Religions > Bible > Surveys Show Pastors Claim Congregants Are Deeply Committed to God But Congregants Deny It!
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Religions > Bible |
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"*Peace of Christ*" |
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09 Jan 2006 09:15:55 AM |
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Surveys Show Pastors Claim Congregants Are Deeply Committed to God But Congregants Deny It! |
Surveys Show Pastors Claim Congregants Are Deeply Committed to God But
Congregants Deny It!
January 9, 2006
(Ventura, CA) How committed to God are Americans? It depends who
you ask. Two new national surveys conducted by The Barna Group provide a
glimpse into the contradictory views of church pastors and the people who
attend churches, suggesting that the optimistic views of pastors are not
justified. There is a huge gap between the perception of pastors and the
reality of peoples devotion to God.
Pastors Believe That All Is Well Spiritually
Based on interviews with a representative national sample of 627
Protestant pastors, the Barna study discovered that pastors believe a
large majority of their congregants deem their faith in God to be the
highest priority in their life. On average, pastors contend that 70% of
the adults in their church consider their personal faith in God to
transcend all other priorities. Amazingly, as many as one out of every six
pastors (16%) contends that 90% or more of the adults in their church hold
their relationship with God as their top life priority!
Adults Are Lukewarm About God
In contrast to the upbeat pastoral view of peoples faith, a nationally
representative sample of 1002 adults was asked the same question i.e., to
identify their top priority in life and a very different perspective
emerged. Only one out of every seven adults (15%) placed their faith in
God at the top of their priority list. To make an apples-to-apples
comparison, the survey isolated those who attend Protestant churches and
found that even among that segment of adults, not quite one out of every
four (23%) named their faith in God as their top priority in life.
Some population niches were more likely than others to make God their
number one focus. Among those were evangelicals (51% of whom said their
faith in God was their highest priority), African-Americans (38%) and
adults who attend a house church (34%). The people groups least likely to
put God first were adults under 30 years of age, residents of the
Northeast and West, and those who describe themselves as mostly liberal on
political and social matters.
Regardless of how the population was evaluated, though, there was no
segment of the adult population that came close to the level of commitment
that Protestant pastors claimed for churchgoers.
Misunderstanding Based on Poor Assessment
In trying to understand how pastors could have such a positive notion of
the faith commitment of their people at the same time that the people
themselves deny making God their top priority, the survey of Protestant
pastors sheds light on the issue. A question asking pastors to identify
the specific standards they use to evaluate the spiritual commitment of
congregants showed that few pastors rely upon criteria that reflect
genuine devotion to God.
Overall, only one measure how many people are involved in some form of
church-related volunteer activity or ministry effort was listed by at
least half of all pastors (54%) as a measure of the spiritual health of
their congregation. Only two other criteria church attendance and some
type of life change experience (usually meaning that a person has made a
first-time commitment to Jesus Christ as their savior) were named as
important criteria by more than one out of every seven pastors. (Each of
these criteria was listed by 45% of all pastors.) Other top-rated
standards were whether congregants were involved in evangelism (13%), how
much new information or knowledge about Christianity the people received
(10%), how much money was donated to the church (10%), and the comments
made by congregants to the pastor (10%).
The unifying thread running through pastors responses to an open-ended
survey question regarding how congregational health is assessed was that
the most common measures do not assess much beyond the superficial
participation of people in church or faith-related activity. On average, a
pastor might seek information as to attendance relative to previous years;
how many people, if any, had accepted Christ as their savior; and whether
there were enough people involved in the churchs ministry to keep existing
programs going. In other words, the typical pastor measures the spiritual
health of congregants by considering one or two numbers (e.g. church and
Sunday school attendance) and a handful of vague impressions (what did
exit comments suggest about peoples reaction to the sermon, how widespread
was peoples participation in the singing, were there enough people who
were sufficiently trained to enable the services and programs to operate
smoothly).
Perhaps the most telling information relates to the measures that are not
widely used by pastors to assess peoples spiritual health. Less than one
out of every ten pastors mentioned indicators such as the maturity of a
persons faith in God, the intensity of the commitment to loving and
serving God and people, the nature of each congregants personal ministry,
the breadth of congregational involvement in community service, the extent
to which believers have some forms of accountability for their spiritual
development and lifestyle, the manner in which believers use their
resources to advance the kingdom of God, how often people worship God
during the week or feel as if they have experienced the presence of God,
or how faith is integrated into the family experience of those who are
connected with the church.
Activity That Does Not Concern Churches
In fact, the survey found some disturbing results concerning the
priorities of pastors in how they measure spiritual health.
