Most pastors are confident their churches are helping people grow as Christians. Just don’t ask them how they know that.
In the second part of the State of Discipleship study from Lifeway Research, U.S. Protestant pastors describe their congregations’ discipleship approaches and reveal data behind some key spiritual growth metrics.
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Half of pastors (52%) say they have an intentional plan for discipling individuals in their congregations and encouraging their spiritual growth. Similarly, 52% are satisfied with the state of discipleship in their church, including just 8% who strongly agree. Additionally, only 30% say their church has specific methods for measuring discipleship, even though 71% believe there are methods to track spiritual growth in a congregation.
“Churches have good intentions and efforts to help people grow spiritually; but without intentionality and evaluation, discipleship won’t be improved,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “More than 9 in 10 pastors admit spiritual formation could improve in their congregation and that they won’t be completely satisfied with discipleship in their church until it does. They recognize the church flourishes when disciples are being formed.”
Effective evaluation
Around half of pastors feel generally confident in their discipleship strategy, but few are actually ensuring discipleship is taking place in their congregations.
Half (49%) believe their church discipleship strategy is effective, including only 7% who strongly agree. More than 2 in 5 (42%) disagree, 2% aren’t sure and 7% admit they don’t have a discipleship strategy in their church.
White pastors (48%) and African American pastors (45%) are less likely than Hispanic pastors (62%) and pastors of other ethnicities (72%) to say their strategy is effective. Additionally, pastors of churches with 250 or more in attendance (67%) and churches started since 2000 (71%) are among the most likely to believe in the effectiveness of their discipleship plans.
Despite half of pastors asserting they have an effective strategy, just 29% say they regularly evaluate the discipleship progress among their congregants. Two in 3 (66%) say they aren’t consistently evaluating churchgoers’ spiritual growth.
Many of the pastors who were most likely to say their strategies are effective have the evaluations to support their claims. Hispanic pastors (43%), pastors of other ethnicities (50%), those at churches with 250 or more in attendance (53%) and those at churches established in the past 25 years (45%) are among the most likely to say they regularly evaluate discipleship progress among churchgoers.
Among those who evaluate the discipleship progress, most say, as part of that, they track the number of people serving (59%) and the number of people at key stages in the process (58%). Slightly less than half (45%) track the number of new leaders. One in 5 (20%) survey the congregation, while 15% say they do something else and 7% aren’t sure.
“Effective discipleship includes intentionality,” said McConnell. “New churches tend to be intentional about what they do as they are forced to focus on essentials. It’s not surprising that they are more likely to have an intentional plan for discipleship and more likely to describe their strategies as effective.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Aaron Earls and originally published by Lifeway.
