Let me propose a simple way to work with some trusted colleagues and get a measure of your congregations that can be helpful and stimulate interest in the process. This takes advantage of a very simple but surprisingly informative form of poll taking. We are always hearing of pollsters sampling the designated population for their attitudes, etc. Most people enjoy reading the results of such polls but often feel that the people who are polled are never people that they know.
What I would propose is a very basic and easy to execute poll of your congregation but done in such a way to elicit an honest response. The first step is to identify a couple of pastoral colleagues from other congregations of similar size whom you trust and are willing to participate in this adventure. Each of you agree to do the telephone polling of the other person’s congregation, record and feedback the information among you. While I have done this within my own congregation and found it helpful, I am suggesting that you do it in each others congregations in order to encourage the respondents to be candid in their responses.
Take the directory for your church and starting anywhere in the first 10 family units, count ahead 10 for the second call, ten more for the third call, etc. What you are setting up is a random set of people to interview in the other person’s congregation but doing it in such a manner that the task is not overwhelming, In a 500 member congregation, for example, there are probably 250 family units, so that 25 calls would cover them all. When you look at the list, you will be surprised at how representative your sample is by this basic process. If you were doing it in a larger church, you could take every 15th family unit and still come out with a small enough sample to not be an overwhelming task.
Tomorrow I will develop the idea further.
