REVEALed: A Lot of People Have Been Here a Long Time

[This is one of a series of posts related to the REVEAL Spiritual Life Survey. To see the others, click here.] One of the first things that was quickly obvious from our REVEAL results was how high our "tenure" was, meaning how long people have been a part of our church. According to the survey, 45% of the adults in our church have been here a decade or longer.

By itself, the fact that the percentage was high didn't surprise us. We're a very established congregation, having existed for more than 125 years. But I was surprised at how high. 45%! (And on our second survey, two years later, it's up to 47%!) Almost half of our people have been here longer than a decade.

While a positive note about people's loyalty and commitment over time can legitimately be drawn, I think that number should also raise some potential red flags for us:

  • If that many people have been here that long (combined with the data that said 59% of our people are above age 50), it becomes obvious that our church is going to face some major challenges in the next 20-30 years. History reliably shows that nobody can keep coming to church here forever...
  • Having that many people who have been here that long likely means that people are pretty accustomed to and happy with the status quo. Leading change is always difficult. Leading change in a church where half the people have been there over a decade is a monumental task.
  • At an earlier point in our history, these numbers must have been different. Perhaps people have changed, and our methods of bringing in new people haven't. Perhaps earlier generations simply placed a higher value on bringing in new people. Whatever the explanation is, I'm sure it's a combination of a lot of factors, but this number is serious. (Think of what it would say if we were a sports team: If half of our roster had been in the league 10 years or longer... It may be possible to still be good right now, but we won't be good much longer.)
  • It would be one thing if we had these numbers in a small, rural town where the entire population is aging and there are very few people moving in, but that's not the case. While we're not in a huge city (our population is about 110,000), we're a rare area in the country that has a thriving economy and plenty of growth.
While there are implications such as these that can be drawn from this statistic, this first insight is really just a demographic number. REVEAL really starts to do its work on the next insight it gave us: A lot of people have been here a long time without growing.

"If You Were Going Somewhere By Yourself, I'd Want to Catch Up."

Recently I bought a bigger truck, solely for the purpose of being able to take my kids around with me when I'm doing work on our ranch. I love it when I get to take them. Sure, my productivity takes a dive, but I can still get some things done, and I love having my favorite people (my family) with me at my favorite place (our ranch). Several weeks ago, I had my three-year old son with me on one of these days and on our way out of town driving toward the ranch we had to stop at a tire shop and get a flat fixed. They got it done for us, and then I was buckling him back into his car seat, and we had a short conversation that I hope I never forget:

Me: "I sure love having you with me, bud." Him: "I love having you with me, too, Daddy. I wouldn't want to go anywhere without ya." ...[He thought for a minute as I continued buckling him in]... Him: "If you were going somewhere by yourself, I'd want to catch up."

Now that will make a Daddy's day. In fact, by now that conversation was about two months ago, so I guess I can say that it didn't just make my day, but made my quarter.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a great time with a group from our church on our Three Ways to Pray retreat, where we explored praying with other people's words, praying without words, and praying with our own words. Although I grew up most accustomed to praying with my own words, in recent years I've focused more on the other two ways of praying.

Praying with other people's words through practices like Fixed-Hour Prayer has brought a shape, rhythm, and depth to my prayer which I've longed for for a long time.

Praying without words seems to be one of the most needed practices in my own spiritual life, and probably is for many of us. It's in doing so that what we so often call "a personal relationship with God" actually, for me, becomes something that can actually be described with words like relationship or friendship.

But these comments from my little boy, and the immense joy that they brought to me knowing that they came from a very sincere place in his tender little heart, have reminded me of the power of talking to God in very personal words. For a lot of people, this is a very natural and easy way to pray, but not always for me- at least not at this point in my life.

I don't know if my words to God can have anywhere close to the same effect on him that my son's can have on me, but I would guess that it's similar. It certainly isn't by accident that the writers of Scripture, and particularly Jesus, so often choose to describe our relationship to God as one between a father and his children. So, if things between God and me are that similar to things between my son and me, I need to tell him how much I like being with him.

It doesn't require many words, but I've got to use some.

The First Week of BlogX: Complete!

The most helpful person to me in the technical parts of setting up this blog has been John at TentBlogger. He has a ton of very helpful information on his blog, and if you're a blogger as well, you should definitely become familiar with what he writes there. Seriously, what Dave Ramsey is to my paycheck, TentBlogger is to this blog. (I'm far from being black-belt at the things that either one of them teaches, but I'm making progress!) John has begun a 90-day blogging challenge called BlogX, and I'm participating to try to improve my writing habits and clean up the technical parts of the blog. It's been a real challenge so far, but if I can stick with it, I really think it will pay off with more consistency and better writing.

I've actually been done with the first week of BlogX for a week, and didn't get much of anything done on the blog last week. But, I'm back on the wagon now. Blogging lesson learned: When I can look on my calendar and foresee a few days when I know I won't be able to write anything, it would be great to already have a few drafts on hand to be able to publish and keep the activity on the blog happening during those down days.

Looking forward to seeing what's coming in BlogX week 2...

Top Posts for September 2011

Recommended Resource: Pray As You Go Podcast

Several months ago, my spiritual director recommended an online resource which I've found very helpful: The Pray As You Go Podcast. For six days of each week, it provides a recording of reflective music, a contemplative reading of Scripture, and a guided reflection on the passage. It's produced by a group of British Jesuits, and one of the Jesuits' greatest contributions to Christian spirituality is how they help the rest of us enter into the world of Scripture in a way that engages our imaginations and our intentions, rather than simply reading the Bible as if were just a textbook.

Each episode of the podcast is +/- 10 minutes long, and every time that I have listened over the past months, I have been grateful that I did. Carving out 10 minutes somewhere in my day by doing this helps me to keep my mind grounded in Scripture in a very prayerful way.

Since those guiding the reflections are Jesuits (a group within Roman Catholicism) and I'm not, every once in a while there's a mention of something with which I'm unfamiliar (such as a feast day), but for the most part I've found myself right at home with where the podcast is designed to guide us, and you likely would as well.

One quick tip: don't try (as I did when I first started listening) to listen to this while driving and think that doing so will be an equal substitute for actually carving out 10 minutes to be still and listen. Praying while driving is a good thing, but we also need habits of praying while doing nothing else. (And you'd better also be doing other things while you're driving.) The best use will come when you can be still for ten minutes, close your eyes, and listen.