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How to Use Technology to Measure Spiritual Growth

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How do you measure spiritual growth? And how do you identify the places and ministries in which spiritual growth is likely? Answering those questions has always seemed a bit elusive for many church leaders.

Spiritual development is at the core of who we are and what we do in ministry. It can be measured, but not by numbers, attendance, or some mathematical matrix. People need to be known. When they are, we can more fully understand their desire to follow what they know God has said.

The best way to measure spiritual growth

Many churches today substitute participation for spiritual growth. They point to the number of groups they have and the number of people in groups as a sign of spiritual health. That’s not an accurate measure.

Real spiritual growth results in life change. You want to know how each individual moves from uninvolved to involved, from non-givers to givers, from watching to serving. This is the evidence of spiritual growth and results in higher retention because people are engaged in Kingdom-building work, in their own hearts and in the lives of others.

This is where technology comes in…

Technology helps you record significant events within a church member’s spiritual life. Many church leaders think technology gets in the way of our relationships. However, when used well, technology can actually improve our relationships by helping us remember the things we discover about people and celebrate their spiritual growth.

Technology enables you to help people find their groove in ministry. The best way to help people activate their faith and grow isn’t simply to encourage them to get involved. It’s to challenge them, equip them, and make it easy for them to know where and how they can serve when they’re led to serve.

Technology allows you to follow a church member’s spiritual growth from uninvolved to fully engaged. There are certain attributes we would all agree are byproducts of spiritual growth. Technology provides the path to meaningful metrics by recording and reporting those attributes.

Technology not only provides us with a macro-level view of the overall growth and health of our church, it also provides a microscopic view into the spiritual growth of individual lives. And that’s definitely something to celebrate.

How does your church leverage technology to measure individual spiritual growth?

Steve Caton
Steve Caton
Steve Caton has been building teams and nurturing innovative growing organizations for over 30 years, successfully expanding a variety of companies such as The Giving Crowd, Newdea and Christianity.com. Steve is most recognized for his work at Church Community Builder where he assisted in catalyzing an eight-year period of double-digit growth and service to over 4,800 churches. Steve is passionate about Kingdom causes and has authored hundreds of articles and ebooks about effective leadership and organizational health. Currently, Steve is the Chief Growth Officer at Generis where he works alongside a team of over 45 generosity and leadership experts to increase their reach and impact.  

2 COMMENTS

  1. Hey David,

    I’m the co-founder of Ambassador App. Lauren was kind enough to do a writeup about us last October. I don’t know if you were being facetious about “Spiritual Growth”, but we help churches track their online ministry influence.

    Our platform provides actual hard numbers for your online ministry. Ambassador is a sermon sharing platform which broadcasts your sermon to your email lists and social media accounts. We have tracking URL’s on each link so we can report back to your number of listens, downloads and shares. We just added iTunes podcast channel creation, and iTunes will report subscriber numbers as well.

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