I don't get down to the shore very often, though it's only 40 minutes away. Here is a bird pic from a previous visit. I'm not big into bird photography, but I do like the shapes here.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Friday, November 07, 2008
A Review of Willow Creek's Follow Me (Reveal): Which comes first? Spiritual growth or spiritual behaviors and attitudes?
(Part 7 in a series)
Perhaps the biggest surprise for me with Follow Me is its flipping around of the causal story of Reveal. The first discovery reported by Reveal was that progress on a spiritual continuum was a powerful predictor of long-term spiritual growth (pp. 33-37). In other words, the more that people identify Christ as central in their lives, the more likely they to have spiritual behaviors and attitudes reflective of spiritual growth. These include tithing, evangelism, serving, love for God, and love for people.
Spiritual continuum → change in spiritual attitudes and behaviors
In Follow Me, however, the story goes the other way. In presenting possible catalysts for progression along the spiritual continuum, Follow Me lists the first catalyst as spiritual behaviors and attitudes (p. 27, 31-35).
Spiritual attitudes and behaviors → change in spiritual continuum
Taken together, the message of Reveal and Follow Me is that if you want Christians to read the Bible more, you should move them along the spiritual continuum (that is, increase the centrality of Christ in their lives). In order to move them along the spiritual continuum, you should have them read the Bible more. While Follow Me explicitly acknowledges that evangelism can be both a cause and an effect of growing faith (p. 46), the same could be said about every factor examined in the book.
The net result is circular logic that I’m not sure is helpful or practical for church leaders. For example, one of the two “breakthrough” discoveries of Follow Me is that reading the Bible is a powerful catalyst for spiritual growth. Neither the data nor the conceptual models employed by Reveal and Follow Me tell us whether this is true. It could be that spiritual growth results in an increased appetite for reading the Bible, or it could be both, i.e., bidirectional causality.
My guess is that the most helpful model will prove to be one that doesn’t separate spiritual identity, behavior, and attitudes, but rather one that combines them as the desired outcomes. They become different facets of one, underlying concept, and the question then becomes:
? → spiritual growth and spiritual continuum.
Next: Is the spiritual continuum useful?
Perhaps the biggest surprise for me with Follow Me is its flipping around of the causal story of Reveal. The first discovery reported by Reveal was that progress on a spiritual continuum was a powerful predictor of long-term spiritual growth (pp. 33-37). In other words, the more that people identify Christ as central in their lives, the more likely they to have spiritual behaviors and attitudes reflective of spiritual growth. These include tithing, evangelism, serving, love for God, and love for people.
Spiritual continuum → change in spiritual attitudes and behaviors
In Follow Me, however, the story goes the other way. In presenting possible catalysts for progression along the spiritual continuum, Follow Me lists the first catalyst as spiritual behaviors and attitudes (p. 27, 31-35).
Spiritual attitudes and behaviors → change in spiritual continuum
Taken together, the message of Reveal and Follow Me is that if you want Christians to read the Bible more, you should move them along the spiritual continuum (that is, increase the centrality of Christ in their lives). In order to move them along the spiritual continuum, you should have them read the Bible more. While Follow Me explicitly acknowledges that evangelism can be both a cause and an effect of growing faith (p. 46), the same could be said about every factor examined in the book.
The net result is circular logic that I’m not sure is helpful or practical for church leaders. For example, one of the two “breakthrough” discoveries of Follow Me is that reading the Bible is a powerful catalyst for spiritual growth. Neither the data nor the conceptual models employed by Reveal and Follow Me tell us whether this is true. It could be that spiritual growth results in an increased appetite for reading the Bible, or it could be both, i.e., bidirectional causality.
My guess is that the most helpful model will prove to be one that doesn’t separate spiritual identity, behavior, and attitudes, but rather one that combines them as the desired outcomes. They become different facets of one, underlying concept, and the question then becomes:
? → spiritual growth and spiritual continuum.
Next: Is the spiritual continuum useful?
Thursday, November 06, 2008
A Review of Willow Creek's Follow Me (Reveal): Answering longitudinal questions with cross-sectional data
(Part 6 in a series)
Turning to concerns about Follow Me, given the similarity of methods of Follow Me and Reveal, they share some of the same weaknesses, and so some of the shortcomings that I discuss here will amplify issues raised in my previous review of Reveal. Follow Me asks an important question: “What moves a person from one stage of spiritual growth to the next” (p. 27). This question is also a longitudinal question in that it concerns how people change over time. What are the sequential stages of spiritual growth? What are the catalysts between these stages? Basically, how and why do people become more spiritually mature over time?
In contrast to the over-time focus of its research questions, the research methods of Follow Me are cross-sectional—portraying each respondent at only one point in time. This disconnection between questions and methods mean causes some problems; specifically, the methods are not well suited for studying change over time. In fact, it’s not clear how much they can at all.
Here’s an illustration. Suppose that we went to a track meet and took a photograph of a race in progress. This photograph would describe the race at one point in time, so it could tell us some things such as who is winning the race and by how much. It would not describe, however, how the race is changing over time. So, just from the photograph, we can not tell if the second-place runner is catching up to the leader or following back. We don’t know how the runners’ relative positions have changed since the start of the race.
Similarly, the analyses of Follow Me tell us which respondents are at which stage at that particular time, but they tell us much less about how the person is changing over time. This means that the study design does not lend itself well to analyses of catalysts and movements and other changes over time. In other words, it's hard to know why some people move from stage to stage while others do not. Unfortunately, this is the substantive focus of Follow Me.
Follow Me asks an important question, and it uses a perfectly acceptable research design, but it’s the wrong design for the question. The use of cross-sectional data to study longitudinal processes results in various confusion about what’s the cause and what’s the effect, as we’ll see in the next post of this series.
Next: Causal ordering
Turning to concerns about Follow Me, given the similarity of methods of Follow Me and Reveal, they share some of the same weaknesses, and so some of the shortcomings that I discuss here will amplify issues raised in my previous review of Reveal. Follow Me asks an important question: “What moves a person from one stage of spiritual growth to the next” (p. 27). This question is also a longitudinal question in that it concerns how people change over time. What are the sequential stages of spiritual growth? What are the catalysts between these stages? Basically, how and why do people become more spiritually mature over time?
In contrast to the over-time focus of its research questions, the research methods of Follow Me are cross-sectional—portraying each respondent at only one point in time. This disconnection between questions and methods mean causes some problems; specifically, the methods are not well suited for studying change over time. In fact, it’s not clear how much they can at all.
Here’s an illustration. Suppose that we went to a track meet and took a photograph of a race in progress. This photograph would describe the race at one point in time, so it could tell us some things such as who is winning the race and by how much. It would not describe, however, how the race is changing over time. So, just from the photograph, we can not tell if the second-place runner is catching up to the leader or following back. We don’t know how the runners’ relative positions have changed since the start of the race.
Similarly, the analyses of Follow Me tell us which respondents are at which stage at that particular time, but they tell us much less about how the person is changing over time. This means that the study design does not lend itself well to analyses of catalysts and movements and other changes over time. In other words, it's hard to know why some people move from stage to stage while others do not. Unfortunately, this is the substantive focus of Follow Me.
Follow Me asks an important question, and it uses a perfectly acceptable research design, but it’s the wrong design for the question. The use of cross-sectional data to study longitudinal processes results in various confusion about what’s the cause and what’s the effect, as we’ll see in the next post of this series.
Next: Causal ordering
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
A Review of Willow Creek's Follow Me (Reveal): What’s New?
(Part 5 in a series)
Given that Follow Me is a follow-up of Reveal, it’s worth asking how it’s different. While Follow Me has the same look as Reveal, with similar graphics and layout, it has a somewhat different feel. Reveal was parsimonious in presentation and told a memorable story. Follow Me, in contrast, meanders somewhat, and it feels less focused. The book presents two breakthrough discoveries (Chapter 5): Christians can do better, and reading the Bible prompts spiritual growth. Now, I’m not an expert in church matters, but it’s not clear to me that these represent breakthroughs—I’ve certainly heard them in countless sermons. Still, it’s good to be reminded of their truth.
As I understand the chronology of the Reveal ministry, they collected data several years before publishing Reveal and then they published Follow Me a year or so after Reveal—may just months after they finished collected the additional data used in Follow Me. I wonder if the book would have benefited from additional time to assimulate and make sense of the data. I found myself wondering if the publication of the book was somewhat rushed. Not only did it not have the tight focus of their previous book, but it had some duplicated sections. For example pages 47 and 77 contain similar discussions of whether spiritual growth is linear. Pages 19 and 26 present the same figure.
