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Semelhante a Adventist Personal Public Evangelism Research
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Adventist Personal Public Evangelism Research
- 1. The Effectiveness of Adventist Personal and Public Evangelism Alan Parker, D.Th Southern Adventist University
- 2. The Adventist Church • Fastest growing denomination in North America (1.42% annual growth) • However, much of this is among immigrant ethnic groups. • This study looks particularly at how the Adventist church is reaching non- immigrant populations through traditional evangelistic strategies of personal and public evangelism
- 3. The Adventist Church • A 2004 randomized survey of Adventist members asked them why they joined the church: – 59% brought up in Adventist home – 58% friend or relative – 49% reading of literature – 36% public evangelistic meetings – 34% Bible studies in the home
- 4. Research Question Who are we reaching with our traditional strategies of personal and public evangelism and what factors correlate with the greatest retention of interests?
- 5. The Funnel
- 6. Main Users of Disciples • Evangelistic Churches • Bible Workers • Professional Evangelists • Evangelism Training Schools (like SALT, AFCOE and NETS) • Occasionally, large media ministries
- 7. Overview of Research Method Phase I - Data Sorting and Metaanalysis 1. Divided data between personal evangelism (Bible studies) and public evangelism events (mainly prophecy seminars). Code and import into SPSS. 2. Eliminated meetings with few attendees 3. Eliminated meetings that lasted less than 3 nights 4. Delimited churches to those in U.S.
- 8. Limitations • In meta-analysis, we couldn’t always ensure we were comparing apples to apples • Limited options in advertising data • Data was not consistently entered
- 9. Phase 2 • Goal for phase 2 was to address these limitations - Compare results based on event length, event type, etc. • Use new data that includes baptism dates • Use SPSS for more detailed analysis
- 10. Overview of Research Method Phase III – Case Studies Do case studies on selected churches through interviews, analysis of membership records and thematic analysis of notes in Disciples.
- 12. The Funnel Sowing seeds Less seeds
- 15. Where do Bible study interests come from? 12,203 Bible Study Interests generated from: – Unknown (3,652) – Door-to-door surveys (2,942) – Bible study interest cards (1,670) – Colporteurs & Literature (970) – Friends, family and members (902) – Prophecy Seminar (711) – Media ministry interests (425) – Church and Sermon Appeals (363) – Health and Community Events (209)
- 16. Where do these Bible study interests come from? 45% 15% 11% 3% 6% 14% 6% Surveys Colporteurs Prophecy Health Media Friends/Fam Church
- 17. Follow-up Visit Type 80% 3% 15% 2% Personal Visit Letter Call Email
- 18. Bible Study Type 18% 22% 4% 56% In-home Drop-off Mail-in None
- 19. Bible Study Topics 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 Lesson 1 Lesson 2 Lesson 3 Lesson 4 Daniel 2 Bible 2nd Coming Origin of Evil Salvation
- 20. Age - Bible Studies 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 0-9 years 10-19 years 20-29 years 30-39 years 40-49 years 50-59 years 60-69 years 70+ years
- 21. Age - Bible Studies (7 visits) 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0-9 years 10-19 years 20-29 years 30-39 years 40-49 years 50-59 years 60-69 years 70+ years
- 22. Gender – Bible Studies Male - 39% Female - 61%
- 23. Gender Retention Women are also more likely than men to continue to receive Bible studies. By the 7th visit, men account for only 31% of Bible study interests.
- 24. Bible Study Retention 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 1-2 Visits 3-4 Visits 5+ Visits Survey Mail Card Colporteur Seminar Friend/Fam Media
- 25. Bible Study Retention 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 7+ Visits Survey Mail Card Colporteur Seminar Friend/Fam Media
- 27. Gender Differences 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 Male Female In-Home Drop-Off Mail-in
- 28. Retention of Bible Studies The following showed strong correlations with Bible study retention: • Friend or family member • Mail-in interest card • Female • Older than 50 or younger than 10
- 29. Bible Studies and Decisions 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 Christ Sabbath Baptism Survey Mail-in Card Seminar Friend/Fam Colporteur Other
- 30. Analyzing the Data • Surveys and mail-in cards get more Bible studies but less decisions. • Bible studies from prophecy seminars, friends, family and member contacts are much better at getting more difficult decisions (Sabbath and baptism).
- 33. Public Evangelism Retention Rates Prior studies of public evangelism reveal that 1-3 years following the series: 63% (those with no prior contact) to 93% (those who had prior contact) of new members remain in the church.
- 34. Public Evangelism Retention Rates Prior studies of public evangelism reveal that 1-3 years following the series: 63% (those with no prior contact) to 93% (those who had prior contact) of new members remain in the church.
