They Want What? May 4, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Methods & Strategies , add a commentThe following cartoon cracked me up — we just completed our latest survey so the timing couldn’t have been better.
Copyright 2007 Christianity Today International/BuildingChurchLeaders.com. Used with permission.
Survey Says…. November 16, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog, Church, Methods & Strategies , add a commentAs the Executive Pastor of the growing, 1,200-attender Park Community Church on the northside of the city, I am always interested in learning more about our congregation. Every other fall, we take an extensive survey of our congregation that gives us a snapshot of who attends, their demographics, and helpful information about their spiritual journey and habits (serving, small groups, connectedness, faith-sharing, etc).
This data has proved invaluable as we grow and look for how to better serve our congregation. We also have a vision to ereach one percent of Chicago with the Gospel through church-planting, church partnerships, para-church partnerships and faith-based ministries serving the city.We did the 67 question survey right in the service, allowing 25 minutes for folks to fill it out. If you find this sort of thing helpful for your church, email me and I will send you copy of the survey.
It takes about three-to-four weeks to get the data input and ready for analysis but I will talk about the results in a later post in December.
Just Who Does Go to Hell? August 17, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog, Breaking News, Church , add a commentLast week, MSNBC did a piece on people’s attitudes about hell.
The correspondent stated that there are no more central questions for every single one of us than the questions about belief. Is there a God? Is there life after death, is there a heaven, or hell? His data showed that Americans, as we all know by now, are far more likely than, say, Europeans, to answer those questions in the affirmative. A Harris poll of our attitudes conducted a few years ago found that 94 percent of American adults believe in God, 89 percent in heaven and 73 percent in hell. For professing Christians, those numbers are even higher.
But more interesting were the answers to the question…just exactly who is going to go to hell? Hell is for other people! Fully three-quarters of survey participants felt pretty sure they will be going to heaven when they die, while just 2 percent expected they would wind up in hell. WOW!
MSNBC then asked thier readers to take the following questions — with more than 17,000 answers, here is how people responded:
