My Own Survey

I don't know, is Reg Bibby right? That's what I wanted to find out. So, I made up a list of about 260 "affiliates" from my own church -- people who attend, but don't attend all the time people who haven't been seen for years; people who grew up in the church but drifted away.

I created a survey that tried to get at three questions:
What do they think about the church?

Why aren't they here more?
Is there anything we could be doing to change that?


Then, I asked the other United Churches in Niagara Presbytery (our local region with about 45 churches) and 12 of them agreed to take part.



In all, I mailed out over 1000 surveys, got 200 back, and did follow-up interviews with about 20 individuals.



I have learned a huge amount about what people are thinking, and what it is in their lives and their hearts that keeps them away from church. So often, we look at folks who we think should be in church but aren't from "the inside" -- from our "in-house", active church member or professional clergy perspective. We don't try to see things from the outside -- from the perspective of the person who might really like to be in church more, but who has to work every weekend. Or the person who would like to be there more, but whose spouse won't come.



This blog is one of my ways of sharing what I learned about some great people who belong to our churches but whom we don't see all the time.