A few weeks back Calvary dedicated some Sunday morning time to our yearly survey, asking questions about spiritual practice and health, spiritual disciplines and growth. We’re trying to track trends, to see if we’re growing as a church. Most of the time when churches want to see how they’re doing they (we?) count N’s: noses, nickels, and newbies. We’re looking at a lot of different pieces of info, checking it against last year’s answers, and plotting it out from gathering to gathering.
The data has been sliced and diced, sorted and collated, folded and spindled…Local data guru Jim Fong (Calvary attender and sports-card aficionado!) walked us through his team’s initial findings and helped us get a handle on some of the information that the survey delivers. Then our staff spent hours praying and thinking and talking and examining and asking what it all means.
To be honest, this isn’t my favorite way to spend a day. Too many numbers and details and theories about who answered this questions this way or that way…I had to keep pulling my mind back to focus on the task at hand, because it’s very important. While I’d rather be playing music or playing in a creek, I know how to put on my big boy pants and take care of business when I need to!
We wrapped up the day by starting to set some goals for us as a staff and as a church, followed by a pretty intense time of prayer around the table.
I may not dig the numbers and minutia of digging through the survey results, but if this produces a more clear picture of where we are as a body of believers and what God is doing in us, then I’m all in.
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