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Full Transcript of Episode 10: Research on Worship: Putting the Pieces Together
Lizette Beard: [00:00] Podcasting from Nashville, Tennessee, this is “Keep Asking.” The weekly podcast that helps you dive in a bit deeper and wider into the research, providing insight into today’s church and culture.
Lizette: [00:41] Welcome back, everyone. Glad you could join us. Today, I’m hoping that a fight’s going to break out between the three of us. We’re going to be covering some research on worship, and maybe hopefully tapping into a little bit of the worship wars that we’ve heard about.
[00:46] Plus, I think our personalities are different enough. We should not be such an agreeable podcast. I don’t think that’s what we want to be known for. I think there needs to be a little tension. A few more hot takes. You’re OK with that?Scott McConnell: [01:02] Sure. We can get innovative with worship.
Lizette: [01:07] Let’s get a little crazy. We’re looking at what several different research projects have taught us about worship.
[06:29] A question we are asked a lot is, have you done any research on worship “in this really specific way”? Or about this very specific type of church? More often than not, our answer has actually been no. Sometimes the population is just too specific. [06:52] Once I was asked if we’d done any specific research on churches in three particular counties in a state south of here. I thought, no. [07:02] Sometimes it’s a question that would be interesting…None of the people would be interested in it. It’s not that it’s not important to someone, it’s just probably wouldn’t be important to very many more people than that. [07:20] If we don’t have a full‑blown research study out there, what value can people get from research that comes from multiple studies even if it’s not on the very granular thing they’re looking for?Scott: [07:35] It’s always helpful to get multiple perspectives. With any research topic, multiple perspectives are actually needed. No one study is going to completely exhaust what needs to be known on that topic. Something like worship, where every congregation is involved in worship, it’s something that has a lot of facets and more research is needed on.
Lizette: [08:01] Casey, church planters and church plant organizations are often wanting to know what’s the latest in findings. What’s the most effective in worship? What’s happening out there? What did you find out when you were analyzing the data from our most recent church planting research project?
Casey: [08:24] We did a really large study of church plants, 843 church plants started since 2008 or later. I felt like it was interesting both in terms of trying to describe that population in terms of their worship habits. There’s a who difference. 24 percent of church plants are multi‑ethnic. Meaning there isn’t one ethnicity that’s 80 percent or more of the congregants.
[08:58] More than four on turn on average are completely unchurched, they’re unchurched for many years. Over 40 percent of people attending church plants are people who haven’t been going to church prior to that experience.Lizette: [09:10] Can you repeat that one ….Break that down for us a little bit on what you’re saying there.
Casey: [09:17] We’re talking specifically about church plants started since 2008. There’s 18 percent of those people who are previously completely unchurched. They’ve never been to church before based on the estimates of the people responding.
Lizette: [09:34] That’s across all church plants. Those who are attending all church plants?
Casey: [09:38] Mm‑hmm. And an additional 24 percent, who have been unchurched for many years, maybe they were, again these are estimates, but maybe they were going as children then they stopped going. This was their first time back in several years.
[09:57] I think that that’s probably a different population in terms of who’s showing up at these church plants than maybe what established churches are used to.Scott: [10:09] That breaks a stereotype. I think a lot of people assume that when somebody starts a new church near them that they’re just borrowing church attendees from other churches.
[10:20] Sure, some of their attendees are people who’ve been attending church, but those are pretty high numbers for reaching people who’ve not attended church in a long time or not believers, never attended church. That’s why we exist as a church, is to reach those kind of people.Casey: [10:42] That’s the who perspective on who’s coming to these church plants. We also have a where perspective. Only 31 percent of these church plants say that a church building is their current primary facility, so roughly 3 out of 10 are meeting weekly or the primary place they’re meeting for worship is a church building.
[11:06] For the rest of them, it’s schools, or retail or commercial spaces, homes, community halls, recreation centers, industrial warehouse spaces, on and on. There are a lot of other locations that church plants meet at. That’s obviously different from established churches. I don’t think we know, offhand, the percentage for established churches, but I’d say it’s fair to say that’s more than 3 out of 10.Lizette: [11:32] Scott, say a church planter is looking at that. What should they keep in mind when they’re just looking at even the very practical things that they’re seeing in that research?
