New Research: Less Than 20% of Churchgoers Read the Bible Daily

by: Ed Stetzer

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Statistically, you can see a recurring pattern: Bible engagement is directly related to spiritual growth.

While it may be possible to become a “better person” by attending church, it is not true spiritual growth. New life in Christ, the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, are regular Bible engagement is evident in the lives of growing believers.

God’s Word is truth, so it should come as no surprise that reading and studying the Bible are still the activities that have the most statistical influence on growth in this attribute of spiritual maturity. As basic as that is, there are still numerous churchgoers who are not reading the Bible regularly. You simply won’t grow if you don’t know God and spend time in God’s Word. Bible reading won’t make you a Christian and you can’t grow without the power of the Spirit, but engaging the word deeply matters.

However, if tangible life changes are statistically related to Bible engagement in the life of a disciple of Christ, why aren’t more reading and studying the Bible?

We’ve released new research as part of the Transformational Discipleship study that shows only 19% of churchgoers personally (not as part of a church worship service) read the Bible every day. That is roughly the same as those who responded “Rarely/Never” (18 percent). A quarter of respondents indicate they read the Bible a few times a week, and 14% say they read the Bible “Once a Week” while another 22 percent say “Once a Month” or “A Few Times a Month.” (Note that “churchgoers” does not mean “born again” or other things– just what is says. We will look at more on that in future research releases.)

From the release (read the full story here):

While the majority of churchgoers desire to honor Christ with their lives and even profess to think on biblical truths, a recent study found few actually engage in personal reading and study of the Scriptures.
“Bible engagement” is one of the eight attributes of discipleship identified in the Transformational Discipleship study conducted by LifeWay Research. The study produced the Transformational Discipleship Assessment, which measures an individual’s spiritual growth in each of these areas of development.

The survey found 90 percent of churchgoers agree “I desire to please and honor Jesus in all I do,” and 59 percent agree with the statement: “Throughout the day I find myself thinking about biblical truths.” While the majority agree with both statements, there is a significant difference in the strength of agreement. Nearly two-thirds of churchgoers (64 percent) strongly agree with the first statement, but only 20 percent strongly agree with the second.

While these stats might seem disheartening, we did identify six things that led to increased Bible engagement:

1. Confessing wrongdoings to God and asking forgiveness.
2. Believing in Jesus Christ as the only way to heaven and the number of years one has believed this.
3. Making a decision to obey or follow God with an awareness that choosing to do so might be costly. Sixty-three percent of churchgoers say they have at least once in the last six months.
4. Praying for the spiritual status of people they know are not professing Christians.
5. Reading a book about increasing their spiritual growth. Sixty-one percent of churchgoers say they have in the last year.
6. Having been discipled or mentored one-on-one by a more spiritually mature Christian.

These findings on Bible engagement are part of the largest discipleship study of its kind. Results from each of the eight attributes of spiritual maturity will continue to be released over the coming months.

To help pastors, churches and individuals measure spiritual development, LifeWay Research used the study’s data to develop a questionnaire for believers, called theTransformational Discipleship Assessment (TDA). This online evaluation delivers both individual and group reports on spiritual maturity using the eight factors of biblical discipleship. The TDA also provides helpful and practical suggestions on appropriate next steps for spiritual development.

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Discipleship, Ed Stetzer, Transformation

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Leveraging Technology to Make Disciples

by: Church Community Builder

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Tags: Church Community Builder, Discipleship, Steve Caton, Strategy

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Multiplying Relationships: How Every Church Can Multiply

by: Lane Corley

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Reaching North America for Christ is too big a task for one church to handle. New Church Multiplication is one of the best ways for us to work the North American fields to the edges. And every church can get involved in multiplication of new Churches. How? The sky is the limit. There is no right or wrong way to support church planting. The question is, what are you willing to do? How big of a commitment are you willing to make?

Here are three levels of relationship that excludes no church from involvement. I offer a few suggestions that are not meant to be an exhaustive list under each level.