- 35. Demographics • Adventist evangelism is effective at reaching lower middle-class and blue collar workers. • Adventist evangelism is effective at reaching nominal Christians of other faiths (2 out of 3 converts). • Catholicism is the most common background of those not raised in an Adventist church (20% of converts).
- 36. Demographics • Women are more likely than men to attend evangelistic meetings. Between 60-67% of attendees at meetings are women. • The number of young adults attending evangelistic meetings is declining.
- 37. Advertising • Handbills are traditionally more effective than radio and television ads (1991), but all forms of advertising are having a diminishing response (2000). • Those who have had prior contact with the Adventist church are much more likely to attend a meeting regularly and make a decision (2000).
- 38. Advertising • Handbills are traditionally more effective than radio and television ads (1991), but all forms of advertising are having a diminishing response (2000). • Those who have had prior contact with the Adventist church are much more likely to attend a meeting regularly and make a decision.
- 39. Baptism Rates • Initial baptisms of interests seems to be low. In ACTS 2000, 5% were baptized. • However, churches later reported additional baptisms that raised this percentage to 15%. • One-week “revival” meetings were not in the literature.
- 41. Advertising Effectiveness by Opening Night Attendance 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 Member Mail Friend Worker Poster Newspaper Radio
- 42. Attendance Per Site: Lead Source was Worker 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
- 43. Attendance Per Site: Member 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
- 44. Attendance Per Site: Friend 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
- 45. Attendance Per Site: Mail 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
- 46. Analysis • Greatest retention occurred when there was a more personal connection with a guest: – Bible worker 61% – Friend 55% – Member 48% – Non-personal methods – 40% or less retention rates
- 47. Analysis • Most common methods of advertising: – Members (invite others) – Mail – Friends • Less common methods: – Bible workers – TV – Newspaper – Posters – Radio
- 48. Advertising Effectiveness by Decisions 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 Member or Worker Mail Friend
- 49. Analysis • Baptism and Sabbath decisions are a combination of both personal and advertising recruitment – A significant number of Sabbath decisions are made by people recruited through mail advertising – But a relationship with a friend at the meetings is most likely to result in a baptism decision – Member and Bible worker connections have the best potential for Sabbath and baptism decisions
- 50. Demographics of Attendees at Prophecy Meetings 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 Age 0-9 Age 10-19 Age 20-29 Age 30-39 Age 40-49 Age 50-59 Age 60-69 Age 70+ Night 1 Night 7
- 51. Demographics of Attendees at Prophecy Meetings 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 Age 0-9 Age 10-19 Age 20-29 Age 30-39 Age 40-49 Age 50-59 Age 60-69 Age 70+ Night 16
- 52. Demographics of Attendees at Large Meetings (Media) 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 Age 0-9 Age 10-19 Age 20-29 Age 30-39 Age 40-49 Age 50-59 Age 60-69 Age 70+ Night 15
- 53. Analysis of Demographics • Evangelistic meeting attendance and retention is best for those ages 50 and older. Do we need to take a longer term approach with this age group? • What can we do for the 20-40 year olds that will enable us to better reach this age group?
- 55. Opening Night Topics 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 Night 1 Night 2 Night 3 Daniel 2 Signs Revelation Overview Validity Bible GC Salvation
- 57. Gender Disparity - Prophecy 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 Night 1 Night 7 Night 16 Female Male
- 58. Gender – All Events 42% 58% Male Female
- 61. Factors Leading to Retention • Prior interest in prophecy • Older than 50 • Larger meetings (over 100 registrations) • Shorter meetings • Prior SDA connections or Bible studies
- 62. Moving Forward • Yes, traditional methods of personal and public evangelism still work, BUT • We need to examine the effectiveness of print advertising • We need to experiment with non- traditional forms of evangelism • We need to experiment with creative events to reach both younger and older audiences
Notas do Editor
- We got our data from a program called Disciples. Disciples is a pre-work and attendance-tracking software program that many churches and schools of evangelism have been using over the years. This program allows for identifying how the person was first contacted, what kind of pre-work was done with them, what advertising they responded to, which events they attended, and what decisions they made. The program also includes other demographic information. Using Disciples gave us access to over 100,000 names from about 450 churches to use in our study.
- Dr. Parker
- Had no ability to specify type of meetings. We had prophecy events mixed with data not relevant to our study (e.g., church attendance, random events user recorded attendance for). Software didn’t allow users to select multiple options (e.g., if a person came through a handbill and a friend, user could only select one of them) Users were usually Bible workers or church members who entered in info that was relevant to them rather than full information that we would have liked to have seen.