[11:45] I’ll do a plug for NewChurches.com, you can see a lot of this data if you’ll go register at NewChurches.com, where we put a lot of our church planting data. What should church planters, church planting organizations keep in mind as they’re looking at these are using buildings, these are using schools? How is that helpful?Scott: [12:08] There’s kind of mixed signals in those facilities. Because if somebody’s in a church building from the very beginning, they’re more likely to be helping with other church plants. Because they’re financially in that position, they’re able to invest in others faster and better.
[12:29] At the same time, some of those in the facilities that Casey mentioned are actually more effective in terms of growing their attendance. Most of that is probably not because of the facility they’re in itself, let’s all turn our sanctuary into a warehouse look and feel, but it’s because they have that startup feel to them because they’re in a warehouse. [12:52] They’re constantly trying to get beyond that point. They’re working hard to reach people and to tell people about their faith and about what this church is doing together and, “We’re willing to do that stuff together, even if it’s in a warehouse.”Lizette: [13:13] OK. Casey, what else besides the who and the where?
Casey: [13:18] I think the big one that probably people think about a lot is how. How are they worshiping, what’s their worship style? If I walk into a church plant, what might I see there, particularly, that might be different from if I walk into a typical established church?
[13:39] One of the things that stood out for me was when we’re looking at the worship style, so 34 percent contemporary, 18 percent blended, 11 percent seeker. But as you go down, seven percent post‑modern immersion, five percent urban contemporary. [13:55] The first time you see traditional on there is at four percent, so about 1 in 25 church plants, that’s their worship style, is that kind of traditional. Another 1 in 50 said liturgical, so that’s probably in that same space, but that’s obviously different from established churches in terms of the numbers there. That stood out to me. [14:20] Then in terms of some of the communal aspects of it, 69 percent having refreshments served at a typical weekly worship gathering, 19 percent participants share a meal. If you just walk into a random church plant, it’s more likely than not that they’re not going to have sharing a meal, but it’s not unlikely either. [14:43] You’ve got a one in five shot that if you walk into a church plant they’re going to do lunch afterwards or whatever. That type of different community, I think, that…Lizette: [14:54] Wait. Did you just guarantee people they were getting a lunch if they went to a church plant?
Lizette: [14:59] I’m just checking.
Casey: [15:00] If they go to five, it’s more likely than not that they do.
Lizette: [15:04] All right. As we looked at some of our other projects where we’ve touched on research, one of the things I came up with was that it’s worth taking a good look at quality research on worship, because it can be eye‑opening and calming at the same time. Eye‑opening because it helps us see beyond our own blind spots.
[15:25] We can see, “Oh, look,” whether it’s church plants or other established churches, what’s happening? What are they doing that’s different? But calming because, I think more often than not, good research pulls the curtain back on some of the claims out there that you have to change this aspect of what your church is doing to have any kind of success. [15:52] One question you want to ask when people are making unsubstantiated claims or, what are they trying to sell you? Is it really happening in all over the country, all over the world, like they may be saying? Research typically flattens that out a bit. [16:14] In our Transformational Church study that we did several years ago that had a huge impact on how we at Lifeway research think about churches, think about churches that are seeing transformation, life change, we saw that there were factors other than just the what they’re doing or how they’re doing it. A little bit more nuanced in characteristics in general. What were some of your takeaways from that project?Scott: [16:45] Each of the questions we asked related to worship on the Transformational Church Assessment measured how the church is doing worship, but not in a method standpoint. The questions were practical, so they’re things that a worship team could sit down and discuss and say, “How could we do this better?”
[17:04] At the same time, they weren’t, “Do it this way, not that way,” type of methods. One example would be, is there a sense of expectation of what’s going to occur in the worship service among the congregation? [17:20] A worship team can sit down and say, “You know, our scores are pretty low here. There’s not a sense of expectation. What can we do to create that, but still within the way our church functions and within the way we think about worship?” [17:35] They can still be true to who they are and still show improvement in that area. One of the big takeaways from that transformational church research was not just that ability to measure how you’re doing on worship, but the fact that that actually matters. [17:52] Your church’s scores on those handful of worship questions actually predict whether your church is growing…Lizette: [17:59] Hey, that was the piece of data I was going to share.