It’s worth thinking about how much value is added by Follow Me’s increased sample size, and as far as I understand their sampling procedure, it’s an open question as to how much the substantial increase in sample size actually increases the validity of the findings. Here’s why: The value of sample is its representativeness of a larger population, not in it size per se (at least after a certain point). For example, if we want to use a public opinion poll to predict a presidential election, we’d much rather have a national, random sample of only 100 voters than we would a sample of 10,000 voters from the same conservative or liberal region of the country.
The original Reveal sample of about 5,000 respondents and the Follow-Me sample of about 80,000 respondents are both plenty big to detect statistical differences between groups (called statistical power). Both Reveal and Follow-Me use convenience samples, meaning the researchers took easily-accessed churches rather than drawing a random sample of all churches in the country. According to Reveal (Reveal, p. 93), its seven churches were selected to be geographically and culturally diverse. Follow Me chose 200 churches out of 1,700 that applied at Willow Creek’s annual Leadership Conference. Probably the 200-church sample better represents American Christians than the 7 church sample, but we can’t know for sure with both being convenience samples. At the very least, Follow Me studies a certain kind of church—those that have leaders who attend the Leadership Conference and apply to be in surveys. Perhaps this type of church is not representative of American churches.
The real value of having 200, rather than 7, churches is not in the increased sample size but rather it allows for across-church comparisons. In describing its sample, Follow Me describes its churches as varying along a number of dimensions. They are from different regions of the country, they are of varying sizes, they come from different denominations, and they have different worship styles. Why not, then, see how these different types of churches vary in the processes described in Follow Me? For example, does the spiritual continuum work differently for Baptists versus Lutherans? Does satisfaction with the church services matter more for people in mega-churches than small churches? These types of findings would allow the folks at Willow Creek to test if their conclusions hold for different types of churches. Put differently, Reveal concluded that church programs were not “one-size-fits-all.” It’s likewise a possibility that explanations for spiritual formation do not apply equally well for all types of churches, that they too are not “one-size-fits-all.”
Next: Cross-sectional data
Given that Follow Me is a follow-up of Reveal, it’s worth asking how it’s different. While Follow Me has the same look as Reveal, with similar graphics and layout, it has a somewhat different feel. Reveal was parsimonious in presentation and told a memorable story. Follow Me, in contrast, meanders somewhat, and it feels less focused. The book presents two breakthrough discoveries (Chapter 5): Christians can do better, and reading the Bible prompts spiritual growth. Now, I’m not an expert in church matters, but it’s not clear to me that these represent breakthroughs—I’ve certainly heard them in countless sermons. Still, it’s good to be reminded of their truth.
As I understand the chronology of the Reveal ministry, they collected data several years before publishing Reveal and then they published Follow Me a year or so after Reveal—may just months after they finished collected the additional data used in Follow Me. I wonder if the book would have benefited from additional time to assimulate and make sense of the data. I found myself wondering if the publication of the book was somewhat rushed. Not only did it not have the tight focus of their previous book, but it had some duplicated sections. For example pages 47 and 77 contain similar discussions of whether spiritual growth is linear. Pages 19 and 26 present the same figure.
It’s worth thinking about how much value is added by Follow Me’s increased sample size, and as far as I understand their sampling procedure, it’s an open question as to how much the substantial increase in sample size actually increases the validity of the findings. Here’s why: The value of sample is its representativeness of a larger population, not in it size per se (at least after a certain point). For example, if we want to use a public opinion poll to predict a presidential election, we’d much rather have a national, random sample of only 100 voters than we would a sample of 10,000 voters from the same conservative or liberal region of the country.
The original Reveal sample of about 5,000 respondents and the Follow-Me sample of about 80,000 respondents are both plenty big to detect statistical differences between groups (called statistical power). Both Reveal and Follow-Me use convenience samples, meaning the researchers took easily-accessed churches rather than drawing a random sample of all churches in the country. According to Reveal (Reveal, p. 93), its seven churches were selected to be geographically and culturally diverse. Follow Me chose 200 churches out of 1,700 that applied at Willow Creek’s annual Leadership Conference. Probably the 200-church sample better represents American Christians than the 7 church sample, but we can’t know for sure with both being convenience samples. At the very least, Follow Me studies a certain kind of church—those that have leaders who attend the Leadership Conference and apply to be in surveys. Perhaps this type of church is not representative of American churches.