Friending / Encouraging

Church Planting is a difficult, lonely task, filled with uncertainty and vulnerability. You and your church can strengthen and encourage a church plant, as well as demonstrate a kingdom mindset, by reaching out a hand of friendship. This can be done with little or no expense to you and your church. Here are a few ideas:

• Put a church planter on your weekly prayer list. The real battle against the kingdom of darkness is free through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. As your church prays for the lost to be saved, take the new church and planter to the throne of God as they reach out to the unchurched in your community.
• Buy a church planter a cup of coffee and ask him how it’s going and offer him your insights about the community. Ask him about his family. Demonstrate a desire to see the church succeed. If you don’t have a desire to see him succeed, then repent and get over the idea that your church can reach everybody in the community. Also, encourage the women’s ministry to remember the church planter’s spouse and support her when possible. Just simply treat them as you would want to be treated. Seems like I saw that principle written in red somewhere.
• Invite a church planter to share during your Wednesday night prayer meeting, to Sunday School classes, to promote special missions offerings, etc. Exposing your church to the story of God’s work in your community will benefit the church by opening their eyes to needs in their Jerusalem and Judea.

Partnering / Sponsoring

Maybe your church is ready to be engaged in off-campus multiplication a little more directly. Investing financially & tangibly in a local church plant is one great way to help your church see their community as a mission field and multiply your impact on the Great Commission challenge. A few ideas for investing and sponsoring are:

• Become a financial co-sponsor. Put planting in the budget at whatever level you can. Most of the co-sponsors for the churches I’ve planted have been between $50 and $200 per month. Some have given a one-time gift. It takes money to minister in North America and a financial contribution encourages the planter and communicates commitment to the Great Commission.
• Adopt a church plant for your VBS offering. The kids will love the story about a church that meets in a Fire Station or Rodeo Arena or Move Theater and baptizes in a swimming pool. And it may plant seeds in their hearts that will lead them into a career on mission. One church in my region collected children’s ministry supplies for a church plant and five years later they were still using the construction paper and supplies received that week.
• Conduct a local or national mission trip to assist a church plant in outreach efforts. You can travel to a neighboring city or state or to the other side of town to assist with block parties, door to door work, servant evangelism, etc. Recently, I heard of a church that put together a team to take care of an area church plants Sunday morning setup for one month, just to give the planting team a break and to be a blessing to the new church.
• Give your cold prospect list to a church planting team. One of our sponsors gave our church plant a list of over 250 names that had only attended occasional events at the church or had not attended in a great while. We were able to contact those folks again and invite them to the new church. Later this month we will baptize a couple that we met because their names were on that list. You never know if a new church may be the tool for harvesting people you’ve cultivated and watered for years.
• Invite a church planter to attend conferences with you and your staff. Most church planters have followed a call and are choosing to live paycheck to paycheck. Most do not have the funds for conferences. Invite them to go with you. Offer to pay part of the way or challenge your church to pay their way. Pay or not, invite them along to enjoy and learn from you and your team.
• Sponsor a date night for a church planter and his spouse. Research is showing that church planting families are under great duress. There’s very little money and time for unwinding and recharging. In a difficult season of our first church plant, a church in another state invited my wife and I to spend three days in their area, put us up in a nice hotel, and left a gift basket full of gift cards to area restaurants and attractions. Priceless, simple gift that served to rescue us from a season of discouragement.
• Offer your office equipment to a church plant. Allow a church planter to make copies, send faxes, and cut post cards. A minimal expense that will meet a huge need for a guy that offices out of a spare bedroom, basement, or garage.
• Offer your facilities to a church plant. We’ve used facilities of other churches for core group meetings, leadership meetings, Thanksgiving Banquets, and housing for short-term mission teams. Extend the usefulness of your facility to expanding God’s kingdom through church multiplication by simply saying yes or being inviting to a church plant.

Parenting / Reproducing

Is God calling your church to reproduce and send out from your membership to plant a new church or a new campus? To multiply at this level you should go about it with the same veracity as you would with a new building project or capital campaign, utilizing all avenues of communication for a sustained period of time. During a building campaign, the last thing you want to hear from a member of the church is, “I’m not sure why we need a new building.” You work hard to get everyone on the same page through sermon series, letters, special web pages, banquets, personal testimonies, visual displays throughout the building, commitment Sunday’s, personal home visits, and more. If planting a new church in North America with momentum and a great potential for survivability is our goal, we should want every member to be on board and to do away with some anti-multiplication slogans – “I don’t see why we need a new church” or “Those people can just come to church here” or “Sending out people will hurt our church.” Here are a few ideas to prepare your church for off-campus multiplication:

• Answer the call from God to reproduce through off-campus multiplication. Ask, did we hear from God or from our local Associational or Denominational leader? This type of endeavor requires a vision from God that will be owned by your church and its leadership.
• Bring a Minister of Missions and Multiplication or Church Planter on staff. Part of this person’s job description should be to cultivate congregation and community for a new church. Devise a strategy that will allow the congregation to see him as an insider and whereby he can build trust with the people. Allow him to have regular pulpit opportunities, write newsletter articles, attend staff meetings, etc. Buy in and trust is so important if you want this to move quickly, so maybe this person is already on your staff or has a relationship with your church that makes them insiders.
• Prepare a Message series on Multiplication and Church Planting. The Book of Acts may be a good place to start. Bring the series to a close with an invitation to be part of a planting team or to help with the new church in some tangible way. One church devised dozens of ways that every member could be involved starting with things like prayer and making cookies for a block party, ending with the invitation to join the Core Group for two years.
• Along with a message series, guide small groups and/or Sunday School classes through basic missiology and importance of church planting. Take everyone in the church through a sustained study on multiplication and lead them to consider weekly their part in God’s Mission in general and specifically the need for a new church.
• Make a long-term commitment to the development of the new church. Parenting is the best description for this extensive role in expanding the kingdom. Parents nurture, train, discipline, encourage, and celebrate all the child does. Take that role with the church plant. If done in the right way and in God’s time, I promise they want remain with you for 18 years. With quality cultivation and core building and great parenting, it won’t be long before your church will be a GRANDPARENT! And then we are well on our way to a Multiplication movement.

In every community across our nation there are unreached population segments and people groups. The fastest growing religious affiliation is the “unaffiliated.” Church planting is one solution to stemming the tide of spiritual darkness in North America. There is no right or wrong way to support church planting. You may even find that it has a positive impact on your church. As a matter of fact, research shows that churches that sponsor new churches tend to grow themselves. Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird in their book Viral Churches point out a study of church-sponsoring churches showed that worship attendance increased 22 percent and giving increased 48% for the five years after sponsorship of a church plant. And whether your church grows or not, until everyone in our communities has an opportunity to hear the Gospel we must push forward. Reproduction and multiplication of new churches is the fastest and healthiest way to bring God’s kingdom to all peoples. As each church does what she can do, we can together reach more people and make more disciples in fulfillment of God’s Great Commission.

Read more from Lane here.

Tags: Church Planting, Discipleship, Encouraging, Lane Corley, Multiplication, Reproducing, Sponsoring

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8 Measures of Personal Discipleship

by: Ed Stetzer

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In 2008, LifeWay Research commissioned a survey of more than 7,000 churches to discover the principles involved with healthy congregations. That research made up the framework for Transformational Church, a book I coauthored with Thom Rainer.

In 2011, we conducted another study to focus not on the church, but on the individual believer. In this study, we asked more than 4,000 people about their spiritual lives and level of maturity. This was not a convenience sample drawn from participating churches, but a randomly selected sample to ensure an even higher level of research accuracy.

The results allowed us to identify eight Biblical factors that consistently show up in the life of a maturing believer. Those “attributes of discipleship” are:

1. Bible engagement
2. Obeying God and denying self
3. Serving God and others
4. Sharing Christ
5. Exercising faith
6. Seeking God
7. Building relationships
8. Unashamed transparency

Spiritual growth does not happen by accident, and since Jesus has called us to make disciples of all nations, we wanted to discover the common traits for those maturing in their faith. It goes without saying that such attributes do not make you a Chrisitan but, rather, are an outgrowth of being a Christian. Furthermore, these are measurements of growth, but only God causes the growth.

Yet, God shapes congregations through the shaping of the individual members’ lives. This shaping doesn’t just happen; God grows us as we place ourselves in a position of obedience to receive that growth. This requires intentional awareness and leadership on the part of both leaders and church members.

Preparing your church to receive the growth God provides almost always involves knowing where your people are in their spiritual walk. To help pastors, churches and individuals measure their spiritual development, we used the survey data to develop the Transformational Discipleship Assessment (TDA). The assessment results in a report on spiritual maturity using the eight attributes of biblical discipleship. The TDA also provides helpful and practical suggestions for individuals to take the next steps in their spiritual development.

I’ll be releasing more information about the specific factors later in the fall. Due to the sheer volume of material, however, it will take several months to complete our analysis and release all of the materials.

