Jim Collins said, the difference between Good and Great is how you confront the brutal facts. You can’t confront them if you don’t know them.

Every five years the National Church Life Survey (NCLS) conducts a survey into church life and mission in Australia. Previously they have done some great work tracking the effectiveness of church planting.

The latest NCLS findings are due out soon. I’ll read them with interest.

Here’s my wish list for the NCLS or any research into church life and mission health and progress:

1. Generational growth

Most surveys focus on single local churches. Are they growing or declining? What’s the age range of attenders? Who has come to faith?

Mildly interesting stuff.

What would get me on the edge of my seat are some questions like these:

Has this church started a new church in the last twelve months?

Have any of the new churches started new churches?

I’m not concerned if the church has a membership of five for five thousand—I want to know where are the churches with children, grand children and great grandchildren. Show me some four generation churches and I’ll be happy.

2. Variations within the same denominations

The NCLS provides figures on the various denominations—Anglican, Baptist, Uniting etc. They tell us something, but not a lot.

Show me the difference in vitality and growth between say the Sydney Anglicans, who are evangelicals, and the Perth Anglicans who are not. Are the Sydney Anglicans multiplying churches or just planting them? Why?

Let’s compare the evangelical St Matthew’s Anglican church with the rest of the Perth diocese. What’s the difference and why?

What about the Baptists in NSW who are evangelical, who have a strategy to plant churches, and have committed good leaders to pursue it? Let’s compare their progress with say, the Baptists in Victoria, my home state.

A few years ago the BUV had just two churches that had planted churches in the previous five years, Crossway, my home church and Lilydale Baptist, which has fallen on hard times.

These variations have more to do with orthodoxy of belief and effectiveness of practice rather than geography.

3. The ratio that counts

I’d like to know what the ratio of churches is to the growing Australian population.

In 1991, using NCLS figures, I estimated it was one church to very 1561 people. In 2001 it was one to every 1800 people. I’ve not been able to get the figures from the NCLS for 2006, I suspect was around one to 2000 people. Where are we now?

Church leaders in Australia are flying blind on one of the most important indicators of progress in our mission.

4. The Pentecostals

Since 1977 the Australian Christian Churches have been one of the fastest growing movements in the land.

Two years ago I suggested the rate of ACC growth may be slowing. The ACC has been moving to a model of consolidation around successful multisite churches, rather than continuing an aggressive church planting strategy.

I’d like to be wrong, but since my prediction ACC figures have become hard to come by. That normally points to a plateau or decline.

5. The emerging-missional communities

For years we’ve had the critique. We’ve had the claims that, while the existing church can only reach 9% of the population in Australia, the emerging-missional communities are going after the 91%.

So how are they doing? Are they seeing new disciples, new groups forming, new churches started of any shape or form? Are they multiplying disciples and communities? Or are they lost in a missional fog? Show me the people.

6. The exceptions

Will the survey show us the unexpected outcomes—good or bad? What churches and denominations are collapsing?

I don’t think the Uniting Church counts it’s people any more. I don’t think it wants to face just how bad things are.

What churches or movements are seeing unexpected progress. What new groups are out connecting with people, sharing the gospel, making disciples, and multiplying communities of Jesus’ followers?

Perhaps I expect too much from the NCLS and participating churches. Then again, how carefully do you track your money? Do you know your financial status? Do you have a budget? Do warning bells ring and red lights flash when you’re dangerously close of bankruptcy? So, if it’s important to track financial key indicators, why not key indicators for the progress of the gospel?

More than 40 percent of the people on earth today are Christians, and their number is growing more rapidly than that of any other major faith. In The Triumph of Christianity, acclaimed religious and social historian Rodney Stark explains how an obscure Jewish sect became the largest, most thriving religion in the world.

In Stark’s groundbreaking book The Rise of Christianity, he examined the early success of Christianity and how it conquered Rome. Now, in this much-anticipated volume, Stark tells a far more extensive story, beginning with the religious and social situation prior to the birth of Jesus and continuing to the present.

As it moves through six historical eras, The Triumph of Christianity gets right to Christianity’s most pivotal and controversial moments—often turning them on their heads.

“The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion” (Rodney Stark)

Here are the two commentaries on Acts I keep returning to.

“The Acts of the Apostles (Pillar New Testament Commentary)” (David G. Peterson)

“The Acts of the Apostles : A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary” (Ben Witherington)

Anyone else have recommendations?

Saffie the Wonderdog and I escaped last week to do some work on my next book.

Actually, Saffie hasn’t been much help. She sleeps in until 9am, has her morning nap at 11am and wakes up ready for a walk on the beach at 2pm.

It’s a dog’s life.

The next book is on Jesus and the rise of the early church. I’ve been revisiting some great titles. Here are the works of my two favourite contemporary authors on the topic.

“Early Christian Mission (2 Volume Set)” (Eckhard J. Schnabel)

“Paul the Missionary: Realities, Strategies and Methods” (Eckhard J. Schnabel)

“Jesus & the Rise of Early Christianity: A History of New Testament Times” (Paul Barnett)

“The Birth of Christianity: The First Twenty Years (After Jesus, Vol. 1)” (Paul Barnett)

“Paul, Missionary of Jesus: After Jesus, Vol. 2″ (Paul Barnett)

One of the last great efforts at state-sponsored atheism is a failure.

And not just any kind of failure. China has enforced its anti-religion policy through decades of repression, coercion and persecution, but the lack of success is spectacular, according to a major study.

The survey involved a random national sample of 7,021 people ages 16 and older in 56 locales throughout mainland China.

