Petr Činčala

The Pastor As Spiritual Example

Question number 58 in the NCD lay questionnaire reads, "Our pastor is a spiritual example to me." How relevant is this item for the church's health? Read this research report and find out...

The following report attempts to answer two research questions:

1. How does the answer to this question compare by continents, countries and denominations?

2. How does the view of the pastor as a spiritual example relate to the overall health of churches?

Question 1: How does the answer to this question compare by continents, countries and denominations?

For clarity, this question has been normalized the same way as the standard NCD scores with the exception that the norm we use for comparison applies to the whole globe rather than to an individual country (average of total number of surveys = 50, standard deviation = 15).

The following table shows how people view their pastor as a spiritual example by continents:

The next table breaks this information into countries. The list is sorted from the lowest average score for the given question to the highest.

 

Hungary	35.1
Finland (Swedish)	39.1
Sweden	39.5
USA (Chinese)	39.8
Netherlands	40.6
China	40.8
Hong Kong	40.9
Australia (Chinese)	41.2
Macao	41.4
Germany	41.6
Norway	41.8
France	42.2
Canada (Chinese)	42.6
Taiwan	42.8
Denmark	42.9
Singapore (Chinese)	43.5
Russia	44.0
Austria	44.7
Czech Republic	44.7
Malaysia (Chinese)	44.9
Slovakia	44.9
Switzerland (German)	45.4
Belgium (Flemish)	45.5
Finland Fin	45.6
Northern Ireland	45.9
Ireland	45.9
Singapore	46.4
Romania	47.6
England and Wales	47.7
Poland	48.0

Our suspicion that this issue has a cultural note as well seems to be true. Regardless of denominations, there are differences in viewing pastors based on the cultural climate in various societies. For example, the pastors in the Spanish-speaking world enjoy more authority and are viewed as a spiritual example more than the rest of the world. The same is true for South Africa.

Back to the core question: How about denominations across countries and continents? Following is a table with denominations with more than 2,000 lay surveys sampled.
 

Well, the table shows there are differences by denominations as well. Pastors of Vineyard and Foursquare are viewed more positively as spiritual examples than pastors of the Roman Catholic and/or Seventh-day Adventist denomination.

Question 2: How does the view of the pastor as a spiritual example relate to the overall health of churches?

I have divided the average scores on qualities by answer to the question 58 ("Our pastor is a spiritual example to me"). The following table shows global data by individual lay surveys (not just with average answers for individual churches):

The scores clearly show as with the total data that the spiritual example of a pastor is an integral part of a healthier church. It shows not just with Passionate Spirituality, it shows with all qualities. This has a powerful implication: the health of the church goes along with the health of the pastor and vice versa. It takes a healthy pastor to have a healthy church.

Finally let's see the results of a correlation test correlating the average of question 58 for individual churches with the quality scores of individual churches.
 

The highest correlation of the q58 is obviously with passionate spirituality, but the relationship is quite strong with other qualities as well (such as inspiring worship and empowering leadership). The scores of the other qualities are somewhat related to the answer to q58 as well, as both tables show.

To have spiritual leaders as positive examples in churches is part of the churches' "health". Let me close with a note of pastoral nature: The same as our physical children follow our examples (whether good or bad), our spiritual children follow our paths in spiritual growth. Humans are social beings and they are influenced by their environment. The challenge for contemporary churches is: What is their influence on their members and on their surrounding societies? Are they salt and light to the world? What role do pastors play in this influence?

Petr Činčala (PhD) lives in the Czech Republic and works as Research Manager for NCD International