The real value of having 200, rather than 7, churches is not in the increased sample size but rather it allows for across-church comparisons. In describing its sample, Follow Me describes its churches as varying along a number of dimensions. They are from different regions of the country, they are of varying sizes, they come from different denominations, and they have different worship styles. Why not, then, see how these different types of churches vary in the processes described in Follow Me? For example, does the spiritual continuum work differently for Baptists versus Lutherans? Does satisfaction with the church services matter more for people in mega-churches than small churches? These types of findings would allow the folks at Willow Creek to test if their conclusions hold for different types of churches. Put differently, Reveal concluded that church programs were not “one-size-fits-all.” It’s likewise a possibility that explanations for spiritual formation do not apply equally well for all types of churches, that they too are not “one-size-fits-all.”
Next: Cross-sectional data
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Why vote? A hilarious video
Here's a video sent to me by my son, Gus, and it's probably the most clever piece of campaign advertising that I've ever seen!
Once the election is over, I have no idea what I'll do with my time. I spend way took much time reading the election survey websites.
Monday, November 03, 2008
A Review of Willow Creek's Follow Me (Reveal): Why Collect Data
(Part 4 in a series)
Another strength of Follow Me is that it models some of the possible uses of data for a local church. It would seem that church leaders would benefit from knowing what their church members want. In addition to thinking and praying about this, church leaders can also just ask them, and Follow Me demonstrates how to do this. As shown on page 38, Follow Me asked respondents what they thought was important in a church and if they were satisfied with it in their own church.
Likewise, these data can be used to find out which groups in a church are most or least satisfied. Once satisfaction data are collected, it’s a simple matter to compute satisfaction scores for separate types of people in a church—young, old, male, female, white, racial minority, small group members, new members, and long-time attendees.
Once church leadership has this information—what their people want and who is satisfied, they can act in a variety of ways. They can use this information in guiding them in creating programs tailor made for where their church members are at. Or, they can alter existing programs to better fit what people want. Or, they can keep the programs the same but explain to their members why they are doing so, to clear up any concerns or misunderstandings.
I attend a church that took part in Follow Me, and so I took the survey as a respondent, and I also met with the leadership while they discussed the survey results. I did have a few concerns about the survey itself; for example, my church was started three years ago, but according to the survey, 9% of the respondents from this church reported attending for 5 years or more. I don’t know if this was a goof on the part of the respondents themselves or by the Reveal program in analyzing the data.
Nonetheless, the church leadership found some of the results helpful in their planning for the coming years, especially who was satisfied/dissatisfied with which aspects of the church. After listening to the discussion, I cam away thinking that the discussion itself, perhaps more so than the specific findings of the church survey, was important. Just the fact that the leadership was talking about who wanted what seemed like a good idea, and they made conclusions that went far beyond the data themselves. As such, the very process of taking a survey and working out what it means seems valuable as an opportunity to question church assumptions and traditions. It is a time to rethink a church's standard procedures.
Next: What's new?
Another strength of Follow Me is that it models some of the possible uses of data for a local church. It would seem that church leaders would benefit from knowing what their church members want. In addition to thinking and praying about this, church leaders can also just ask them, and Follow Me demonstrates how to do this. As shown on page 38, Follow Me asked respondents what they thought was important in a church and if they were satisfied with it in their own church.
Likewise, these data can be used to find out which groups in a church are most or least satisfied. Once satisfaction data are collected, it’s a simple matter to compute satisfaction scores for separate types of people in a church—young, old, male, female, white, racial minority, small group members, new members, and long-time attendees.
Once church leadership has this information—what their people want and who is satisfied, they can act in a variety of ways. They can use this information in guiding them in creating programs tailor made for where their church members are at. Or, they can alter existing programs to better fit what people want. Or, they can keep the programs the same but explain to their members why they are doing so, to clear up any concerns or misunderstandings.
