Why a Spiritual Life Survey?

            Over the past three weeks 90 members of my church, First Baptist Church, Cornelia, GA,  have invested 30-45 minutes of their lives in a taking an in-depth survey of their spiritual life.  The survey is called Reveal.  It was developed by Willowcreek Community Church in Chicago when they asked a simple question of themselves, “Where are we?”  This led them to begin to find a way to measure what God was doing in the lives of the people within their church. 

            Their basic premise going into the first survey was this:  The more a person is involved in a church (the more they attend on a regular basis – which is how almost all churches base their view of success), the greater a person should be growing spiritually.  In other words, a person who regular comes to church should be growing more in Jesus than a person who comes less often.  Their biggest discover was this:  “Involvement in church activities does not predict or drive long term spiritual growth.  There is a ‘spiritual continuum’ which is very predictive and powerful.” 

            Here are the other 5 big discoveries about spiritual formation:

2.      Spiritual growth is all about increasing relational closeness to Christ.

3.      The church is most important in the early stages of spiritual growth.  Its role then shifts from being the primary influence to a secondary influence.

4.      Personal spiritual practices are the building blocks for a Christ-centered life.

5.      A church’s most active evangelists, volunteers and donors come from the most spiritually advanced segments.

6.      More than 25% of those surveyed described themselves as spiritually stalled or dissatisfied with the role of the church in their spiritual growth. 

At FBC, Cornelia, we are entering into a futuring process we call Walking By Faith.  We are using this survey of our spiritual lives to get a bench mark of where we are a congregation.  Not just how many people are here, but where are we in our spiritual lives.  We hope this information will be able to lead us to develop the spiritual resources and structures to move us deeper into faith and missional living.  It’s an exciting time in our congregation.

A quote I used in my DMin thesis has stuck with me for quite a while (and I’m too lazy to pull it down to remember who said it), “As churches, what we measure is what we become.”  I pray as FBC, Cornelia measures our spiritual lives, we begin placing the spiritual lives of our congregation and our community at the forefront of all we do as a church.  God desire this from us.

If anyone is interested in learning more about the Reveal Survey, let me suggest several books by Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson who developed the survey. 

Reveal:  Where are you?

Follow Me: What’s next for you?

Move: What 1,000 Churches Reveal about Spiritual Growth.