Building on yesterday’s preparation for your congregational poll, there are still a couple of preparation steps that you need to take.
First, you need to decide what it is that you want to know? This is something that you and your participating colleagues need to discuss. There are a couple of things you need to remember when you are making that decision. First, people are more likely to participate willingly if the survey is not too long.
Second, since you will be recording their responses, it needs to be done in a way that makes it fairly easy to record. For example, questions that elicit long verbal responses are both difficult to capture in a phone interview and difficult to collate when you are trying to create a picture of how the congregation feels.
Third, it is important to gather information that will be helpful rather than too vague to do anything about. It is less helpful to ask whether they like the pastor than to ask what are three strengths that they see in the pastor’s ministry.
Fourth, frame the questions in a manner that doesn’t invite negative venting but encourages constructive possibilities. Rather than ask what are two things you don’t like about the church, it would be better to ask what are two ways that you believe the congregation can be for faithful and effective in their ministry.
Fifth, don’t ask for things that you don’t want to know. For example, if you are committed to developing a contemporary worship service but have not developed a lot of support for that idea yet, don’t ask whether that is a good idea if you are not prepared to act in accordance with the feedback you receive. As will be explained tomorrow, part of this process is designed to share the information with the congregations and you don’t want to share that 70% don’t like the idea even before you have educated the congregation about what you want to do.
More on this tomorrow.
