Full survey results

Well here are the results from our CitC survey conducted on September 21. A total of 191 people took part. I wonder what particularly stands out? What is worrying? What things do we need to be praying and acting upon?

Q1) How long have you been coming along to Crossroads?
1 month    12%
3 months   4%
6 months   9%
9 months   12%
12 months  7%
18 months  9%
2 years      9%
3 years      10%

4 years      10%
5+ years    11%
10+ years   6%

Q2) How did you find out about CitC?
Friend            76%
Website          4%
Yellow Pages <1%

Advertising      3%

Referred         16%

Q3) Have you found CitC to be a friendly and welcoming congregation to be part of?
Strong yes    37%
Yes              54%
No               7%
Strong No     2%

Music
Q4) Do you find the music and singing at CitC encouraging and enjoyable?
Strong yes      53%
Yes                41%
No                 4%
Strong No       2%

Q5) Do you think the style of music at CitC connects and works with most people you know?
Strong Yes      36%
Yes                52%
No                 9%
Strong No       3%

Q6) How much singing should we be doing at CitC?
Much more       3%
Little More       27%
It’s about right 67%
A little Less      3%
Much less         0%

Our service
Q7) Do you think our Sunday night gatherings succeed in helping people genuinely engage with God?
Strong Yes      47%
Yes                48%
No                 3%
Strong No       2%

Q8) Do you think our Sunday night gatherings succeed in helping people genuinely engage with each other?
Strong Yes      15%
Yes                60%
No                 20%
Strong No       5%

Preaching
Q9) Overall the preaching at CitC is encouraging and challenging.
Strong Yes      72%
Yes                25%
No                 2%
Strong No       1%

Q10) Overall the preaching at CitC is easy to follow.
Strong Yes     55%
Yes               40%
No                3%
Strong No      2%

Q11) Overall the preaching at CitC is faithful to the Bible.
Strong Yes    82%
Yes 1           6%
No             <1%

Strong No    1%

Q12) Overall the preaching at CitC connects well with me.
Strong Yes    56%
Yes              37%
No               6%
Strong No     1%

Q13) Would the preaching ‘style’ and content connect well with your friends & family?
Strong Yes    24%
Yes              56%
No               17%
Strong No     3%

Feeling connected and cared for
Q14) CitC is a place where I feel I am connected well with people?
Strong Yes    24%
Yes              47%
No               25%
Strong No     4%

Q15) At CitC I don’t really know how to connect with others and/or I know very few people.
Strong Yes    8%
Yes              31%
No               42%
Strong No     19%

Q16) I consider CitC to be a place where people genuinely care for each other.
Strong Yes    28%
Yes              60%
No               11%
Strong No     1%

Q17) I find it easy to find out what is happening at CitC and that information is communicated well about what is going on.
Strong Yes    49%
Yes              40%
No               9%
Strong No     2%

Being involved in CitC
Q18) I understand the purpose of our Sunday gatherings.
Strong Yes    61%
Yes              34%
No               4%
Strong No    <1%

Q19) I feel I am involved in building Christ’s kingdom at CitC.
Strong Yes    27%
Yes              46%
No               22%
Strong No     4%

Q20) I regularly feel encouraged to get involved in serving at church.
Strong Yes    29%
Yes              44%
No               23%
Strong No     5%

Q21) There are things that I would like to be doing more of at CitC but I’m not sure how to go about it.
Strong Yes    15%
Yes              21%
No               46%
Strong No     18%

This year
Q22) I have grown in my love and understanding of Jesus through my involvement with CitC.
Strong Yes    48%
Yes              36%
No              14%
Strong No    2%

Q23) I have been shown clearly how the gospel applies to my life.
Strong Yes    54%
Yes              35%
No               7%
Strong No     3%

Q24) I financially support Crossroads.
Regularly         31%
Sometimes       18%
Irregularly        22%
Not at all         11%
Yet to organise18%