Here is some more information from the news release:

Scott McConnell, director of LifeWay Research, said the new assessment tool zooms in to the personal level.”The Transformational Discipleship Assessment helps people see how they are doing with those eight attributes. It answers, ‘Are you growing? Are you consistently following Christ?'” McConnell explained. “It also helps leaders know where to focus sermons, Bible studies, events and other disciple-building activities.”

McConnell said the research was conducted in three phases. First recognized discipleship experts were interviewed. Their input was used to revise a set of questions that have been effective in measuring dozens of specific biblical principles that may be reflected in a believers actions, attitudes or beliefs. Then 1,000 Protestant pastors in the United States were polled. In the final phase, more than 4,000 Protestants from both the U.S. and Canada were surveyed in three languages, English, Spanish and French.

What have been some of the key ways in which your church has been effective in the discipleship of believers?

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Discipleship, Ed Stetzer, Measures, Multiplication, Transformational Church, Vision Frame

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We’ve Confused Leadership with Discipleship

by: Larry Osborne

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Five years into North Coast Church, Founding and Senior Pastor Larry Osborne realized the programmed discipleship classes his Vista, Calif., church was teaching weren’t making disciples. In 1985, he implemented the church’s small group system, now one of the largest small group ministries in the nation, with 91 percent of the 8,000-plus attendees involved in a weekly Growth Group. In this Q&A, Osborne shares about the church’s shift from information to relationships and the “bur in his saddle” these days.

Last year you tweeted: “Discipleship is a rather simple concept: Obedience. Why do we make it so esoteric and complex?” How have we made discipleship complex?

The Greek word for disciple, mathetes, simply means follower. That includes people at the front of the line, in the middle, and at the back of the line. And there are good followers and not so good followers. But we have tended to confuse leadership with discipleship. I hear people over and over say, “Well, I define a disciple as … ,” and I have this sense that we probably ought to let Jesus define a disciple. He used the word mathetes. And in His definition of a disciple, He included some people who weren’t exactly stellar in all the things we think a disciple should do and be.

Jesus talked about obedience: If you love me, you’ll obey me. John talked about Here’s how to know that you know me—we will obey Him. And obedience isn’t perfection; it’s obeying the light we have. According to Prov. 4:18, the light gets brighter the more we follow the light we have. But we tend to look at maturity. We love the lost, we love the baby Christian and the on-fire, charge-the-hill Christian. But anybody struggling, the smoldering wick or bruised reed, we want to snuff it out or break it off.

So that has been a bur in my saddle as I’m watching the pendulum swing from an easy “believism” to raising the bar and thinning the herd. Essentially, we’re going back to the 1930s and ‘40s when my mom became a Christian. She grew up afraid of full commitment because she was always told, “If you do that, you’ll end up in Africa. The Christians take the hard path.”

What impact does/will this have on church leaders and their people?

It ends up in a lot of gift projection—trying to make people into us instead of what God’s called them to be. It leads to absolute lack of patience and bearing with one another. Basically, we become what I call an accidental Pharisee. That’s pretty much what the Pharisees did—you were either this or you weren’t. It was a very clear black and white line. We tend to take Jesus’ commands to an individual and make them into a command everybody must follow.

North Coast’s mission statement is Making Disciples in a Healthy Environment. How have you simplified this concept?

We’ve always avoided classes and a set of hoops to jump through or even disciplines to practice. For 27 years, we’ve tried to get people into weekly community groups because we believe that all the “one anothers” of Scripture and the things we’re supposed to obey are going to show up in community, whereas in a class all you’re doing is taking notes. There’s not a lab to live it out.

We’ve always had more than 80 percent of attendees involved. I think this year, we’re at 91 percent of weekend attendance. We believe everyone should be in a weekly community gathering of some sort. In our internal meetings, everything is about creating community. We’re very clear on what our core is—worship, teaching, community and mission. Everything else is just an ancillary offering.

Take us back 27 years. What was North Coast doing before small groups?

We did the typical classes. I led these things called Timothy Teams that I walked a bunch of men through, and they had notebooks full of information. But they weren’t necessarily treating their wives and children with any more biblical obedience and godliness. It was that way across the board. I looked around at our people, and they were becoming more rigid and prideful, and they weren’t really becoming more obedient. I just didn’t see a lessening of sin corresponding to an increase in information.

In 1985, I realized that people didn’t need more information and class time; they needed more lab work. The people who had a lot of information weren’t living it out. That’s when we decided to stop the classes and get people into small groups, which we consider the hub of our ministry.