- Chelsy (after 1st bullet) We also know when people were baptized and when they joined the church. This added data will further inform our extended analysis.
- Dr. Parker
- Bottom line: the greater the database of names, the greater chance of baptisms
- The first area we looked at was the area of Bible studies.
- 12,203 Bible Study Contacts. This is the largest study every conducted on Bible study interests and is pretty ground-breaking, as there is almost no information on this area in Adventism.
- Though we don’t know where all of our Bible study interests came from, we at least know that a large number came from door-to-door surveys. This is likely due to Bible schools’ requirement for students to do door-to-door work. Surprisingly, what this tells us is that door-to-door work is still effective at generating interests, even though none of us particularly likes it!
- A graphic picture is helpful here. You can see how surveys are the main source, probably because of the schools of evangelism. But it also suggests that we are better at “stranger evangelism” than at friendship evangelism. About 60% of these contacts are door contacts. About 14% through church events, 6% through media interests from those watching television and just 20% through personal contacts.
- When these interests are received, then a follow-up is initiated. We call these follow-ups visits. Most of these visits take place at the door. However, 15% follow up with a
- About half the time, the visit is not successful and no Bible study is able to be initiated (may be skewed by lack of data input). About 18% of the time a person is able to get a sit-down Bible study in the home. Or they convert it into something called a drop-off where the Bible study is dropped off at their home each week, but they don’t sit down and go through it. In a small number of cases, the studies get mailed to them.
- These are the top five Bible study topics. Obviously, the first few lessons are presented the most often, so I looked at the breakdown of topics by the first four lessons. Daniel 2 is by far the most popular. Then the Bible is a distant second. The second coming and the origin of evil are popular in the beginning, but by lesson 4, the most popular topic is salvation.
- We only have age data for about half of our Bible Study Contacts, but for those interests where we do have age, we see a pretty even spread, especially in the 20-60 year age range. This was frankly surprising. We expected to see a largely older group. Perhaps a result of having younger students doing recruiting at doors. However, this age pattern did change as time progressed.
- There was a noticeable drop off in the 20-40 year age group. The most consistent group was the 50+ group and the under 10 age group (although the numbers were small here).
- When we examined gender (and we had about 80% of the data here, so it’s pretty reliable), 61% of Bible study contacts were female. Is this a matter of more women being at home and being available? Is it a matter of greater spiritual interest among women? Is it because women are more open to strangers? We don’t know. But this gender disparity is pretty consistent across all the research we did.
- 57% of survey interests do not make it past the first two visits suggesting a very high rate of drop off for these kinds of leads. However, family and friend leads and mail-in Bible study cards do much better. About 40% of all friend and family leads and 38% of Bible study cards will have 5 or more Bible study visits, compared to just 18-23% for other lead sources.
- You can see here that by the seventh visit, the numbers have largely evened out, but mail-in cards are now the number 1 source of Bible study interests. Surveys are still important but many have dropped away. Family and friend interests have stabilized the most.
- Interests generated by friends show a remarkable conversion rate to in-home Bible studies. Whereas surveys seem to convert easily to a drop-off, but also have a fairly good conversion rate to an in-home Bible study. Bible Study Interest Cards seem to do better at being converted into a drop-off rather than an in-home study (probably because they were expecting it in the mail). Media interests have a fair chance (a little over 1 in 4) of being converted into an in-home study or drop-off. Colporteur interests seem better suited to drop-off. Prophecy meetings have a less than 1-5 chance of being converted into any kind of study.
- There were also some gender differences here. While women were more open to Bible studies in general, they seemed to prefer drop-offs to in-home Bible studies. This could be related to the fear of having someone come into their home or perhaps the gender of the person doing the personal visit.
- These four factors most strongly correlated with Bible study retention.
- Many decisions were not recorded, but of those that were, we can definitely see trends. A good number of those who were recruited through surveys and mail-in cards made decisions for Christ. But far less made decisions for the Sabbath and baptism. However, prophecy seminars and friend and family studies (where there is much greater personal contact) allowed for stronger appeals and decisions.
- So to summarize …
- Chelsy
- According to Sahlin (2008), traditional public evangelism in the Adventist church has usually sustained high retention rates of converts. The NET ’95, ’96, and ’98 evangelistic meetings displayed a high retention rate with 85% of baptisms still attending church 18 to 24 months after baptism. In the Pennsylvania Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, of those who were baptized or made a profession of faith in 1997, 72% were still attending local Adventist churches two to three years later. A follow-up study on the ACTS 2000 meetings (332 baptisms and professions of faith) showed high retention rates as well. However, the retention rate of those who joined solely because of the meetings was much lower than that of those who had prior contact with the church (63% versus 93%).