Scott: [18:03] It’s good stuff.
Lizette: [18:04] It is good stuff.
Scott: [18:05] We all ought to be sharing.
Lizette: [18:08] I know.
Scott: [18:08] Because we often hear that worship attendance isn’t related to anything. It’s not related to discipleship growth. It’s not related to other things. But, the health of the church? It’s a key part. We exist to glorify God. If we’re doing worship well, as a church, more people will begin to attend worship and we’ll see more new commitments.
Lizette: [18:31] [sighs] Models, I’m assuming those are statistical models, as I look at these notes, say that five of the seven elements are statistically significant in predicting attendance growth over one year. Worship is the most important element for long‑term attendance growth.
[18:52] The model that includes churches mean responses to the worship assessment questions accounts for 33 percent of the five‑year growth of that church. The look on your face says that’s not familiar, at all to you. If we keep this in the podcast, we’ll include some notes on that. If not, we’ll just chop it all out.Scott: [19:13] Well, that’s probably true, by itself. I was looking at the whole model. With a couple other items thrown in there with worship, we actually can describe 57 percent of the change in the worship over five years.
Lizette: [19:28] I was reading from some notes that somebody else wrote, so let’s talk about models in statistics when we’re analyzing. What does a model tell us?
Scott: [19:37] Casey can probably describe through a regression analysis, what we’re talking about when we talk about a model.
Lizette: [19:43] I don’t know that we really want to tackle regression analysis unless he can do it simply?
Casey: [19:48] Yeah, I got it. We’re good.
Lizette: [19:52] Excellent. This is getting good.
Casey: [19:54] Two minutes of stat‑nerding out, at the most.
Casey: [19:58] I would say, a good talk on models probably starts with “All models are wrong but some are useful.” What we’re doing in each of these is we’re saying, let’s try to predict something. We’ll call it a response variable.
[20:18] We’re trying to predict some outcome using several other variables to explain it, several other factors that help explain what’s going on in that outcome. That’s what you’re looking at there. Is saying, let’s explain that outcome of, what was it, five‑year growth and attendance?Lizette: [20:36] Mm‑hmm.
Casey: [20:37] Using all these other variables that might help explain that. We know that, in that model, it’s not accounting for everything that might help explain that because there are probably infinitely many things in each individual specific situation that are impacting, how do their five‑year growth number look?
Lizette: [20:55] I’m going to dial you back just a little bit because Casey used to teach AP Statistics to high schoolers.
Casey: [21:01] That’s true.
Lizette: [21:04] Let’s pull it back to, say, I won’t make you explain regression analysis to an eight‑year‑old but how about to an eighth grader? Maybe, even, when we think about models, am I making a good connection here?
[21:15] When I had jaw surgery, which is a fun thing to bring up, the surgeon actually made a cast, or a mold, of my jaw. He and the co‑surgeon practiced on the model before the surgery a few times. That was not my jaw but because of how much was happening, I’m really glad they practiced. We’ve never discussed this as a connection, but am I even remotely…Casey: [21:46] No, yeah.
Lizette: [21:47] Is that what you do when you’re modeling, you’re saying…?
Casey: [21:49] Right. We know this isn’t the real situation. We know that worship attendance isn’t a function of these six things. We know it’s a function of lots and lots of things. But these six things are pretty good at predicting what’s happening here, so let’s talk about it like those are the six things.
[22:06] We can even talk about how good a model it is, how much of the variability is that explaining. There’s that piece of it because if the jaw looked nothing like your jaw, then it’s not a very good model and then, practicing on it isn’t going to really help that much.Lizette: [22:23] But it looked exactly like my jaw but it wasn’t my jaw.
Lizette: [22:27] Now they’re totally confused. No. I also think this goes back to we’re not trying to say that, when someone’s saying, “Hey, this had an impact on our worship service,” what, I think, research helps us remember is there are a lot of things going on in a worship service. You may learn something from someone or you may pick up an idea, but that’s never 100 percent of what’s happening.
