As a church leader, you know how hard your church staff works. You see them putting in long hours and working at weekend and evening events, while rarely getting the thanks they truly deserve. The last thing you probably want to do is put more on their plates, but at the same time, you know that some things are too important to keep putting off. One of those things might be conducting a church survey.
If it’s been a while since you’ve sought formal feedback from your congregation in the form of a church survey, you don’t want to go too much longer before you actually do it. But where do you start? What questions do you ask? And how do you go about conducting an effective church survey without further burdening your staff with more work?
VitalChurch Ministry, a nonprofit organization dedicated to church revitalization, recently put together an easy-to-administer church survey, which they call their Church Vitality Survey. It comes with all of the church survey questions (including some you might not think to ask), and VitalChurch Ministry handles much of the process on your church’s behalf. In other words, apart from providing them with some basic information about your church and then encouraging those in your congregation to complete the survey, the rest of the process is managed by the team at VitalChurch Ministry.
The completed surveys go directly to VitalChurch Ministry, and their team processes them. They then send you a report within a few days that includes the survey results, along with a summary analysis for each question.
What is perhaps the most valuable part of the church survey created by VitalChurch Ministry, is the follow-up call that is included with one of their church diagnostic experts. VitalChurch Ministry has a team that regularly goes into churches for in-depth evaluations. They are experts at getting to the heart of a church’s issues and then helping churches get past them. In your follow-up call, the VitalChurch diagnostic experts can provide you with some valuable insight into your congregation based on the survey results and they can also offer helpful suggestions, based on their years of experience working with churches.
After the church survey process is complete, you may realize that your church needs some additional outside help. Maybe the survey uncovered some issues that you didn’t know were there, or you found out that your church is weak in certain areas of its ministry. VitalChurch Ministry is also able to provide resources to churches that need help in areas like strategic planning, governance upgrades, or discovering their God-given mission. Much of the work VitalChurch Ministry does is conducted by seasoned pastors, who lovingly walk alongside churches as they work to become the vibrant places that God has called them to be!
