Survey Resources
- The Gallup Guide, by George Gallup. shows ho to design and conduct a survey and provides ten reproducible surveys (2002)
- Zoomerang provides free online surveys that the user can create and leave online for 30 days free. http://www.zoomerang.com/Login/index.zgi
- Contact Dr. Jackson Carrol of the Ormond Center, Duke University. He is currently working on a Lily Foundation project to study similar traits. 919-660-3400 or try www. divinity.duke. edu and look him up on the faculty list.
From Bill Easum
The following survey was used by the church my wife and I attend on Padre Island. This church has gone from 0 to 300 in attendance in less than two years in an area with less than 9,000 people.
We have always used members and staff to make calls. some of our other new churches used paid personnel with much less dramatic results, less than 50% of our positive results. However it is not always easy at first to get people to do the calling.
We used a simple script like: Hello, This is ______ from the new Island In the Son Church we were calling to see if we could ask a couple of real quick questions. would that be alright? (pause for answer) If "no" we would always say, "Thanks and God bless you." If "yes" we would ask if they were currently attending any local church? If "yes" we would say how glad we were and move on. If "no" we would simply ask if we could send them information about our new church and its ministries in their neighborhood. If "no" we would say Thanks and God Bless. If "yes" we would verify the name and address with a promise that it would be in the mail soon.
Our results with the first campaign before the church opened was a clear 10% ratio of positive responses and 14% actually showed up at the services. Since opening the church the results have been around 3% positive with about the same number actually showing up in worship. We always have followed up the initial contact with at least 7 pieces of mail in growing amounts of information as interest is peaked. We only drop a name after 6 months of newsletters and a second phone call. One interesting phenomena has been happening recently and that is with the new visibility of a building some of the people who are coming are saying that we called them 2 years ago and invited them. Talk about delayed response!