I attend a church that took part in Follow Me, and so I took the survey as a respondent, and I also met with the leadership while they discussed the survey results. I did have a few concerns about the survey itself; for example, my church was started three years ago, but according to the survey, 9% of the respondents from this church reported attending for 5 years or more. I don’t know if this was a goof on the part of the respondents themselves or by the Reveal program in analyzing the data.
Nonetheless, the church leadership found some of the results helpful in their planning for the coming years, especially who was satisfied/dissatisfied with which aspects of the church. After listening to the discussion, I cam away thinking that the discussion itself, perhaps more so than the specific findings of the church survey, was important. Just the fact that the leadership was talking about who wanted what seemed like a good idea, and they made conclusions that went far beyond the data themselves. As such, the very process of taking a survey and working out what it means seems valuable as an opportunity to question church assumptions and traditions. It is a time to rethink a church's standard procedures.
Next: What's new?
Sunday, November 02, 2008
A Review of Willow Creek's Follow Me (Reveal): Strengths of the Study
(Part 3 in a series)
As with the original Reveal, Follow Me gets high marks for asking the right question. Its focus is one spiritual growth, and it wants to know what moves a person from one stage of spiritual growth to another. It seems to me that this kind of question should be on the minds of every church leader—where do they want the Church to go, and how do they get it there? This obviously isn’t a new question for the church, for it’s been around for 2,000 years, but Follow Me reminds us of its importance.
Follow Me also reports an ambitious, on-going data collection effort. There are limitations, of course, to what the Church can learn from quantitative data, but we’re no where near those limits yet. Many of the questions routinely asked by church leaders can be answered, or at least informed, by collecting data. I foresee a time when individual churches routinely survey their members as part of their leadership activities. Again, not that the information from surveys is more “true” or valuable than other forms of information—I’m not advocating an empirically-driven church—rather collecting data is an easy, usually-valuable tool that belongs that all churches should consider.
Another strength of Follow Me is its illustration of how easy it is to collect data. So far the Reveal team has collected data from 150,000 people, and it appears that they did so for a minimal amount of time and money. They set up a web-based survey and had local churches recruit people to participate in the survey. Once filled out, the surveys were automatically converted to a database that the Reveal team could then analyze.
Compare this to the situation of even 20-30 years ago when a survey of 150,000 people would have involved 150,000 printed surveys manually entered into a data base. Web-based surveys are remarkably easy to conduct using inexpensive surveys such as Surveymonkey.com. It seems to be taking the church a little while to figure how easy surveys are, that they are something that could easily be done by any pastor or church leader. Once church leaders figure this out, church surveys might become as common as church newsletters or bulletins.
Next: Why Collect Data?
As with the original Reveal, Follow Me gets high marks for asking the right question. Its focus is one spiritual growth, and it wants to know what moves a person from one stage of spiritual growth to another. It seems to me that this kind of question should be on the minds of every church leader—where do they want the Church to go, and how do they get it there? This obviously isn’t a new question for the church, for it’s been around for 2,000 years, but Follow Me reminds us of its importance.
Follow Me also reports an ambitious, on-going data collection effort. There are limitations, of course, to what the Church can learn from quantitative data, but we’re no where near those limits yet. Many of the questions routinely asked by church leaders can be answered, or at least informed, by collecting data. I foresee a time when individual churches routinely survey their members as part of their leadership activities. Again, not that the information from surveys is more “true” or valuable than other forms of information—I’m not advocating an empirically-driven church—rather collecting data is an easy, usually-valuable tool that belongs that all churches should consider.
Another strength of Follow Me is its illustration of how easy it is to collect data. So far the Reveal team has collected data from 150,000 people, and it appears that they did so for a minimal amount of time and money. They set up a web-based survey and had local churches recruit people to participate in the survey. Once filled out, the surveys were automatically converted to a database that the Reveal team could then analyze.
Compare this to the situation of even 20-30 years ago when a survey of 150,000 people would have involved 150,000 printed surveys manually entered into a data base. Web-based surveys are remarkably easy to conduct using inexpensive surveys such as Surveymonkey.com. It seems to be taking the church a little while to figure how easy surveys are, that they are something that could easily be done by any pastor or church leader. Once church leaders figure this out, church surveys might become as common as church newsletters or bulletins.
Next: Why Collect Data?
