Product Description

What would draw the people of your surrounding community into your church? Want to know about the kind of fund-raising that would work best for your church? How does your church compare to others around the nation? With a number of sample surveys and clear, easy-to-understand instructions on how to conduct quality research, you have all the tools you need to find these answers and more for your church!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #702150 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 175 pages

Max Lucado, Oak Hills Church of Christ
The possibilities of research-based (rather than hunch-based) decisions are exciting.

Leith Anderson, Wooddale Church
The Gallup Guide is comprehensive and compelling—teaching every detail about how to diagnose a church and community.

Morris H. Chapman, Southern Baptist Convention
The Gallup Guide makes invaluable survey tools accessible to enable biblically grounded, visionary, congregational leaders to know their audiences.

Customer Reviews

Teach yourself to listen to your church members!
This book is filled with good information about where people are these days. The first chapters are a summary of research done by the famous research company. Did you know that George Gallup is a believer? He also makes religious research a major part of his work.

This book will help you learn how to minister to the people in ways you may have never thought about before listening to them. Research is an important way to serve--one of the important needs of people is to be listened to and heard. This book will teach you how to do surveys and questionnaires that will help you in ministry. There are even survey examples with permission to copy them and use them yourself.

Good polling, but didn't suit...
I don't know why I was expecting more from this book. It has 10 very good surveys that can be used by the reader to poll inside or outside a church or other faith-based organization. But somehow with all their data, none of them fit what we needed. I got much more out of "Surprising Insights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them" by Thom S. Rainer. It also has several polls in the back, but they are targeted toward what we are trying to do: find out where our congregation is at in their faith journey and where need to grow to reach the unchurched.

This book does shine in the opening and closing chapters on how to conduct a poll and analyze the results. Invaluable information here. If you are planning to poll outside your church or synagogue then there are several surveys that may interest you. If you are preparing for a new pastor, there is an excellent survey to derive the current needs of the church. But overall, this one didn't fit us or the need to pulse our congregation as it is now.

A must read for church leaders considering a survey
The Gallup Guide is informative and gives one all the tools they need to successfully survey the congregation. The chapter on the Lay of the Land is packed full of details about individual spirituality and people's perceptions and needs of the church. The data points that the church of the future will be shaped by the laity taking and increase role in discerning the will of God for the church and their lives. In the chapters that follow all the details to completing and analyzing a survey is concisely laid out in an easy to follow manner. This book even contains ten reproducible surveys. After reading this book I had everything I needed to successfully survey my congregation. In addition it is great to read a book written by Michael Lindsay and George Gallup because they are leaders in their churches and realize that this book is only a tool in discerning God's will for the church. I highly recommend this book to any church leader.