What steps did you take to make the shift from information to relationships and secure buy-in from both church leadership and the congregation?

I got the approval of the elder board and informed the congregation we were going to cancel some of our “come and fill your notebook” classes and that we were going to get into small groups where we could live out our faith and talk about the application of what we heard on the weekend. I said we were no longer going to do classes; we were going to do life.

How did you know if this shift was effective at making disciples?

When the church was small, you could measure effectiveness anecdotally. Now we measure hard numbers. But in the early days, we started watching for community to take place. Were people expecting the organized church to minister to them in a crisis, or was the small group picking up the ball? Were people expecting the church as an organization to do things out in the community? Or were they getting out and serving with each other.

The other thing we tried to measure, again anecdotally, was sin because I can’t measure righteousness. You can fulfill all the spiritual disciplines and be in the middle of an affair. Three of my six mentors were Type a, jump-through-every-discipleship-hoop personalities, and three of them had affairs. That’s when I began to say all this little checklist stuff isn’t creating godly people. So I came to the conclusion that I can’t measure righteousness; I can measure sin. A doctor can’t tell me I’m healthy. He can say there’s no discernible illness. So what I look for is sin. That’s the sign there’s something wrong. But I don’t want artificial measurements of righteousness—did you read your Bible every day, did you talk to a non-Christian about your faith, did you journal, did you go out and do community service? I’ve seen too many people in the middle of abusive relationships, affairs, addicted to porn, etc., that were dong all these things. They were jumping through the hoops. But the Gospel wasn’t taking root.

Tags: Discipleship, Larry Osborne, Leadership, Leadership Engine, North Coast Church

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Design Your Ministry for Results

by: Mark Howell

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Small group ministry struggling to meet the objectives you’ve set?  Ending the ministry year and falling short of the goals that have been set for you?  Although there are a number of possible explanations, the most likely reason is that your ministry isn’t actually designed to accomplish the goals and objectives you’d like to reach.  If you want that to change, you need to design your ministry for results.

An Important Disclaimer: I realize that God makes things grow.  And you should, too.  This is not about that.  This is about our role in designing the ministry for results (and we do play a part).

Design your ministry for results.  Sounds more complicated than it really is.  Here’s what I mean.

First, understand the direct link between your results and your ministry design.  Don’t miss the fact that design and outcome are absolutely related.  Can’t find enough leaders?  Don’t blame the culture or the times.  In the same way a field of corn onlygrows according to a farmer’s goals and objectives when the conditions are right (rainfall, sunshine, rich soil, temperature, etc.), your ministry will only grow when environmental conditions are right.

Second, carefully analyze each of the environmental elements that affect small group ministry.  Here are a few of the most important elements:

• Choice: If there are multiple options for the next step, don’t be surprised when unconnected people are indecisive.  Research has shown that there is a negative impact to too many choices.  Watch Sheena Iyengar’s TED talk on choice overload for more on this topic.  Prescription: Start a “stop doing list” and make a commitment to purposeful abandonment.  ”To call abandonment an opportunity may come as a surprise.  Yet planned, purposeful abandonment of the old and of the unrewarding is a prerequisite pursuit of the new and highly promising.  Above all, abandonment is the key to innovation–both because it frees the necessary resources and because it stimulates the search for the new that will replace the old”  (p. 33, Inside Drucker’s Brain).
• Priorities and emphasis: If your culture is designed to promote every option equally, don’t be surprised when your most connected people are confused and overcommitted and your least connected people are unresponsive.  Fuzzy priorities delay action.  Prescription: Choose which option gets promoted.  Demand intentionality.
• Expectations: We’re living in a time that would be completely foreign to our great grandparents.  Schedules.  Cost-of-living.  Mobility.  Extracurricular activities for children.  If you’re waiting for unconnected people to make the first move, adjusting their way of life to fit yours…you’ll be waiting a long time.  Prescription: Make it possible for a baby step in the right direction as a first move.  Remember, when youthink steps not programs you’ll design easy, obvious and strategic.

Third, make the changes you know must be made.  Once you understand the design issues that are determining your results, begin implementing.  Don’ t underestimate the tendency to search for a problem-free solution.  How should you implement change?  Fast?  Slow?  All at once?  Over time?  Your culture and history will determine that.  The key is to move forward.

Read more from Mark here.

Tags: Discipleship, Mark Howell, Multiplication, Structure

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