For the sake of the gospel advancing, the elders at Kaleo wanted to examine how missional our Sunday services are and the people who attend. We sent out a request to people in our church to fill out a 20 question survey asking them about the preaching, hospitality, worship and many other elements of our sunday service. We want to (1) learn what people felt about the missional nature of our church and (2) see what fears and hindrances keep them from inviting others to Sundays. It is our desire that people would invite non-believers to our church to hear the Word of God preached.
Some observations (many of these came from comment areas for people to post):
1) Non-Christians, new Christians and those little to no church background loved the service style. People with the most 'churched' background were the most likely not to like our worship style. (To hear our style of worship, you can listen to the Bazelel mp3 samples at Semper Reformanda Records. We have had people steeped in a conservative/traditional background struggle with the worship style.)
2) Contrary to many people's fears, non-Christians understood the messages that were preached. We are really blessed to have a preacher who is able to preach to both mature Christians and address the non-Christian's objectives to the faith. This talent both acknowledges to non-Christians that we are aware of the prevailing secular worldviews and the arguments against the faith. (eg. "Now, if you are not a Christian, this claim that Jesus was God seems absurd…" This is the type of address that non-believers appreciate, we don't need to lie or dumb down our faith that we believe is the only true reality. But we don't leave it there, we address these objections each week.) Second, it emboldens Christians who hear an apologetic for the faith and often have these same doubts and questions. And as these Christians face questions from non-believers, they move from doubt to gospel courage.
3) Sunday service is the event Christians are most comfortable inviting people to. This is over, socials/bbq's, home groups, mercy ministries, etc. People remarked that they also knew the guests would hear the gospel each Sunday, so this is where they'd want someone to visit.
4) Desire, lack of time, lack of relationships and fear of rejection are the most common stumbling blocks to people living missionally.
RESULTS: If you'd like to see the rest of the results, I've attached a 23 page summary of our Church Missional Survey. Again, this does not include the pages of comments we got that were quite helpful.
HOW-TO: If you'd like to do a similiar survey, we used Wufoo to build our forms . Here is the online form & questions we used to conduct the Kaleo Mission Survey.
Future: As a church we are going to do additional surveys on connecting, developing & sending aspects of our ministry.
