Does an emphasis on PERSONAL spiritual vitality positively impact church health and vitality?
Or does it stunt growth by making participants too inward focused?
This is one of the questions answered in a recent report. See below for a summary.
985 words - less than a 3 minute read
This edition of Church Leader Insider is the second of our updates from the recently released report Megachurch 2020: The Changing Reality of America’s Largest Churches, by my friends Warren Bird and Scott Thumma. Go back and read the first update here.
Much of the gold in the report was not publicized by media reports but wise large church leaders would be wise to read and process the whole report.
This week on the Great Things God Has Done Podcast - Leonce Crump here in the ATL!
For 20 years now the study has tracked strong congregational agreement that its worship is “spiritually vital and alive” versus those that say not. One way that has been asked is to let survey participants decide what spiritually vital and alive means for their context.
But the question is also asked in such a way to create a matrix of practices that combine to a tangible spiritual health and vitality score.
Spiritual vitality includes having clear purpose, mission, a willingness to change, higher levels of volunteers and connecting people within the congregation and to the larger ministry within the community.
For those that strongly agree to the spiritually vital assessment show that 85% are actively involved in their local community, 71% say they have grown either significantly or moderately as a church, and 55% say that over 40% of their adults are in a small group. (go back and read prior issue on small groups.)
Further when comparing those churches with high spiritual vitality scores to any other score in that category, even among megachurches we see some significant differences.
These include:
· Congregational Growth rate in last five years
· Strength of incorporating newcomers into the congregation
· Willingness to change to meet new challenges
· Emphasizing to parents to talk about faith with children
· Emphasizing personal spiritual practices
· Talking about faith to those outside the congregation
Dr. Bird and Dr. Thumma created a seven-component family and personal practices emphasis to compare to the congregation’s sense of spiritual vitality.
These included:
· Regular worship attendance
· Tithing
· Personal Scripture study
· Devotional prayer
· Talking about faith with those outside the congregation
· Talking to children about faith
· Living faith out in everyday life
Bottom Line: “Increased emphasis on these personal practices strongly corresponds with those who are actively recruiting new people and engaged in small groups.”
There is almost always a 20-point difference between those that have the highest emphasis on personal religious practices and those that have a lower emphasis. This includes factors such as:
· Financial health of the congregation
· International/global ministry activities
· Community serving opportunities to those in need
· Religious education and Bible Study of adults
See figures 20,21,22 in the report for a complete breakdown.
My observations in looking under the hood at many megachurches in recent years is that we are focused on weekend worship growth, pathway growth (usually a series of steps, classes or group engagement), and then helping reach others. This is not a bad thing, but it incomplete.
What does this mean? See implications below the ad.
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No slots are open until February 2021, but we can engage the conversation to get your thinking started.
Story continues
Implications:
Spiritually and vibrant churches focus on helping each person grow through personal practices. Core disciplines and spiritual practices could be the causation instead of the other way round. [I note here that causation is different that correlation]
Those churches that spend the time to adequately emphasize, train and equip people in PERSONAL and FAMILY spiritual practices get benefits CORPORATELY when it comes to health, vitality, community outreach, service and involvement.
Often churches stress involvement in groups, community service and other practices as first steps. This research seems to indicate that those that emphasize personal spiritual practices FIRST will get the resultant involvement in groups and service as well.
Part of this is the continued shift we have observed in this current pandemic season – the Shift from Platform to Pastoral to PERSONAL.
As more are realizing, every staff member has become a parish pastor (again.)
Large churches seeing fruit right now are doing it because they are getting very personal, life on life connection with their people to build, equip and train them to self-feed and carry out the mission of God in their communities. They are helping congregants find their next normal, new spiritual rhythms even when they are not meeting in person.
The shift to personal is an opportunity to build core disciples in new ways through mentor and classroom techniques that help each believer know and follow Jesus in a deeper way.
Just in the past year I have seen great interest in programs which teach the concepts in harmony with the survey findings even through this odd pandemic season.
These church work to build the right sequence of mentorship, teaching and principles to deepen the lives of both inquirers and believers to become disciples. This is not just done through their group process or a class. It includes high touch ministry with the others.
How about your own church? Do you see the same? Do you agree or disagree with the findings?
Hit reply and let me know. Would love to dialog with you about this.
And finally for this week – our Weekly Pastor Forum call continues to focus on issues of the week and pastor’s own questions about the practices and indicators others are seeing across the country. The call is limited to Senior Pastors of larger churches and is a safe space to question, vent and get help.
Apply for an invitation by emailing Linda.Stanley@generis.com
This is the last issue of the year, we will look for you in 2021.