Foaming whitewater churns in portions of the Platte River after spring run-offs. When summer's dog days sear the Great Plains, though, the Platte River dries up. It's reduced in some spots to mudflats with trickling rivulets of water. A preacher I recently heard compared short, simplistic sermons to the Platte River in August-an inch deep and a mile wide.

Specializing on news briefs, a national blog site requested samples of my commentaries. The blog's editor wrote, "Like MacDonald's, writing on our blog appeals to readers on the run who grab their news in quick gulps. Your commentaries feed readers wanting mom's home grown cooking, served at a leisurely pace. They take time to digest." I interpreted this rejection of my writing for his blog as a compliment.

A key finding in the recently released Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 35,000 Americans shows an alarming number of Christians settle for a Platte River faith. 92 percent tip their hats to belief in God. A surprising 58 percent pray daily. But there's a gap, what the Pew study authors call a "stunning" lack of congruence, between professed faith and how believers use it to guide their lives. The disconnect between faith and practice is huge.

Evidently, many Christians in America see their faith as merely a slice of life's pie. It's wedged among other slices. Slices include hobbies enjoyed, work done, domestic chores accomplished and books read. But few use faith as the lens through which they perceive life and act on what they see. Their faith is largely self-contained, divorced from life's other spheres. Still, it's useful to them when worshipping in church or supplicating on bended knee.

David Kinnaman, president of the respected evangelical Barna polling group, in his book UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity ... and Why It Matters backs up the Pew study's findings about Platte River faith, an inch deep and a mile wide.

Kinnaman measured the depth of personal faith. He wanted to discover whether believers held a biblical worldview, acting like a lens through which they peered at faith and acted on it. The worldview Kinnaman constructed embraced eight beliefs found in the Bible. A person holding this biblical worldview believes Jesus was sinless, God is the creative power who spun our universe into orbit and intersects with it today, salvation is God's gift our moral brownie points can't earn, Satan is real, a Christian is called to share faith with unbelievers, the Bible is trustworthy in the spiritual principles it teaches, moral truth isn't relative, and the Bible reveals such ethical verities.

Kinnaman reports only "one out of every twenty-two young adults who have made a commitment to Christ" possess depth to their faith so that it informs, shapes and helps interpret every aspect of life. Merely 9 percent of adults use their faith as a lens through which they sort out the good from the bad in life.

"This means that out of ninety-five million Americans who are ages eighteen to forty-one," reports Kinnaman, "about sixty million say they have already made a commitment to Jesus that is still important; however, only about three million of them have a biblical worldview."

Jesus spun a parable about Platte River faith. He imagined a sower casting seed on various types of soil, some receptive so roots sunk deep and other shallow so seedlings couldn't grow. "As he sowed," said Jesus, "...other seeds fell on rocky ground, where it had not much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. When the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, withered away" ( Mark 4: 5-6). Nebraska farmers along the Platte River witness this cycle of quick growth, slight roots and scorched seedlings.

Bill Hybels, pioneer mega church preacher at Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, is wrestling with whether seeds he plants really give roots to a deep faith. Since 1975, Hybels has built a model of church growth that turns conventional religion on its head. It skips over heavy liturgy, catechism teaching, three-point sermons, and sanctuaries with hard pews. Hybels, whose early Calvinist religious environment I share, knocked on doors, asking what it would take for backsliders to return to church. Using this market research, he tailor-made services in cushy amphitheaters featuring hand-clapping music, engaging dramas, and sermons connecting the Bible to what Oprah features. It was Bible-lite for faith's beginners. Slim on doctrine, tradition and theology.

Hybels believed if he got those curious about faith in the door the first time, he would have a chance to mold disciples of Christ later on through study. What he has found is that too many worshippers' faith development stopped at the door. They liked the religious tickle Willow Creek church provided but avoided finding an abiding faith.

Hybels and his staff have revamped Willow Creek's marketing of faith. Now they don't merely woo folk who seek the Lord. Rather, Willow Creek aims to help them find Jesus through Bible classes fortified by rigorous theology. Gone at mid-week services are sunny worship happenings with nice entertaining videos that perk up worshippers but don't inspire them to hone a faith worth dying for.