The Art of Leadership Network. Well, hey, leaders, before we jump into today's conversation with Warren

Bird and Adele Banks, I've got David Kinneman here, CEO of the Barna Group, and we are going to talk

about a state of the church update. And today, David, I want to ask you about the state of church

engagement. You've got some new research, and we want to share

it with leaders, because as we learn, we all grow together. So what are you discovering about

engagement? Well, I've heard you say before, Carrie, that engagement is the new attendance

and a great way to measure an effectiveness in ministry.

And we have done a study among pastors asking them a very similar question.

And we asked them to choose between two different options.

We asked them of the two statements, which comes closer to what you believe.

And the first was attendance and size are a good metric for measuring the success of a church versus, number two, depth of engagement and commitment are a good metric for measuring the

success of a church. Now, in our surveys, I sort of said number one, number two, but we always

rotate randomly the ways in which those are presented. Right, in case people have a bias

toward like, well, I always do the first answer.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So, and I always think about sort of the false dichotomy, sometimes survey researchers put

together because obviously attendance and, you know, engagement can be good measures.

But essentially, what we found was pretty surprising was that 92% more than nine out of

10 senior pastors say that depth of engagement and commitment are a good metric for measuring

the success of a church. Maybe they've been listening to you, Carrie, but only eight percent.

You know, I was talking with my team the other day. I'm like, I remember the first post,

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