A few months ago, Willow Creek conducted a series of surveys to assess how churches were promoting spiritual growth in the congregation. If you would like to read about the results, you can visit the REVEAL blog. Since my research area is essentially focused on how people grow in their faith and since I work with a small business that does church consulting, I consider myself to have some authority on this topic. Although I have thought about the study quite a bit, I really want to focus this discussion on the place of assessment in the church.
There are four main issues related to church assessment: (1) what do we measure? (2) how do we measure? (3) what do we learn? (4) what do we miss?
1) What do we measure? Or, in other words, how do you measure someone's spirituality? Now there will be some who argue that spirituality is a completely personal affair and therefore it is impossible to measure it objectively. But I find this unpersuasive, as spirituality inherently stretches beyond the mystical, and is full of theological beliefs that we either hold to or deny, religious behaviors we either engage in or don't, and phenomenon we either experience or don't. To say that our spirituality is devoid of anything religious is to say something objective about our spirituality.
Next, on this same point, we need to consider what are the important variables inherent to faith. Sometimes we make these decisions based upon theological reasoning. For instance, it makes sense not to study how food preferences are related to religious behavior. And the flipside could be that it makes sense to study how prayer is related to a sense of closeness to God. These are our a priori theological beliefs that can inform us. But additionally, we can simply use trial and error, in a scientific manner, to figure out what variables are important to study. For example, one study may look at 10 different variables related to church attendance and find that only one is significantly related to it. We would therefore decide to further study that variable, since it seems to be important (if our theological beliefs state that church attendance is a good thing).
2) The question of how we measure spirituality is also an important one. Are we to assume that those who rate themselves as a 10 (out of 10) on closeness to God are really closer to God? Should we even use paper and pencil (or nowadays, computers) to assess someone's spirituality? Should we rely on spiritual exemplars to study what factors are important to spirituality? It is easy to generate more and more questions. But the truth is that we need to start somewhere. Face-to-face interviews are time consuming. Using spiritual exemplars risks finding people who have their outsides clean. And of course paper and pencil measures have plenty of problems. The real place to start is by engaging a variety of different methods. We should not limit ourselves to one way of approaching the problem.
3) What do we learn from assessment? Assessment can tell us whatever we want to know. It can tell us if people like the preacher's sermons. It can tell us how people use their faith to deal with problems. The real task is learning to ask the right questions. What is most essential to the life of the church? This means that we must really dig in to the Word, explore our theology, and dialog with people from other denominational and faith backgrounds. Again, the point is to begin the discussion. Willow Creek seems to have been scared prematurely by their findings. If we learn anything from the REVEAL study, it's that we should not shift paradigm's too quickly but we should also not be afraid to admit we have been doing things wrong.
4) What do we miss? By this I meant that we should always be aware that we have blindspots. Assessment is never going to be comprehensive so we should always be willing to take a step back and look at the full picture, as best as we can. No one in the congregation may realize that using multimedia in sermons is affecting them and assessment is unlikely to evaluate this issue, but that doesn't mean it's not an issue, for instance.
REVEAL is the first large scale step towards something that I have become a huge believer in since being in grad school - using assessment to improve our churches. While there are some limitations and problems in REVEAL, it does add a great deal of knowledge and has opened up the Christian culture to the use of assessment. I hope that this trend continues, hopefully without being abused, and allows the church to repent and grow where it needs to.
4 comments:
Hey Curt, great blog, and interesting post. Let me start my response with some scripture:
“As water reflects a face, so a man's heart reflects the man.” - Proverbs 27:19
“Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the hearts.” - Proverbs 21:2
He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight.” - Luke 16:15
“You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” - James 2:19
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” - James 1:22
So, we can’t assess spirituality based on our attempts to weigh the heart, or even a person’s extensive knowledge and verbal acceptance of Biblical truth.
“A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.” - Matthew 7:18-23
“Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?” - 1 Corinthians 3
We are to use fruit as our indicator. As it says in James 2:17, “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” So, if a person accepts the Gospel, their fruit is how we see if they are really alive in Christ and walking with God.
maybe a good place to start is to assess people on what they THOUGHT they were getting from church. eg, better mental health, better prayer life etc.
i know that ultimately we want to assess whether people have given their lives fully to God but i suspect we might need a bit of early-church-style persecution to assess that one. is america ready ;-)
anyway, i totally agree that we need to do more assessing and not be so scared. it is a basic educational principle that assessment drives learning. most people learn strategically and assessment focusses the mind. it might also help people consider whether they really want to go to church rather than just turn up week after week.
mind you, their tithe is as good as anyone elses. mind you, do we need the parking problem...
Sounds like a great idea but what are you really measuring? Outcomes of faith? Do we look for how people now live better and if that hasn't worked are we ready to through it out? This smells to me like evengelical perfectionism. The church is full of that; commit more, deeper, better, work steps more, fully devoted, you name it. When we get to the banquet table and sit beside Jesus we are going to be very surprised who he welcomes to sit across from us. They weren't as spiritual as me! I never did the stuff they did! But why are we even at the table? ONLY because of his grace and severe mercy. We have no right to be there either. Our mangelling is sin and it is crippled us worse then we ever thought. We have eternity with Jesus waiting only because of Him. How are you going to measure that?
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