Measuring Spiritual Growth

Todd Rhoades has started a great discussion over at Monday Morning Insight on measuring spiritual growth. I think this is a great topic, and I would love to know more about how different churches monitor and measure the spiritual health of their church. And for whatever it's worth, I would encourage you to add Todd to your blog reading diet!

Here are a few things I mentioned:

At National Community Church (where I am on staff), we have small groups. All of our small group leaders have a small group coach called a "zone leader."

We have a number of tools that we use to help people grow spiritually and monitor their growth.

We have a leadership covenant that we ask all leaders to sign. It covers basic theology and character issues.

We have a discipleship assessment that asks basic questions about 4 areas of discipleship: Seeking (the "spiritual" dimension- spiritual disciplines such as prayer, worship, etc), Learning (the "intellectual" dimension-Bible study), Influencing (the "relational" dimension- evangelism and discipleship), and Investing (the "stewardship" dimension- giving of finances, time, energy, and talen). We also have a spiritual development plan that helps leaders set goals for their spiritual growth (Bible study, prayer, sharing their faith, giving, etc). We ask our leaders to complete these assessments and growth plans 1-3 times per year and discuss with their zone leaders.

We also ask our small group leaders to submit weekly "win sheets" to let the pastors know how God is working in the lives of those they lead.

Most of our materials and resources can be found at www.zonegathering.com, our online community for our small group leaders. I will try to include links to those over here sometime.