New Study Reveals Top Church Priorities
Discipleship and evangelism emphasized among church leaders
A new study conducted by The Barna Group revealed the ministry priorities that Protestant churches have for the coming year. Not one priority was selected by even half of the church senior pastors who were surveyed.
The top three listed priorities were discipleship and spiritual development with 47 percent, evangelism and outreach with 46 percent and preaching with 35 percent.
Other priorities emphasized by the church leaders included congregational care efforts such as visitation and counseling (24%), worship (19%); ministry to teenagers and young adults (17%); missions (15%); community service (15%); ministry to children (13%); and congregational fellowship (11%).
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Ministry to families and prayer was listed as the lowest priorities with four and three percentages, respectively.
While half of all white churches listed discipleship at the top, 67 percent of black churches placed evangelism as their dominant priority. Mainline churches also chose discipleship as their highest priority while baptist churches placed their emphasis on evangelism.
More female pastors (65%) found discipleship to be a top priority than male pastors (46%).
Larger churches, in comparison to smaller churches, also placed evangelism at the top of their priority list.
"While there are certainly distinctions worthy of note, what really stands out is the consistency of the profile of priorities among pastors of vastly different church backgrounds and perspectives," said George Barna. "Church size, regional location, doctrinal leaning, pastoral age and even pastoral gender produced surprisingly few major differences. This may reflect the similar emphasis that most pastors receive in their pastoral training. At the same time, it also suggests that it would be quite unlikely to see a significant shift in ministry priorities among the nation’s churches. What we have in place today is likely to remain relatively static for the foreseeable future, unless a confluence of leadership, events and resources emerges to alter the prevailing perspectives and habits of our Protestant churches."
