A Thaw Is Not a Harvest - Part Three: What you saw. What they saw. And the number neither of us can find.

Bottom line upfront: Nobody preaches that money is required for God to do great things. Nobody would defend it. But most of American ministry still budgets as though it were true—and that assumption built the scoreboard we now use to decide whether America is in revival. And I understand the allure of that scoreboard, I used to believe in it too.

Here is the trap. Money can buy stages, crowds, reach, downloads, seats, and decisions. Money cannot buy spiritual formation. So we fund what we can see, and ministries learn to show us what funding can buy. The numbers are honest. The stories are sincere.

Almost none of them measure whether a single life actually changed.

That is my opinion. Now here is yours.

What you said—and what your neighbors said

I asked what you see when you look at your own community and across America. Do you see revival happening? Then I asked 716 Americans who have never heard of me. In neither group did a majority say they saw evidence.

262 of you answered the same two questions I put to a general-population panel of 716 people. I asked them to check a box, yes or no, do you see evidence of revival in your own community? In the United States? 42.7% of the public survey checked the yes box and  agreed that revival could be seen locally. 49.4% agreed that it could be seen nationally. You said 34.7% and 41.2%.

Not one of those numbers is a majority. And the Christians were the bigger skeptics—eight points below the general public on both questions. So, the people who read Scripture, attend church, and open ministry email were harder to convince.

Also, both audiences moved the same direction. Both agreed that there was more revival at the national level than at the local level (a rise of 6.7 points for the public respondents and 6.5 points for you). And among people who saw nothing happening in their own community, 34% still believed revival was sweeping the country.

Distance makes revival easier to believe and harder to falsify. In other words, the farther from home we’re talking, the easier it is to believe since we have no firsthand evidence by which to test it.

That is exactly what a media phenomenon looks like. It is not what a revival looks like.

Then we asked them to explain the box they had just checked

Every respondent then explained their answer in their own words. 363 wrote something substantive. When we analyzed their responses, skeptical themes outnumbered affirming ones roughly 186 to 91. Two to one.

The box measured what people were willing to hope. Their own explanation measured what they had actually seen. And in their responses the largest theme was hatred, division, and hypocrisy in the Church. Forty-four respondents interpreted the rise in Christian visibility as evidence of growing political identity, and not spiritual awakening. They were not counting who attended an event. They were watching how we treat people.

So two audiences, one test. You asked, are they becoming disciples? They asked, can we tell? Those are not competing definitions. They are the inside and the outside of one transformation.

The missing number

In our State of Christianity in America study—6,037 adults—only 31% have ever personally helped one other person grow spiritually. And people who do not follow Jesus reported engaging in similar types of mentoring activities at virtually the same rate. So I am asking every ministry for one number: for every person doing the discipling, how many people are being discipled?

The answer can be very revealing. For example, Church A has 20 leaders discipling  240 people. That’s a ratio of 12 to 1: twelve people being served by every leader. Church B also reports 240 people being discipled, but by only 4 leaders. That’s a 60 to 1 ratio!  Both churches report 240 people being discipled, but in Church A the work is distributed among many more leaders than in Church B. Church A represents multiplication and growth that could span generations if those being discipled go on to disciple others. Church B is facing a bottleneck and stagnant growth.

It’s important to learn this ratio, because if we cannot say how many of our people are discipling one other person by name, we cannot say revival is happening. We can only say something felt like revival.

How can we fix the ratio.  If you are over 50, read this part twice. 

One question on the SALT survey asked the respondent if they felt someone else was better suited to help another person grow. Their responses showed that these seasoned believers had concluded that the work of helping others grow is best left to the professionals.

But you are the only people in this country who can tell the difference between a crowd and a change. That took forty years to earn and we need your voice now more than ever. The numbers won’t move without you.

My verdict

There are legitimate reasons for hope. Yes, the twenty year slide of people away from church seems to have stopped. Interest does seem to be rising. And young people are moving toward faith—the one hopeful signal both audiences named independently, which is why I cannot dismiss it as just insider enthusiasm.

But formation has not followed. It’s a thaw. Not yet a harvest.

America does not have an information problem. It does not have a program problem. It has a handoff problem.

Movements don't scale through bigger stages; they scale through handoffs. So two questions, and then I will leave you alone. Can you name the person helping you grow? Can you name the person you are helping grow?

If you’re not helping someone grow, pick someone this week. Text them today.

Encourage each other: Four days a week in Scripture, one person at a time—that is how a thaw becomes a harvest.

All in, eyes up!

P.S. We take this apart on the Spiritually Fit Today podcast this week. I’ll share some of my own story and what I’ve learned about self-doubt, and missing opportunities God puts in our path. I hope you’ll join me.