[23:00] I’ll let either one of you have this since I’m going to throw it out there. We’re talking about worship, worshiping God. Are we trying to statistically manipulate God or statistically predict what God’s going to do in worship by even dabbling in this? Is this the Ouija board of research, here? What are we doing?Scott: [23:27] We’re using statistics. That’s pretty different than a Ouija board.
Lizette: [23:33] I cannot wait to tweet that out with a link to a podcast. [laughs]
Scott: [23:37] Because statistics depend on how orderly God has made the world. Because we can find patterns ‑‑ now, there’s some places where it’s completely noise, it’s completely chaos ‑‑ but throughout creation, we continue to find patterns. We continue to find order. We know from scripture, that especially in worship, God loves order.
[24:03] What we’re saying is not that we can predict that more people will come to your worship services, if. We can say that it’s more likely that they’re going to come, if. So, the handful of questions we ask on the transformational church survey are helpful in that direction. They predict that. They say that it’s more likely. It doesn’t guarantee it, though. [24:28] You can be the off‑chance where it doesn’t happen. You could be the off‑chance where you don’t grow as much because there are a lot of other factors that the model can’t account for, but the fact that it’s accounting for a little more than half of what’s going on with the change in worship attendance, that’s describing a lot of what’s happening.Casey: [24:51] On the opposite end from saying this is scripturally unsound, I think you actually see that it’s something scripturally affirmed. That there are certain conditionals. That people who are following through, there are places where God’s saying, act on these principles and, for the most part, good things are going to happen. I think that us being able to…
Lizette: [25:15] That’s very Proverbs of it.
Casey: [25:17] Definitely, that’s where I was going. The idea that, raise a child up in the way they should go. I don’t think that we’re saying that’s a one‑to‑one like, “That child didn’t grow up that way, so that means that this parent did a terrible job,” or things like that.
[25:32] I think that you could model that. You could say, if this parent is doing these things, and raising their children in these ways, that God said that. That’s a reasonable expectation that they’re more likely to have better things happening.Scott: [25:50] So, if I can’t sit still and worship, my wife can blame my parents, is that what you’re saying?
Lizette: [25:57] Scott, he just threw you a softball, where you could plug the book [The Parent Adventure] that you worked on. Are you comfortable doing that? On parenting? We’ll put a link to that. There’s some fun research way in the back, on that.
[26:10] One thing that came to mind but I’m having a trouble coming up with a good ‑‑ I’ll count on you guys to give me a biblical illustration for the other side ‑‑ but in motivation, either our motivation, in doing research or in someone’s motivation in using statistics. [26:25] If you’re trying to build the tower of Babel and it’s about your platform or your objectives that are taking God off the throne, which you cannot do ‑‑ I just want to make sure that I’m not saying ‑‑ but in your mind, if you think you’re doing that, then it’s not going to turn out well for you. But I couldn’t, off the top of my head, come up with a really good biblical …Casey: [26:52] Maybe the other side of it might be all of the planting metaphors, right? That we’re saying, “Hey, you’re taking steps there.” The farmer’s putting stuff in the ground and watering it but, basically, God’s going to be the one that makes it grow. We’re not going to try to seize credit for that.
Lizette: [27:09] But you got to cast the seed.
Casey: [27:11] Right.
Lizette: [27:12] All right. We should, maybe, work those out ahead of time but we survived it. Another thing that I, as I was looking back over some of that that I think is helpful, the difference among transformational churches, 75 percent agree that they see evidence of God changing lives as a result of worship services.
