Revitalize your ministry with research that illuminates how faith-formation truly grows
Uncover best-practices revealed through
Vibrant Faith’s research programs
Research cannot just be studied.
Observe and identify practices within real churches that nurture faith for a lifetime
Test practices in other ministry settings to discover replicable best practices
Teach these best practices to ministry leaders through coaching, training, and resources
Vibrant Faith is honored to work with the Lilly Endowment Inc. through two initiatives:
1
Called to Lives of Meaning and Purpose
Vibrant Faith is one of 13 organizations receiving grants to help form innovation hubs that assist congregations in developing and testing new ministry models to help Christians discover and claim their callings.
2
Thriving Congregations
Vibrant Faith is one of 70 organizations working with churches to embed characteristics of thriving in churches.
Research for the church from the church
A look into Vibrant Faith’s current research projects
Thriving Congregations
Research timeframe: ongoing
Participants: 30 churches in 6 denominations led by 6 coaches
Latest initiative: 2019 survey study with 242 participating churches; 177 categorized as “high vitality”
In partnership with the Lilly Endowment Inc.
Key survey findings:
A majority of all 242 churches were engaged in family and/or intergenerational programming Churches ranked “equipping people to live as disciples of Jesus Christ and make the Christian faith a way of life” as their highest priority The next two highest priorities were equipping people to live the Christian mission in the world (serving, caring creation, and acting for justice and peace) and engaging people in the life, ministries, and activities of the faith community When asked to rate the effectiveness using the ten priorities, the effectiveness score was significantly lower. So, while these ten faith formation priorities are important, churches are only moderately effective in putting them into practice. There was a significant difference (a full point) in these effectiveness ratings between high vitality and low vitality churches.
Creating a Culture of Calling (C3)
Research timeframe: 2018 – 2021
Participants: 24 churches from 8 denominations
In partnership with the Lilly Endowment Inc.
Key desired outcomes from the research project:
Congregations will create a congregational culture where calling is infused into all aspects of church life.
Congregations will develop a lifelong approach to discovering callings and nurturing vocation.
Congregations will nurture calling and vocation with people of diverse religious engagement.
Key findings:
Calling Spirituality is a different way of seeing the world.
Calling Spirituality asks us to engage specifics of people’s journeys.
Getting to the specifics and particularity of people’s lives is key.
Creating a Culture is an adaptive change process for a church.
How you can apply our research to your ministry
Full of wisdom informed by our research, each MasterClass shares specific information to help you in a particular ministry area. Learn from experts in the field by joining online classes on a wide variety of topics about faith formation and ministry.