Thinking of others
Q25) Do you think we generally conduct our meetings and events in such a way so as to make the gospel attractive and compelling for those who don’t yet know Christ?
Strong Yes    30%
Yes              57%
No               11%
Strong No     3%

Q26) Would you be happy to invite your friends or family along to CitC?
Strong Yes    41%
Yes              44%
No               11%
Strong No     3%

Q27) Have you asked any of your friends or family what are not Christian to come along to church with you this year?
Yes    58%
No     42%

Generally
Q28) Do you think CitC is a place where a hunger and love for God is experienced, encouraged and modelled?
Strong Yes    49%
Yes              43%
No               5%
Strong No     3%

Q29) Do you think CitC is a place where a love for others is experienced, encouraged and modelled?
Strong Yes    26%
Yes              61%
No               11%
Strong No     2%

Q30) Do you think the facilities that we use for CitC are suitable?
Strong Yes   44%
Yes             49%
No              6%
Strong No    1%

Q31) Do you find the 6:30-8pm Sunday night timeslot is one that works well for you?
Agree                  71%
Prefer earlier      19%
Prefer later         9%
Earlier & later     1%

Q32) Do you come to pre-church coffee?
Regularly      15%
Sometimes    32%
Hardly ever   24%
Never been   30%

Q33) Do you hang around and talk to people after church?
Regularly     61%
Sometimes   31%
Hardly ever  6%
Never been  2%

Q34) Do you plan to be involved and committed to CitC in 2009?
Yes            73%
No             7%
Unsure       21%

So, what do you think?

A couple of survey thoughts...and results.

I’ve got to admit I’m generally not too crazy about surveys. They’re inevitably restrictive in that my answer never seems to be listed as one of the options. Also they are impersonal…I don’t like becoming a statistic. So trying do an anonymous ‘personal’ survey at church made me rather nervous. And yes the survey was deliberately restrictive. We didn’t want to fall into the ‘me-church’ problem (see previous video post) where we find out what people do or don’t like and then seek to accommodate everyone’s wish list. This would have been a disastrous mistake. Can you image Jesus handing out ‘felt need’ surveys? Can you imagine the apostles running little focus groups to work out how to make their ministry more fun and happy for everyone?

Truth and love and the glory of God are the things that should be driving all that we do in Church and all that we do as Christians. So we wanted to survey how we think we are going as a community in view of the Biblical picture of how church should be. And also survey how ‘you’ think you are going as an individual in our congregation. Now this is hard to do and kind of sets us up for a fall. But I think what we did on Sunday night, combined with our discussion groups was a very helpful exercise.

We are still distilling all the info but let me share with you a couple of the results.

We asked two questions relating to our Sunday night gatherings and genuine engagement.

Do you think our Sunday night gatherings succeed in helping people genuinely engage with God?
Strong Yes 47%
Yes 48%
No 3%
Strong No 2%

Do you think our Sunday night gatherings succeed in helping people genuinely engage with each other?
Strong Yes 15%
Yes 60%
No 20%
Strong No 5%

Now in some ways you could sum up what church is all about under these themes. If we are genuinely engaging with God and each other then we’re likely to be ‘growing followers of Jesus’. So what do these results show?
Well clearly most people think we do a good job of the first, and significantly less feel we succeed in the second, and perhaps succeed as well.
It shows us there is difference of opinion amongst us about these issues. One in twenty don’t think people are being helped to genuinely engaging with God at church. One in four don’t think we are good at helping people engage well with each other.

Now of course what these results don’t show us is why people think like this…and there’s the problem with surveys.
Further info will follow as we go through all the results. But overall people seemed very pleased we spent some time doing our Spring review. 

Thanks guys for putting your thoughts into all this. 

Feel free to add your comments about how you found the whole process.

Me Church

Here's the video we played at church last Sunday night...for your enjoyment, and perhaps a little more.