[27:37] I think another lesson in how to read research is what does that tell you? One, you find out, what do people in your church say about that? Is that happening and are people telling the stories? People could be experiencing life change and experiencing that God is changing their lives, but are the stories being told and are the stories being told to the congregation? [28:06] I think there’s a level of transparency that has to happen there. Also ‑‑ working that word model back in, totally unexpected here ‑‑ but that, in some ways, is modeling, “Hey, this is how someone is learning. This is how someone’s growing.” That can be really encouraging to someone. [28:24] It could be an issue of maybe there’s things in worship that are not happening but maybe there’s things that are not being communicated. Probably something we should have done at the very beginning is talk about what we mean when we’re saying worship in this study and the importance of knowing how words are defined in a project when you’re researching it. [28:54] Let me find my notes real quick because I touched on that. Scott, since I can’t find my notes, I’m going to make you adlib. Talk a little bit about our use of the term worship in that project.Scott: [29:11] I don’t recall how we used it.
Lizette: [29:13] See? You guys…
Scott: [29:14] So, I’m assuming we did not define it.
Lizette: [29:16] Actually, that is really good because one of the things that we encourage churches when they…I need you to laugh louder. We may have to change this to a video podcast because I just need you to see Scott shaking his head in dismay at some of the words.
Casey: [29:37] And you doing the backstroke.
Lizette: [29:38] Me doing the backstroke.
Lizette: [29:39] Because what we did in the project is we encouraged churches, we knew that worship, using that phrase, churches were, at least within that congregation, using it in a similar way. As churches continue to use that resource, we encourage them, “This is how you use it,” and some of the other terms.
[30:03] But it’s important that you look at when you’re looking at a study, to find out, did it get defined? If it didn’t get defined, or if it was left out on how the survey participants took it. [30:15] One of the things that we found is that, as some of the churches have gone through this, some of the feedback we’ve gotten is ‑‑ and this is the most common way I think about it ‑‑ it’s the phrase, “worship,” the entire corporate worship, gathering, singing, preaching, offering, announcements. That worship event. [30:35] Other people are really quick to point in that they want that to include private, personal worship. Now, our questions in the transformational church project do not necessarily touch on that as closely. That’s a little complicated, but we touched on that in some other projects. [30:55] Others, it’s more just about a lifestyle, a posture towards God. I know among Foursquare in the Pacific Northwest, for them, when they were giving me some feedback, they said it was specifically when singing is happening during the corporate worship events. [31:14] That’s just the lesson that when you’re studying research, especially in this, understand how they were using the terms and even if they didn’t use them in the exact same way you did, that helps you in interpreting what you’re learning. Scott, you found some stuff from some other sources. Tell us about that.Scott: [31:40] Each perspective is a little different and this perspective comes from the Faith Communities Today study that’s done every five years. As the name implies, this Faith Communities is a pretty broad sampling of churches and even other faiths included.
[31:57] A couple of things that are helpful in that study is because it’s been done three times, several of the questions, you can see a trend. One of the trends that we see is that some of the turn toward more contemporary worship signaled by the use of electric guitars has actually leveled off. It’s leveled off at about 35 percent of churches using them on regular basis. [32:26] But back in 2000, it was 24 percent. It’s a big jump and then it’s pretty much leveled off since then. We see the fewer churches are being innovative, or very innovative in their worship. That’s dropped about five percent in the last five years. [32:44] What they do see, and I’ve seen in previous versions of this survey is that a church that’s more innovative in worship does see more attendance growth. This is a very helpful study because of its breadth, but at the same time, there may be times where you say that’s going to include some folks on that topic that I wouldn’t want included in the view that I’m looking at on that topic. [33:15] I find it a very helpful study to turn to on a number of topics just because of its breadth and the fact that it’s hit some things where we’d love to have a number on that and they, in fact, do.Lizette: [33:27] That’s good. If you’ll share that link with me, I’ll make sure that that is something folks can get into. I ran across a Pew Research article on some of their aggregated data on worship attendance. I appreciate it that they emphasize that the research reality that how often people say they usually attend services is not necessarily the same as how often they attend.
[33:53] Is that helpful to share or is it undermining the research? What did they do in there when they put that right…? That’s in paragraph number three. Actually, it’s the last part of the second paragraph. They put that front and center.Scott: [34:10] It depends on what they found. It’s a question that a lot of people ask because for years and we’re grateful to folks like Gallup that has continued to ask the same question year after year after year about, “Do you attend church?”
