Measure the spiritual state of your members

Are You Making A Difference?

Knowing is Better Than Hoping

Do you know for certain that you are making a difference in the lives of the people you serve?

Whether we are talking about
church members’ spiritual lives
or community members physical needs...

Whether you are a church
or a social service agency:

You have people you are reaching. Are they helped? Are their lives changed?

We church folk like to think we are doing good. Maybe we have someone come and tell us how much we helped them. From that we assume we have done all we can do and cannot “do good” any better.

But what of the people we do not hear from? Were they helped?



	A semi-independent ministry provided social opportunities to mid-life single Christians. Most of these people were over 45 and had been through a divorce. Unfortunately, there is a tremendous need in every city for ministries like this. This singles ministry had a number of avid participants. These 20 or 30 folks came to all the events and often expressed how much they gained from the group. Obviously this ministry helped these people immensely. But the ministry had a mailing list of over 300 people. Where were the other 270 or more? Why did they not come to meetings and events? Where did the singles ministry fail them? No one in the ministry asked them. No one even noticed that hundreds of people came once or twice and never came back. Maybe this ministry could not have done anything better. But likely there are hundreds of people in need whose needs are not met because that ministry never assessed what they could do better.



	Do you know that you are making a difference? Do you know if you’re doing everything you can possibly do? How do you know?

We Christians often assume that because we are doing God’s work, it must be the best possible. But we are people. We can always do better.

We can’t just assume that by doing the same thing we’ve always done or doing whatever comes to mind first, that it is the best, most effective thing to do.

God has given us science as a way to find Truth in physics, medicine, and other fields. We need to use the same scientific methods to help our ministries become better.

We can become better at doing good when we use the methods of social science that are already used in secular agencies and businesses to make their efforts more effective and more efficient.

We are not being good stewards of the financial resources given to us by God if we blindly guess at what to do, who to serve, and how to serve them.



	Research solutions from Community Empowerment Research can help you be more effective, more efficiently— whether you want your social outreach, spiritual training, evangelism, or discipleship to be better.