its called...
i've recently started receiving a very useful little email... the barna update. i must have forgotten to click (or unclick) some box when i ordered his latest book, "revolution," because i dont normally sign up for inbox-clutterers when i plunder around peoples' websites. in any event, i'm glad i get this one, because its been quite an enlightening experience. the update links to barna.org where the statistical results of his surveys, and their breakdowns, can be found. so far... 2 updates received, 2 posts in the works!from the dec 20 update... "12 most significant findings from 2006 surveys"
there were a number of items from these 12 outcomes that, when taken together, paint a rather bleak picture of the state of the local church in america.
for starters, there was a great disparity between the percentage of church attenders who said God was a top priority in their lives, and what the average pastor believed that percentage to be. a paltry 15% of regular church-goers said their relationship with God was top-priority; however, the typical pastor believed that 70% of the adults in their churches considered their relationship with God to be their #1 priority. barna found that pastors based their conclusions on things like worship and sunday school attendance and, unbelievably to me, how many participated in the singing, rather than indicators such as level of spiritual maturity, level of commitment to loving and serving God and people, the nature of each member's personal ministry, involvement in community service, accountability for spiritual development and lifestyle and use of resources to advance the kingdom of God, among others.
another finding: just 21% of adults consider themselves to be holy, by their own admission large numbers have no idea what "holiness" means and only 35% believe that God expects people to become holy.
additionally: 81% of teens say they have attended a church for a period of at least two months during their teenage years... however, 61% of today’s twenty-somethings had been churched at one point during their teen years but they are now spiritually disengaged (i.e., not actively attending church, reading the Bible, or praying).
also: 5 years after 9/11, there has been no lasting influence on america's faith... despite an intense surge in religious activity and expression in the weeks immediately following 9/11 the faith of americans is virtually indistinguishable today compared to pre-attack conditions, based on 19 faith measures that were studied.
coupled with the increase in the number of people of faith who consider themselves to be revolutionaries (defined as born again people who have made their faith in God the highest priority in their life, who believe that their faith has greatly transformed their life, and who often express and experience their faith through alternative forms of the Church), and the number of believers who are migrating toward house churches, i draw this conclusion...
the average pastor is clueless about the spiritual health of his flock, and totally out-of-touch with how little influence the local church is having on the spiritual formation of its members. the vast majority of pastors, at least according to barna's findings, are still relying on numbers to tell them how great a job they think they're doing. it all boils down to the non-existence of discipleship... a curse which has plagued local churches for decades. in their quest for sheer numbers... worship attendance, sunday school attendance, baptisms (and, i believe in many cases, the bragging rights that go along with high numbers)... churches of every denomination have put discipleship on the back burner... if its still even on the stove at all. and what we've seen is an influx of shallow, fire-insurance-carrying "Christians" (or as a former pastor of mine calls them, "two-fold children of hell"... at first they were lost but at least they knew they were... then they were fed a watered-down, rose garden version of Christianity, and now they're lost but they think they're saved).
many churches are doing a jam-up job of filling the pews, but failing miserably at making disciples. and because the american church by and large has forsaken discipleship, we have pastors who far over-estimate the spiritual maturity of their flocks, the folks who sit under their preaching have no idea what it means to be holy or that they're even supposed to BE holy, we're losing our high school graduates in alarming numbers, and when people do search for something deeper, something solid to hold on to, such as what happened immediately following 9/11, they come to our churches and they dont find it there, because quite frankly, in too many cases it's NOT.
posted by dean at 12:28 AM
9 Comments:
All I can say is, "WOW"!
Incredible! This past Sunday, our theme was discipleship. It's our responsibility to root new believers in the Word, teaching them to grow and not remain as "Fat babies" (see the Amy Grant song). How will they overcome sin in their lives or tell someone else about Christ if they don't know the Word. Discipleship is more than just teaching, it's leading! Jesus got dirty and personally led His disciples to become the great men they became.
Great subject Dean!
Perhaps the greatest thing these statistics prove is that those who become pastors are naturally over-optimistic about human beings. One would think that a person would never even consider the pastorate unless he (or she?) was terribly optimistic about people and about God's ability to speak to them. I am more inclined to put the fault squarely upon the individuals who snub their pastors' hope and, instead, do not try to look optimistically at their capability of spiritual growth maturity (if only they would be as positive as their pastors who are setting a good example!) It's always easiest to "dog" the pastor when the statistics also seem to show that pastors have the highest percentages of truly Godly priorities.
As for using congregational singing as the test of spiritual committment...if that were true, I'd already have one foot in hell. Please.
mark...
while i believe pastors should be optimistic about people and life in general, that optimism must stem from the work that only Jesus can do in their lives... and He cannot work in the life of a person if that person doesnt know much about Him and His Word. probably it's more correct to say that a pastor is (or should be) optimistic about what that person can and should become as they grow in their faith.
i dont believe optimism is a very good substitute for realism, and its pretty obvious that when, statistically, a typical pastor believes that 70% of his flock has God as priority #1, but in actuality only 15% of them really do, the pastor isnt facing reality... and his ignorance of the lack of spirituality of his people is to THEIR detriment. the pastor cant MAKE his congregation grow spiritually, but if he were more aware of their spiritual condition, he could certainly be more proactive in facilitating or at least encouraging more personal discipleship. using the shepherd illustration, if the under-shepherd thinks that 70% of his flock is well nourished and healthy, but in fact only 15% of his flock actually is, that shepherd is going to have a lot of explaining to do to the owner of the sheep.
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jimmy...
like i said, nothing against a pastor being optimistic. but if you look at the indicators identified by barna that were used by pastors to determine the spiritual maturity of their congregants, that optimism is being put into things that dont amount to anything. any of us that have been on church staffs should know that the average pew dweller is there out of a sense of habit, expectation on the part of others, or public image.
early in my ministry as a youth minister, I got caught up in the numbers game, and later on became a victim of it (didn’t matter how deep my kids were getting, the numbers weren’t “up”… quantity vs. quality).
i'm not trying to make blanket statements about pastors or church members as a whole, because there are pastors who get it, and true disciples who get it. but the numbers and reasons cited by barna point more to blissful ignorance than toward optimism on the part of some or many pastors, well-placed or otherwise.
Dean,
I understand your point about the responsibility a pastor has to his (her?) "flock," yet I was actually suggesting that perhaps those who choose to become pastors are "statistically" more inclined toward being optimistic. If this is the case, then it would throw off Barna's numbers significantly, making their estimates appear that more pastors are "out of touch" than is truly the case. Perhaps Barna could actually do a study on this as a way to back up their findings.
As for "realism," I think Jimmy Way Out in West Texas gave the most realistic perspective when he stated that "You can not lead such people where they do not want to go -- and if you try your days in that church will be numbered...it is easy to become discouraged and disillusioned -- and fired!"
That's reality. Perhaps a person in such a position really should be allowed a little bit of positive thinking.
mark..
i started a response, but it's turned into a new post instead :-) ......
Dean,
Thanks for this great post! You probably know that there are a lot of things that I would like to say about this, but job security is sometimes important to me (has become more so since the baby). Anyway - thanks for this... Barna has put some numbers to the things that I see on a weekly basis. I will say that I think that jimmy way out in west texas is right that "You can not lead such people where they do not want to go -- and if you try your days in that church will be numbered." However, I don't think that means that you should stop trying (of course, I still have the naiveté of someone that hasn't been beaten down in the ministry for many years... only a year and a half). I often feel that my days are numbered in my current position because I fight these percentages too much.
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