By John Cole

Oh what a gift the Lord should gie us
to see ourselves as others see us.

(Burns)

If anyone expresses concern about what non-churchgoers think of the church, the churchgoers themselves tend to react in one of two ways:

Either they will say ‘’They don't understand about Christianity and so their opinion doesn’t count." - which begs the question, "If they really don’t understand about Christianity, what are we doing about it?’’

Or they will say "If it matters so much what other people think of us, how can we find out?’’

We can find out, but with difficulty, by listening. Perceptive listening, as many people are recognising these days, is quite a sophisticated art-form. Worse still, many of us are quite badly out of practice, if the only company we keep is people who broadly share our opinions!

There are two main problems: 1. People will normally only tell us what they think we want to hear - and for good reason. It is often hard enough for any of us to express how we feel even to ourselves, let alone a stranger. 2. It is all too easy for us as listeners only to hear what we expect to hear - or want to hear, or can cope with emotionally.

We will be taking a closer look at some of these ‘barriers’ to communication in the next chapter.

Meanwhile, in spite of these difficulties, there may be some worthwhile things we can do: two of the simplest have already been mentioned (in chapter one):

1. Meeting people in places where they feel relaxed and getting into conversation with them - e.g. in the local pub.

2. Making a video or sound/slide sequence about the locality.

Not everyone has the gift of enabling other people to talk freely. It demands great informality and patience. Any nerves or the impression that the relationship is being forced will lead the other person to clam up immediately or else voice predictable platitudes.

The person prompting the conversation will almost certainly have to win acceptance and be fully integrated into the group or ‘tribe’ where the conversation is taking place. We cannot expect to go in as an external examiner.

The sheer fun of playing with the technology - video-camera or tape-recorder - may be enough to break down these barriers. The result might be some fairly genuine comments on what people feel about life in their locality, about the place of the churches within it and the importance of religion in their lives.

The third option is, of course, some kind of questionnaire or survey of opinion. This is a tool to be used with caution.

Mounting a survey of non-churchgoers can often prick the consciences of church members on social issues. This is good, provided the local church has the resources to do something useful or knows how to collaborate with others. The danger is that it leads the local congregation to become over-stretched or even diverted from its God-given task.

Churches are often advised to ‘let the world set the agenda’. This is not strictly correct. God at work in his world must set the agenda. Listening to others fulfils a significant part but by no means the whole of our need to listen to him.

The most effective questionnaires are those mounted within the congregation or among its fringe members, where a degree of goodwill can be assumed - and where there is some opportunity to explain why the survey is being conducted.

It might be possible to poll say 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 of non-churchgoing households for comparison - if these can be identified! However, the questions to the non-churchgoer would need to be very simple and the significance of the results could easily be over-estimated.

Typical questions to non-churchgoers might include:

If you can explain that you understand why some may prefer not to answer, try including the following:

(N B. A disconcerting national statistic suggests that regular prayer is more widespread among non-churchgoers than churchgoers!)

Obviously this kind of questionnaire should be anonymous.

For churchgoers and fringers something far more elaborate is possible. Questions can be included about:

Avoid questions that are so general that people are forced to write an essay in reply. Few will bother! - though you might find that the Holy Spirit has prompted someone to write you an epistle of biblical significance!

On the other hand avoid questionnaires where people only have to tick boxes and have no opportunity to contribute their original thinking.

Multiple choice questions. where you have prescribed the possible answers, will probably draw the biggest response (although they can look very lengthy); but the results will be blinkered, artificially limited by the range of options you gave people in the first place.

‘Tick in a box’ questionnaires are the easiest to collate and are ideal for processing by computer. But written statements in answer to ‘open’ questions can be the most fascinating and fruitful.

There is little point in attempting to collate responses to ‘open’ questions in a statistical way. The comment of just one person could well be enough to give you a totally fresh perspective on church life. Lists of comments on questionnaire forms are best treated as if you are ‘panning for gold’; the more eye catching, the more unexpected, even the more puzzling an answer is, the more likely it is to be saying something important.

Keys to the success of a questionnaire:

1. A balance of multiple-choice and ‘open’ questions - as discussed above.

2. Good levels of pre-publicity explaining the purpose of the exercise and the kind of lessons church people hope to learn.

3. A well thought out system for the distribution and collection of the survey forms.

Even though it is normal for people to be invited to reply anonymously to questionnaires, the best way to elicit a response is to deliver it personally to a named person.

The personal visit - usually to people who are already known to have some feeling of involvement with the life of the church - can be as important as the questionnaire itself.

Visitors need to be briefed:

A good pattern might be to stage a ‘Review Day’ two or three weeks after the forms have been collected, perhaps on a Sunday, following on directly after the morning service and continuing over lunch. An outside consultant is almost certainly needed to help the local church to design the programme for such a day and perhaps also to take charge of proceedings.

The biggest danger with questionnaires (as with the whole ‘Mission Audit’ process - see chapter one) is that they tend to encourage the squirrel mentality.

Questions are asked without regard for whether anything significant can be learned from the answers, or even without stopping to consider whether the questioner already has the answers.

Either way we are wasting the time of the person who receives the questionnaire and the whole exercise is brought into disrepute.

Beware the sort of questions which ask how many televisions there are in the household, or how far it is to the nearest fish and chip shop! Professional pollsters might be able to compare local results with national statistics. Local churches certainly cannot.

In any information-seeking exercise, we need to remember that local churches, like most organisations, are very good at collecting information - if they set their mind to it! They are, however, much less good at reflecting on the significance of the information they have collected and even less good at reaching corporate decisions on how to act on it!