No more than 15 percent of adults in the world’s most populous country are “real atheists;” 85 percent of the Chinese either hold some religious beliefs or practice some kind of religion

The results find a middle ground between the official government figure of 100 million religious believers and extreme projections of growth that estimate the number of Christians has become as high as 130 million.

Among the findings:

• Buddhism is the largest religion in China, with about 18 percent, or 185 million people self-identifying as Buddhists. Another 31 percent of respondents reported having at least one Buddhist belief or participating in at least one Buddhist practice. More than 12 percent of Chinese Communist Party members self-identified as Buddhists.
• About 3.2 percent of the population, or 33 million adults, self-identified as Christians. Again, however, an additional 40 million people said they believed in the existence of Jesus Christ or participated in Christian activities.
• Among popular religious practices, the results indicate up to 754 million people practice ancestor worship, including attending and maintaining ancestral temples, venerating ancestor tablets at home or visiting graves to honor ancestral spirits. About 145 million people observed fengshui restrictions or consulted a fengshui master in the past year.

The actual numbers may be even higher. Religious affiliation still can have consequences in China, from loss of jobs to prison, so researchers note that participants may be reluctant even in an anonymous survey to identify with religion. That is a particular concern with faiths such as Christianity that have been special objects of attack by authorities.

None of the things we all believe about the megachurch is true.

Rodney Stark

Even with congregations of more than 1,000 members, the Baylor Religion Survey found that megachurches surprisingly are more intimate communities than small congregations of less than 100 members. Megachurch growth is mostly due to their members, who tend to witness to their friends, bringing them into the group, and witness to strangers, much more often than members of small churches.

When compared to small congregations, the survey found that megachurch members display a higher level of personal commitment by attending services and a Bible study group and tithing. They also are more likely to accept that heaven “absolutely” exists and that God rewards the faithful with major successes, are more convinced of the reality of evil, are far more given to having religious and mystical experiences, are significantly younger in age and are remarkably active in volunteer work (as much or more so than tiny churches).

“We think of them as these great, huge, cold religious gatherings with a symphony orchestra and a paid choir and a lot of hoopla and a lot of good tidings but no bad tidings,” Stark said. “It’s not true that it’s all happy talk. These people are as interested in evil and sin as anybody in any of the churches. Their levels of satisfaction are high, their volunteerism in community service is very high and their outreach efforts are absolutely phenomenal.”

“What Americans Really Believe” (Rodney Stark)

Dwight Marable has just published a field study of the principles that drive Movements. Here they are:

Intentional Reproduction: New converts participate in new, small churches and in turn reach out to their social networks and start more new churches.

Continual Training: Training is given in small pieces in the homes of believers, at the village well, or in the rice field. They learn enough to implement and do, and then they go and do just that.

Simple Leadership: All believers are active participants in all levels of church life, including baptisms and Lord’s Supper.

Relational Empowerment: Leaders work had to mentor all disciples interested in planting new churches. These relationships grow across generations of church planters, leading to large networks of experienced planters working to mentor the next group of leaders.

Strategic Networking: The focus of evangelism lies in communicating Christ to a network of people and not just to individuals.

Immediate Obedience: New concepts are taught at the moment of application and practice

Passionate Prayer: Leaders who spend considerable time passionately asking for God’s love and guidance as they spread the Christian message are rewarded for their devotion with growing churches and passionate disciples.

The full report is available to download.

Here’s a study that shows, if you attend church in Australia you are far more likely to be university educated.

So which is the chicken and which is the egg?

Albert Einstein came in at second place (16%).

83% responded that Jesus was a real figure from history. Of these believers 43% believed Jesus had miraculous powers and he was the Son of God.

2 in 5 Australians stated they actually practice a religion and only 27% do not believe in a God or universal power of any sort.

When times get tough, Aussies pray. 57% of Australians pray at various times during their lives and 29% pray daily.

The most common situations for prayer being when people are faced with challenging times (36%) or when a loved one has fallen ill (34%). However over 1 in 3 Australians also feel moved to pray when they are thankful for something good that has happened (34%)

When tough times come or bad things happen:
· 28% of Australians turn to God in their time of need, while 15% turn to Jesus.
· Only 6% of Australians turn to online friends and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

It’s reassuring to know that Jesus is outpolling Facebook and Twitter. Although I think he’s probably trailing Google as the preferred source of truth and wisdom.

What is remarkable about this new strain of Pentecostalism is the heroic intensity of the ministries, which have not yet evolved into tired bureaucracies. The founders of these programs are driven by a sense of calling, a feeling of thankfulness for how God has intervened in their personal lives, and they are constantly reinventing their programs in response to what they perceive to be the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Through their research, Miller and Yamamori found Pentecostalism, like early Methodism before it, often improves the lot of the poor. Typically the mother of the household converts first, followed by her children. If her husband follows he is more than likely to stop drinking, gambling, womanizing and becomes more engaged in family life. Household income rises and the whole family is better off.

Pentecostalism is a religion of the people. Again, like early Methodism and evangelicalism generally, it is the democratization of the faith. Everyone has direct access to God, the scriptures, and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Add to this a strong emphasis on the community of faith and human dignity, and social transformation is one of the unintended consequences.

Religion can be an opiate for the oppressed masses (Marx). More often evangelicalism in general, and Pentecostalism in particular, have proven to be powerful forces for change.

As Pentecostals become upwardly mobile—better educated and more affluent—they no longer see the world as a place from which to escape. They tend to want to make the world a better place to live.