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Dogwoods and wall (pic)
You'd be surprised how hard it is to find dogwoods in bloom this time of year...Friday, October 31, 2008
Red sex, blue sex
Here's an interesting article in the New Yorker about Mark Regnerus' book about Christian youth and sex. It's entitled Red Sex, Blue Sex. Wow, politics, religion, and sex all together in one book--should be a bestseller.
From the article: "Regnerus argues that religion is a good indicator of attitudes toward sex, but a poor one of sexual behavior, and that this gap is especially wide among teen-agers who identify themselves as evangelical."
It will be interesting to see how big the differences in sexual behavior are, especially when controlling for other factors such as race & class.
Thank you John, Ben and Gary for the link.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
A Review of Willow Creek's Follow Me (Reveal): Summary of findings
(Part II in a series)
Follow Me uses about the same methodology as the original Reveal, just more widely applied. The data were collected from a convenience sample of about 200 churches with 80,000 respondents. The respondents filled out an on-line survey with hundreds of questions. It turns out that I attend one of the churches selected for the study, and so I am one of its respondents. This gave me the chance to read through the survey instrument itself and get a better feel for how Follow Me measures its concepts.
Follow Me shares many of the same concepts as Reveal. It focuses on what it terms a spiritual continuum, which is a four-stage progression of spiritual maturity from exploring Christ to being Christ-centered. It also links this continuum to various spiritual attitudes and behaviors such as reading the Bible, praying, attending church services, and theological beliefs.
Follow Me adds a couple of new concepts to the discussion. One is what it terms movements (p. 28), and basically these are the spiritual beliefs and attitudes that move a person from one stage in the spiritual continuum to the next. So, for example, the things that move a person from Stage 1 (exploring Christ) to Stage 2 (growing in Christ) are termed Movement 1. Follow Me also emphasizes what it terms the “gap”, which is the difference between what believers want from their church and how satisfied they are with what they have.
Follow Me identifies a variety of factors that catalyze spiritual growth. These include having orthodox spiritual beliefs and attitudes, attending organized church activities, having spiritual practices such as prayer and Bible reading, and doing spiritual activities outside of the church. Conversely, the respondents who reported being spiritually stalled measured as having low levels of various spiritual practices.
Follow Me is about 50% longer than Reveal. Also, whereas Reveal was focused almost solely on data, Follow Me makes use of poetry and extended metaphors, such as the lead author’s efforts at weight loss, Michael Jordan’s basketball skills, and the various instruments in an orchestra.
Next: Strengths of Follow Me.
Follow Me uses about the same methodology as the original Reveal, just more widely applied. The data were collected from a convenience sample of about 200 churches with 80,000 respondents. The respondents filled out an on-line survey with hundreds of questions. It turns out that I attend one of the churches selected for the study, and so I am one of its respondents. This gave me the chance to read through the survey instrument itself and get a better feel for how Follow Me measures its concepts.
Follow Me shares many of the same concepts as Reveal. It focuses on what it terms a spiritual continuum, which is a four-stage progression of spiritual maturity from exploring Christ to being Christ-centered. It also links this continuum to various spiritual attitudes and behaviors such as reading the Bible, praying, attending church services, and theological beliefs.
Follow Me adds a couple of new concepts to the discussion. One is what it terms movements (p. 28), and basically these are the spiritual beliefs and attitudes that move a person from one stage in the spiritual continuum to the next. So, for example, the things that move a person from Stage 1 (exploring Christ) to Stage 2 (growing in Christ) are termed Movement 1. Follow Me also emphasizes what it terms the “gap”, which is the difference between what believers want from their church and how satisfied they are with what they have.
Follow Me identifies a variety of factors that catalyze spiritual growth. These include having orthodox spiritual beliefs and attitudes, attending organized church activities, having spiritual practices such as prayer and Bible reading, and doing spiritual activities outside of the church. Conversely, the respondents who reported being spiritually stalled measured as having low levels of various spiritual practices.
Follow Me is about 50% longer than Reveal. Also, whereas Reveal was focused almost solely on data, Follow Me makes use of poetry and extended metaphors, such as the lead author’s efforts at weight loss, Michael Jordan’s basketball skills, and the various instruments in an orchestra.
Next: Strengths of Follow Me.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
A Review of Willow Creek’s Follow Me: What’s Next for You? (Reveal II) by Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson
(Part 1 in a 13 series)
Earlier this year, the Reveal team at Willow Creek Church put out their second book, Follow Me: What’s Next for You? I wrote a rather extensive review of their original book, Reveal, and so I thought I would follow it up by reviewing their second book as well.
