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TechnoratiIt is Cally Parkinson's dream to put in the hands of every pastor a tool that is just as effective and up to par with that of the corporate world, a tool that would reveal more than just numbers when measuring a congregation's health.
For Parkinson, "Reveal" is just that as it provides insight into and scientific evidence about the hearts of those who would otherwise seem a regular pew-sitter or even an active volunteer.
After surveying thousands of churchgoers, Parkinson and her small team - Greg Hawkins and Eric Arnson - discovered a highly predictive spiritual continuum, where a person's spiritual growth could be predicted by where they stood in their faith journey - exploring Christianity, growing in Christ, close to Christ, or Christ-centered. The continuum showed that those just beginning to explore the Christian faith were least likely to serve, tithe, evangelize, pray, read the Bible and declare love for God and belief in Christ while people who were Christ-centered were most likely to demonstrate these behaviors.
More than 500 churches have taken the Reveal survey now and many have already implemented changes after discovering the gaps that exist between where congregants were spiritually and where they wanted to be. The Reveal team published a new book, Follow Me: What's Next For You?, detailing catalysts that help move people from one segment on the spiritual continuum to the next.
The book comes as the survey has now become available to all churches throughout the country and Canada. The Christian Post had a chance to speak with Parkinson of Willow Creek Association about the exciting new tool, misunderstandings about how Willow Creek Community Church has responded to its own survey findings and the upcoming Reveal Conference.
CP: Who and what prompted this survey?
Parkinson: This is an interesting story. I honestly think it was a divine, extraordinary coming together of circumstances because the way it came together is that Willow Creek approached me about being their communications director. I was at Allstate Insurance Company. I had worked there for 25 years. Most of my experience was in finance, not in communication. Anyway, they decided that I looked like a communications person so I took the job. And I loved this job.
But a year after I got here, I got an e-mail from a consultant that I had worked with … One consultant had come in when I was at Allstate and had done this blockbuster piece of market research on how people go about making decisions in their financial world. And it was just phenomenal work. But that was several years ago. Here I was at Willow Creek and I got an e-mail from this guy and he said “How are you doing? Why don’t we catch up?”
So I invited him out to lunch at Willow. He had never heard of Willow Creek. And this guy was probably the top national brand strategy kind of guy in the country at the time because he ran it for the McKinsey Company, a pretty well-known business consulting firm. He just was really intrigued with Willow Creek, with what he saw and I gave him a whole bunch of tapes and books because I was trying to convince him to do something for me for free and I never dreamed it would be this. But he gave us four years of pro bono work to do this work that we do because he decided that it would be really intriguing to see if the approach he takes – to figure out how a market works – would have application in what he would call the “spiritual space.” Because what he does is that he defines or tries to figure out how a market works not based on what people do but how people feel. Basically, he goes after their attitudes, motivations, needs, that kind of thing. He uncovered – in this survey that we did just for Willow Creek in 2004 – what we call the “spiritual continuum” that really seems to be highly predictive of someone’s spiritual growth. Continue »