[34:26] Those are very helpful things, but the number always seems a little higher than we actually believe are in church on a given Sunday. Findings where we can dig into how far off or for what reasons is it off is definitely helpful. What did you find?Lizette: [34:47] That’s actually what I focused on in that article. That was basically the emphasis of what it was. The diaries tracking attendance indicate their attendee less than if they’re just answering the survey on it.
[35:07] In December 2016 issue of “Christianity Today,” there was a chart explaining the reason people go church‑shopping, and I’m pretty sure this is another source from Pew and it’s Pew Research. [35:27] I want to share a few of these things because one of the things that talked about the reasons people go church‑shopping, 49 percent moved, 18 percent disagreed with pastor, 16 percent married or divorced, 12 percent dissatisfaction with church or its theology, 5 percent changing personal belief. [35:46] Let’s just focus on 18 percent disagreed with pastor, 12 dissatisfaction with church theology, 5 changing personal beliefs. How is that helpful and how can that potentially send leader scrambling in how they process the research?Casey: [36:03] One of the ways it’s helpful is if you’ve got…For instance, it’s going to depend on your context a little bit but if you are on the receiving end of that, if your pastor is on the receiving end of that, you can make the assumption that, “Hey, the reason why they’re leaving is because they have theological differences.”
[36:27] If the top one is just that they moved to a new area, then that tells you that it’s not necessarily that they’re coming with some sort of clash with a previous church. It might just be that they had a change in life situation.Scott: [36:45] Only 18 percent said they disagreed with the pastor and all of the other responses had nothing to do with recent decisions in the church. A lot of times, we think that we’ve got to be changing something in the church to keep people or possibly to attract people. The latter may be true but to keep people, that’s not the case.
[37:07] Some of those preferences that we may hear complaints about from current attendees are not making the list of why they’re going to a new church.Lizette: [37:18] What they’re looking for, one, how they searched. They attended the worship service but also, the importance of talking to friends or colleagues, talking to members, talking to the minister. I was surprised at how few looked for information online. It’s a 36 percent looked there. They could obviously choose more than one since, 91 percent. It doesn’t all add up to 100.
[37:47] That one was a little bit surprising, and only 18 percent called the church. This is, I think, what they were looking for ‑‑ quality of sermons, 94 percent, 83 percent feeling welcomed by leaders. I’m a little surprised that there’s the emphasis there on leaders though they didn’t say, I don’t think there’s the option of “feeling welcomed by everyone.” That was key. [38:14] 80 percent, style of worship service and 69 percent location. Then there are some others. We’ll put the link to these. Feeling welcomed and just good sermons, quality of sermons, are some just core things that I don’t think surprises anyone. [38:35] Some of the panic that comes with ‑‑ we’ve talked about other podcasts ‑‑ the changing of cultural values. Some of those tension points can send some churches into panic, not necessarily that church is on the rush to change, but sometimes, it can feel like churches are making huge changes every day and we need to be aware of people’s views changing, people’s beliefs changing, but relatively, it’s a much smaller percent. [39:10] Any other thoughts from some of the other worship data that we have out there, either from us or other groups? A lot of people are curious about this. Any tips on how someone can learn from this, make some decisions?Casey: [39:28] More generally, we’re pooling in from six, seven data sources over the course of this conversation to talk about one topic. If that’s the space you’re in, as, “Hey, I’m really interested in,” maybe it’s worship and maybe it’s discipleship, whatever it is, do your research and don’t be afraid to poll from several different areas to learn more about that.
Scott: [39:56] It’s helpful to always look at who is in that survey so that you know whether it’s churches is like yours or not. You can still learn from churches that are not like yours but for some decisions, if you’re trying to be similar to some other churches, you need to make sure you want to be similar to them.
Lizette: [40:15] That’s true. Thanks, guys.
[40:16] [background music]Lizette: [40:16] That wraps us up for this week. We’d love it if you have some time and you like what you heard, if you could go hop over the iTunes and rate this podcast.
[40:29] You can also give us feedback directly via email at [email protected] or through Twitter. You can find us @lifewayresearch, @smcconn, @StatsGuyCasey, @LizetteBeard. Looking forward to talking to you next time. Keep asking, learn more, and do better.