Once again, let me summarize my approach to reviews like this. I’m not an expert in church growth, but it seems to me that Willow Creek is doing a fine job at being a church. I’ve had a chance to visit the church, read books by their pastors, and attend their annual Leadership Conference, and these have left me impressed with the good work that they are doing. I know that Willow Creek has its share of critics, but I don’t count myself as one of them. Rather, I write this review to help readers of Follow Me to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of this book as well as to think through some of the issues that arise when we use survey data in advancing the Church’s work.
It’s my impression that more-and-more church-related books are coming out that use empirical data. This probably results from the increasingly easy use of survey methods via the internet. Also, high-profile work by groups such as Reveal, The Barna Group, and Lifeway Research have been widely received, perhaps inspiring even more people to take an empirical approach to writing for the church. As a result, the average pastor who wants to stay current on the church-growth literature will need to have a working knowledge of the basic of social research. This doesn’t necessarily mean knowing high-end statistics, but rather issues of cause and effect, research design, and measurement. Much of this is rather intuitive, so I am hoping that my raising the issues with Follow Me will help church leaders to see them in other work as well.
Lots of people have commented on the Reveal Series. Some of the links that you might want to read include:
Andy Rowell
Christian Post
Random musings
Directions to Orthodoxy
Velocity
Next: Summary of findings
Earlier this year, the Reveal team at Willow Creek Church put out their second book, Follow Me: What’s Next for You? I wrote a rather extensive review of their original book, Reveal, and so I thought I would follow it up by reviewing their second book as well.
Once again, let me summarize my approach to reviews like this. I’m not an expert in church growth, but it seems to me that Willow Creek is doing a fine job at being a church. I’ve had a chance to visit the church, read books by their pastors, and attend their annual Leadership Conference, and these have left me impressed with the good work that they are doing. I know that Willow Creek has its share of critics, but I don’t count myself as one of them. Rather, I write this review to help readers of Follow Me to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of this book as well as to think through some of the issues that arise when we use survey data in advancing the Church’s work.
It’s my impression that more-and-more church-related books are coming out that use empirical data. This probably results from the increasingly easy use of survey methods via the internet. Also, high-profile work by groups such as Reveal, The Barna Group, and Lifeway Research have been widely received, perhaps inspiring even more people to take an empirical approach to writing for the church. As a result, the average pastor who wants to stay current on the church-growth literature will need to have a working knowledge of the basic of social research. This doesn’t necessarily mean knowing high-end statistics, but rather issues of cause and effect, research design, and measurement. Much of this is rather intuitive, so I am hoping that my raising the issues with Follow Me will help church leaders to see them in other work as well.
Lots of people have commented on the Reveal Series. Some of the links that you might want to read include:
Andy Rowell
Christian Post
Random musings
Directions to Orthodoxy
Velocity
Next: Summary of findings
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Witnessing the Flynn effect firsthand
Floyd has joined a local swim club, which means twice a week he has 1.5 hour swim practices. After practice recently he started talking with another little guy, and they discovered that they both played the violin (through the local Susuki program--which we love). They then said which songs they were playing (allegro something or another) and which notes they had trouble with.
I'm pretty sure that the Flynn Effect is happening in my family. This effect is the observation that IQ scores have been steadily increasing over time--about 3 points a decade. It appears that children are getting smarter over time.
I can guarantee you that I wasn't doing anything as ambitious as organized sports or violin-playing when I was in second grade. I think that I watched television the whole year, and maybe went to Cub Scouts (which Floyd does too).
Monday, October 27, 2008
Upcoming review of Reveal: Follow Me
FYI: Starting Wednesday I will be posting an extended review of Follow Me, the follow up book to Reveal. I think it will weigh in at about a dozen posts.
Faith in public life survey
Here's an interesting survey of young people's attitudes toward politics by their religious beliefs. It's called the Faith in Public Life Survey, and here are some highlights from its executive summary:
- Monthly worship attenders swing to Obama in 2008.
- More Americans think Obama is friendly to religion than McCain.
- Young first-time voters are heavily supporting Obama.
- Younger Catholics more strongly support Obama, abortion rights, and more active government than older Catholics.
