Over the past year, I’ve posted findings based on our Lawless Group Church Health Survey completed by hundreds of churches over the years. For example, many members do not pray regularly for staff members, and worship is often rated the highest area of the church’s health. Today’s post is the next segment describing additional findings:
- By far, most churches view themselves as friendly. Even the churches in division affirm their friendliness when completing the survey. When we send our “spies” in, though, we often find churches to be just the opposite. They’re friendly, but only with people they already know.
- Many church members are not certain they would “excitedly invite an unchurched friend to a worship service” at their church. They want to be that excited, but sometimes they themselves don’t like something about the worship service. At other times, they know the church is in turmoil – and they’re afraid to invite friends.
- Churches that have two services tend to like that arrangement; churches with only one service tend to be opposed to two. Our experience is that churches sometimes reluctantly add a second service, but they like the new arrangement when the change becomes the norm.
- Few churches have an intentional mentoring discipleship strategy. Given that both Jesus and Paul discipled this way, this finding is regrettable. We miss a prime opportunity for effective discipleship when we limit our approach to group classes.
- Church members have mixed opinions about their level of discipleship. On one hand, it’s not unusual for 30-40% of the survey respondents say that they’ve been discipled so they “know how to follow Christ and grow as a Christian.” On the other hand, it’s common for a similar percentage to state clearly that they’ve never been discipled.
- Few churches emphasize church planting as a means of reaching people. That percentage is changing due to a growing interest in North American church planting, but most churches still don’t consider this approach as an option for them. It’s hard to think about sending people out when you’re fighting for survival.
- Generally, fewer than ½ of the survey respondents indicate they’ve been trained to read and interpret the Bible correctly. Sure, they’ve been told to read it – but no one’s taught them how to read it well. That finding alone ought to challenge us to consider how we do Bible study and model hermeneutics.
What are your responses to these findings?
A great list. During 12 years of missionary service we visited many churches. I assume they all felt that they were friendly. Almost none felt friendly to us, and some were just plain rude. We consider the current church that where we serve as staff member to be friendly, but I know that it is intimidating for new people to enter the doors of any church.
We have been members and on staff of several churches that I would never invite anyone to.
Lack of discipleship is a huge issue in many churches. We have a pretty good system in our church Our church is around 225 people. Despite the discipleship most people don’t serve. I have a full-time ministry which includes bringing homeless/addicted men to church. I was asked if I would also pick up some elderly folks at a nursing home because no one else in the church would do so. On average it takes our people about 10 minutes to drive to church. Why can’t someone else pick these people up is an interesting question.
We have no emphasis on church planting even though our denomination would consider itself a church planting denomination. The denomination has closed more than 5% of our churches over the last several years.
#7 is sadly true.
Thanks, Michael, for the additional thoughts — and for your time on the field.