christ in West Virginia with 22,318 total adherents. For study purposes the 290 congregations were divided by average Sunday morning worship attendance into the following groups: Group 1 (up to 49); Group 2 (50--100); Group 3 (over 100). Fifty congregations from Group 1 and thirty congregations from Groups 2 and 3 were randomly selected for participation in this research study. Fifty-three congregations completed and returned 1,522 useable surveys.;The surveys were electronically graded using a digital scanner with the results being imported into the Excel software program. The church demographic data were entered manually into Excel with each response assigned a numerical value. The data were then codified and imported into the software program SPSS for statistical analysis. The first set of statistical analyses generated survey statistics which gave descriptive measures of central tendency and variability. It was determined that the data did not have a normal distribution and exhibited a severe skewing to the right. However, the Central Limit Theorem was employed allowing parametric statistical analysis of data to be used.;One-way ANOVA analyses using the F statistic were run on the test scores and variables. In addition, the Bonferroni post hoc test was employed, where applicable, to determine the true source of mean difference between groups within the independent variables. The alpha value required for the tests was set at .05 or below for all the variables.;This research presented evidence concerning the levels of Bible knowledge among adult Bible class participants in selected Churches of Christ in West Virginia. In addition, this research study drew specific conclusions about relationships between Bible knowledge and selected variables. Specific implications and suggestions based on this research study as it pertains to variables significantly related to Bible knowledge were given including: the importance of the educational director; Bible class attendance in formative years; teacher training and development; importance of general education; importance of Christian mentoring; and, discipleship.