- Younger white evangelicals strongly oppose abortion rights but are less conservative and more supportive of same-sex marriage than older evangelicals.
- Younger white evangelicals are more pluralistic and more supportive of active government at home and of diplomacy abroad.
- Americans rank abortion and same-sex marriage as the least important issues in 2008.
- Americans see room for common ground in abortion debate.
- Generation gap on same-sex marriage is large and increasing.
- Support for same-sex marriage is significant among young religious Americans.
- Addressing religious liberty concerns strongly increases support for same-sex marriage.
- Young adults prefer larger government that provides increased services.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
So much for nostalgia
Gus in on a couple of sports teams at his high school, so about once a week he has to wear a dress shirt and tie to school in anticipation of a meet later that day. For these days, he borrows one of my ties (I certainly don't use them), and he looks really nice all dressed up.
Somehow he got a hold of a tie that used to belong to my grandfather. It's gray, narrow, and has a cool retro-look (is something retro if it really is old). The tie is from the 1950s, and I've always liked it.
So, last week when Gus put it on for school, I told him the history of it and how it reflected his great-grandfather. I thought it was one of those cool father-son moments, he probably thought it was vaguely interesting, but he was running late for school.
While, this morning, I was folding laundry and found the tie, ruined from going through the wash. I suppose that instead of telling him the history of the tie, I should have just explained that we don't put silk ties into washing machines.
Somehow he got a hold of a tie that used to belong to my grandfather. It's gray, narrow, and has a cool retro-look (is something retro if it really is old). The tie is from the 1950s, and I've always liked it.
So, last week when Gus put it on for school, I told him the history of it and how it reflected his great-grandfather. I thought it was one of those cool father-son moments, he probably thought it was vaguely interesting, but he was running late for school.
While, this morning, I was folding laundry and found the tie, ruined from going through the wash. I suppose that instead of telling him the history of the tie, I should have just explained that we don't put silk ties into washing machines.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Moonrise over a cemetery (pic)
I think that my wife might be a little worried that I get excited about full moons over cemeteries, but there are some really cool cemeteries here in New England. This one is about 300 years old.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Disco music good for the heart?
This may be the only advantage to having grown up in the 1970s... It certainly isn't the prom pictures with long hair and baby-blue tuxedos!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Alcohol on campus (video)
I show this video to my criminology class when we get to the section on alcohol, drugs, and crime. It's a hilarious prank.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
A random field experiment of parachuting
A good friend sent me this article that calls for proper scientific analysis of the beneficial effects of using parachutes when falling.
Here's the introduction: "The parachute is used in recreational, voluntary sector, and military settings to reduce the risk of orthopaedic, head, and soft tissue injury after gravitational challenge, typically in the context of jumping from an aircraft. The perception that parachutes are a successful intervention is based largely on anecdotal evidence. Observational data have shown that their use is associated with morbidity and mortality, due to both failure of the intervention and iatrogenic complications. In addition, "natural history" studies of free fall indicate that failure to take or deploy a parachute does not inevitably result in an adverse outcome. We therefore undertook a systematic review of randomised controlled trials of parachutes."
Too funny.
Thanks Gary!
Here's the introduction: "The parachute is used in recreational, voluntary sector, and military settings to reduce the risk of orthopaedic, head, and soft tissue injury after gravitational challenge, typically in the context of jumping from an aircraft. The perception that parachutes are a successful intervention is based largely on anecdotal evidence. Observational data have shown that their use is associated with morbidity and mortality, due to both failure of the intervention and iatrogenic complications. In addition, "natural history" studies of free fall indicate that failure to take or deploy a parachute does not inevitably result in an adverse outcome. We therefore undertook a systematic review of randomised controlled trials of parachutes."
Too funny.
Thanks Gary!
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
What, Americans are happy?
Apropos of nothing, I came across this statistic that truly surprised me. I'm so used to hearing about American angst and worry, that I would have guessed that other countries have people much more satisfied with their lives. Well, according to a 2002 Pew Study, this isn't the case. Americans express more satisfaction with their lives than the citizens of any other country except for Canada and Guatemala. (Once again we can blame Canada.) We're only moderately satisfied with our country, and even less so about the world itself. Hm-m-m, maybe this me-first thing is working!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)