Thursday, August 16, 2007

Edwin Friedman on Church Surveys

Here is a hilariously true quote from Edwin Friedman about church surveys. This is from a speech he gave:
So what they do is they poll the congregation and I’m sure you all know here when a vestry or a session or a board of trustees is incapable, doesn’t have the courage to take positions, they always do the same thing. They poll the congregation. So what they did was they sent out this huge questionnaire. And they asked everybody in the congregation what you liked about the minister, what you didn’t like, what you liked about the congregation, what you didn’t like. And they correlated all this material together. And I got invited and I said you know this church still has a money problem and I can solve it for you. There are 350,000 church units in America. If you would send this around to every church in America and just charge them $5.00, $10.00, whatever, and say to them, look this questionnaire contains every question and every answer that any church has ever asked and when you have to do a questionnaire we can save you a lot of money. You don’t have to send it out. (Laughter) Here it is. The answers will not be different.

LOL. I'm making him required reading for COTM leadership!
-t

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