- 49% of new Adventists eventually leave (2016 report). 70% of young adults in the NAD eventually leave. This suggests that public evangelism (conversion growth) has greater retention than biological growth.
- In the past, traditional evangelistic methods have greater success in reaching younger adults. According to the Southern Union Public Evangelism Research Project (1991), the majority (54%) of non-Adventists who responded to evangelistic ads and attended meetings between 1985-1991 were under the age of 40. However, after follow up of the NET ’95 and ’96 evangelistic meetings, younger adult converts were not as prevalent, as the median age of those baptized was 43. converts after ACTS 2000 were mostly middle-aged (average age of 44) (Sahlin 2008). Over time, Adventist public evangelism appears to be trending older. This was also consistent with our study which showed that most public evangelistic meetings were more successful among older age groups.
- In a survey of new members who joined the Adventist church after the ACTS 2000 meetings, many had prior contact with an Adventist church. The majority (61%) were attending an Adventist church before the meetings began. The types of advertising that new members responded to were an announcement at church (34%), a personal invitation by a friend (27%), watching It Is Written (27%), invitation by a pastor (23%), and direct mail (23%) (Sahlin 2008).
- Our study showed that members were the most important recruiting method (43%), followed by direct mail (29%), friend (19%) and Bible worker (3%). The importance of television, radio and newspaper was diminished, compared to large media meetings, like ACTS 2000. However handbills continue to a primary means of attracting a crowd to evangelistic events. In our analysis, we were able to look at the retention rates of the various kinds of advertising methods. However, we also faced a limitation in that the software only allowed for one advertising option to be selected. Since this was unlikely to be the case, with many attendees probably hearing of the event through multiple sources, we do not know the true percentage response of the different advertising types. It’s likely, though, that if listed handbill on their registration form, that this would be their primary means of initial contact.
- ACTS 2000 shed additional light on the likelihood of baptisms after a large evangelistic campaign. Of the approximately 1926 interests who registered at the meetings, only about 5% (n = 97) were baptized immediately after the meetings. Even among the small proportion of registrants rated as “good interests” (28%), only 20% (n = 65) of these were baptized. Thus, this large-scale evangelistic event had a very low conversion rate. However, churches that participated in ACTS 2000 seemed to have some continued success after the meetings, recording a total of 332 baptisms and professions of faith (Sahlin 2008).
- Only interests, and only one category chosen. Some categories were barely used (newspaper and radio). Email and social media were only included in one or two specialized meetings and are therefore not statistically relevant.
- Worker retention was excellent.
- Members and Guests
- Members and Guests
- Email and social media advertising were not included as categories in the software except for one or two specialized meetings
- Not all decisions are recorded. Green – Sabbath Blue – Baptism Many workers are also listed as members
- Numbers of other decisions were too small to be statistically significant
- We only have age data for 35% of attendees. However, this seems to be fairly representative based on my personal experience. You can clearly see how the demographics are older, with the 50-70 age group most well-attended. In general, attendance will drop by about 40% by night 7 for most age groups except for retirees and school-going ages. 63% of attendees are 40 years or older. This is a huge shift from thirty years ago where the average age of an attendee was under 40 and where consistency was much higher.
- By Night 14, the retirees are still extremely consistent and the greatest drop off is among the 30-39 age group.
- Large Media Meetings seem to have the greatest drop in the 20-29 age group by the end of 14 nights. In general only about 1/3 of all interests are attending by this far into the meetings.
- Even though the older groups tend to stick around, they’re least likely to make a decision because they already have their own church, they’re set in their ways, etc. Instead of trying to get them to make a decision during or by the end of the public meeting (which usually only lasts a few weeks), churches may have to consider doing something longer term (like 6 months or more), recognizing that older groups won’t actually make a decision in 4 weeks. We should instead plant seeds in their hearts and water them until they’re ready to make a decision further down the road.
- However, this represented only 10% of the data and most Hispanic meetings did not record ethnicity at all, so likely there were a greater number of Hispanics than the data suggests. However, the large majority of the meetings were held in traditionally Caucasian churches.
- Traced to see if there was a substantial dropoff depending on which night topic was chosen. However, there was no statistical significance for retention no matter the topic. The
- 62% of the opening night audience for Prophecy Meetings is female, but males show a slightly greater consistency. Prophecy meetings are better at reaching males than are in-home Bible studies.
- Prophecy meetings are in harmony with all the events we studied in terms of gender disparity.
- Health Events however showed the greatest disparity
- While revivals showed the least
- Dr. Parker