We were delighted to receive 241 responses after surveying the readers of this Leaders Blog on various questions related to Bible engagement and church identity. That sample size doesn’t give us fully reliable data on the state of the modern church, but we hope it can start a conversation.
Earlier we reported on some basic numbers: your own estimates of Bible knowledge, interest and engagement. But now we want to dig a little deeper. What happens when we compare larger churches to smaller churches, or older congregations with younger ones? Can we tease out some implications for ministry?
Three observations stand out to us. See how they fit with your experience.
Involved congregations tend to be Bible-engaged, but not as much as you might expect. We asked, “What percentage of your church’s weekend attenders are also involved in some church activity at another time of the week (small group, volunteer work, service project, etc.)?” Nearly 40% of responders placed their church’s involvement at 40–70%, with another half putting it in the 20–40% range.
You would expect a high correlation between church activity and Bible engagement. People come to weeknight Bible studies. They put biblical teachings into practice by volunteering in a ministry during the week. If they’re committed enough to read Scripture four times a week, they’re likely to be committed to church ministry beyond a Sunday service.
The numbers bear this out. Half of highly involved congregations (40+%) are also highly Bible-engaged (35+%). Half of churches with low involvement (below 20%) are also low in Bible engagement (below 20%).
So the trend is there, but it’s not as strong as you might expect. More than a quarter of highly involved congregations (40+%) rate low in Bible engagement (below 20%).
There’s a challenge here for active churches. Can you find a way to channel church activity into the Bible? This is not to say that every church softball game has to end with a three-point sermon. But can we leverage the energy of church activities to create an organic excitement about the Bible?
Churches with moderate levels of Millennials are more Bible-engaged. Nearly half of congregations with 20–40% of members in the Millennial category (30 or younger) also reported high Bible engagement (35+%). These figures suggest that if you want to have high Bible engagement, you want to have some Millennials, but not too many.
Why would this be?
It’s easy to hypothesize that some non-engaged churches have lost energy through the years and thus do not appeal to a younger crowd, but then younger congregations ought to be brimming with life. The question is whether that energy leads to engagement with the Bible.
This data may offer a challenge to churches that are successfully ministering to Millennials: Keep connecting them to the Bible. You may be attracting this hard-to-reach generation with straight talk, great worship services, and good coffee, but they then need to establish a framework for growth that’s built on God’s Word. Many Millennial Christians have never established habits of Bible reading and study. If you could help them do so it would be a great gift for them—and a sharp strategy for forming long-term faithfulness among your congregation.
Younger churches need more teachers and group leaders. We asked about the “biggest hurdle” to Bible engagement. One blip in the responses came from leaders of churches with more than 40% Millennials. About a third of this group said their obstacle was “Not enough teachers or group leaders.”
That makes sense, doesn’t it? Younger Christians don’t have the experience we look for in teachers. Sometimes they lack the Bible knowledge of previous generations. They might be short on confidence. Or maybe they’re too busy to commit to a teaching gig.
What can we do about this?
We need a new approach to training young teachers and leaders. We should leverage the leadership skills they have, give them enough Bible knowledge to stay a step ahead of their groups, but also recognize the array of Internet resources they have, literally, at their fingertips. Small groups of the future will follow apps instead of booklets. Members won’t even need to be in the same room. So small group leading will also look quite different. Let’s work on this, preparing a new generation for a new era of leadership.