* Stewardship is rarely deemed a meaningful measure of church
vitality. Church budgets are typically set based on the assumption that
the average congregant will give 2% to 3% of their income to the ministry.
Consequently, the fact that only 6% of born again adults tithe is not seen
as an indicator of lukewarm commitment. * Evangelism is not a
priority in most churches, so the fact that most churched adults do not
verbally share the gospel in a given year is not deemed problematic. Only
one out of every eight churches bother to evaluate how many of their
congregants are sharing their faith in Christ with non-believers.
* When pastors described their notion of significant,
faith-driven life change, the vast majority (more than four out five)
focused on salvation but ignored issues related to lifestyle or spiritual
maturity. The fact that the lifestyle of most churched adults is
essentially indistinguishable from that of unchurched people is not a
concern for most churches; whether or not people have accepted Jesus
Christ as their savior is the sole or primary indicator of life
transformation, regardless of whether their life after such a decision
produces spiritual fruit. * Churches are prone to looking for
indicators of serving people within the church more often than seeking
signs that needy people outside the church are being cared for. In fact,
for every two churches that consider the congregations breadth of ministry
to people not connected to the church to be an indicator of spiritual
health, there are five churches that focus on the amount of in-reach
activity undertaken. * Pastors are nine times more likely to
seek reactions to their sermon than they are to assess the congregations
reactions to visitors. * Perhaps most alarming of all, pastors
were 21 times more likely to evaluate whether people showed up (i.e.,
attendance) than to determine whether people experienced the presence of
God during their time at the church.
The Measures Dictate the Outcomes
According to George Barna, the best-selling author of books such as
Revolution, The Habits of Highly Effective Churches, and The Second Coming
of the Church, two well-known adages summarize the situation. It has been
said that you get what you measure and that you see what you want to see.
Both of those sayings go a long way toward describing the assessment
problem that plagues churches today, he stated. The only way to explain
the enormous gap between the perceptions of pastors and the reality of
peoples lives is to understand that pastors evaluate spiritual health from
an institutional perspective that is, are people involved in keeping the
system going while people are aware of their unmet need to have a deeper
and more meaningful relationship with God.
Barna, whose firm conducted both national surveys, felt that the
information could help churches reconsider how they evaluate their
ministry. The nations adults deserve some credit for recognizing and
acknowledging that God is not a top priority in their life. The challenge
to church leaders is to stop pandering for popularity and to set the bar
higher. People only live up to the expectations set for them. When the
dominant expectations are that people show up, play nicely together and
keep the system going, the potential for having the kinds of life-changing
experiences that characterized the early Church are limited, at best. If
churches believe in the life-changing power of the gospel and the Holy
Spirit, they must hold people to a higher and more challenging standard.
There has never been a time, the researcher continued, when American
society was in more dire need of the Christian Church to provide a pathway
to a better future. Given the voluminous stream of moral challenges, and
the rampant spiritual hunger that defines our culture today, this should
be the heyday for biblical ministry. As things stand now, we have become
content with placating sinners and filling auditoriums as the marks of
spiritual health.
Source of This Information
The data reported in this summary are based upon two telephone surveys
conducted in October and November 2005. One survey included interviews
with a nationwide random sample of 1002 adults, 18 years of age or older.
The maximum margin of sampling error associated with the aggregate sample
in this survey is 3.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All
non-institutionalized adults in the 48 contiguous states were eligible to
be interviewed and the distribution of respondents in the survey sample
corresponds to the geographic dispersion of the U.S. adult population. The
data were subjected to slight statistical weighting procedures to
calibrate the survey base to national demographic proportions. Households
selected for inclusion in the survey sample received multiple callbacks to
increase the probability of obtaining a representative distribution of
adults.
The other survey was conducted among 627 Senior Pastors of Protestant
churches across the nation, distributed proportionally among
denominations. The maximum margin of sampling error associated with the
aggregate sample in this survey is 4 percentage points at the 95%
confidence level. Churches included in the survey sample were located
within the 48 continental states and received multiple callbacks to
increase the probability of obtaining a representative distribution of
pastors and churches.
The Barna Group, Ltd. (which includes its research division, The Barna
Research Group) is a privately held, for-profit corporation that conducts
primary research, produces audio, visual and print media, and facilitates
the healthy spiritual development of leaders, children, families and
Christian ministries. Located in Ventura, California, Barna has been
conducting and analyzing primary research to understand cultural trends
related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors since 1984. If you
would like to receive free e-mail notification of the release of each new,
bi-weekly update on the latest research findings from The Barna Group, you
may subscribe to this free service at the Barna web site www.barna.org.
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