Top 5%
Interesting side panel in this month’s REV magazine.
REVEAL, an initiative within the Willow Creek Association utilizes research tools and discoveries to help churches better understand spiritual growth in their congregations.
REVEAL establishes a spiritual vitality score for each church in its database based on three areas of spiritual activity: (1) faith in action (evangelism, serving,) (2) personal spiritual practices (prayer, Bible reading), and (3) the church’s role (activities, congregant needs), churches that score over 85 are in the top 5 percent of the database.
Not sure if their list of 15 highlighted churches is a sampling of a whole but what stood out (for me) was the discovery of churches that were not on the list. Of course, this could just mean that those churches were not in their database.
The smallest church to make the list was The Citadel of Faith in Detroit, Michigan with a weekend adult attendance of 220.
The largest church to make the list was Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas with a weekend adult attendance of 9000.
We can ask Brad to blog officially as to why two churches in Detroit made the top list (Christian Gospel Center Church of God in Christ with a weekend adult attendance of 350).
Our church only makes lists called “The Wall of Shame.” We’ll keep trying.
I’ve always believed I was in the top 5% … just never knew exactly what it was.
Do the top 5% get a special place in heaven?
I could take a stab at it, but I’m really not sure. I imagine some of it has to do with where the current pastors did their internships, like the African American guy at the Outreach gig in San Diego. He interned at Willow Creek or Saddleback or something.