Frequently Asked Questions

In 2004, key leaders at Willow Creek Community Church connected with Eric Arnson, the founder and director of ORIGINATE, a cutting edge research and strategy consulting firm. While meeting together, God revealed in their hearts a new vision about spiritual development. Cally Parkinson, Greg Hawkins, and Eric Arnson collaborated to write Reveal: Where Are You?, which presents REVEAL's approach, key findings, and heart for the church. As the number of churches involved with REVEAL and the Spiritual Life Survey grew, further research and continued vision produced the second REVEAL book, Follow Me, which picks up where Reveal left off, focusing on movement and growth along the spiritual journey.

REVEAL's main approach focuses on three key areas and questions related to those areas:

• Segments: What are the different groups/segments of people the church might be looking to serve?
  
• Needs: What spiritual growth needs are being met, not being met well or not being met at all for each segment?
  
• Drivers/Barriers: What are the drivers of spiritual growth, and what are the barriers to spiritual growth?

These three areas provide the framework around which REVEAL's collected information is organized.

REVEAL employs both types of research methodology: qualitative (gathering insights) and quantitative (establishing statistical reliability) research. Where the qualitative method is typically a one-on-one process between a researcher and an individual, the quantitative approach utilizes detailed questionnaires that are distributed to large numbers of people. These two methods combine to provide an incredibly reliable pool of information. Once data is received via this process, it is then analyzed. REVEAL uses three common and extremely complementary analysis techniques: correlation analysis, discriminate analysis, and regression analysis.

Willow Creek Community Church's initial research, as well as the continuing research involving hundreds of other churches, used these same research and analytical methods.

Eager for more?

You may still have unique and important questions about the REVEAL research process and methodology. Click here to download a detailed, in-depth report (PDF).

The hundreds of churches surveyed where chosen to specifically reflect a diversity of church models, congregations, and sizes. These include but are not limited to: mainstream denominations, traditional Sunday-school model churches, African-American churches, mission-focused churches, international churches, and churches representing a wide range of geographies and styles. A national demographic report from August 2009 shows the participation percentages that are continuing to grow with each passing month.

Results demonstrate that REVEAL's four segments exist across multiple church model/style/size alternatives, which makes the Spiritual Life Survey a radically telling and relevant tool for spiritual assessment and transformation that can apply in any church context.

We limit the survey to two weeks because based on our experience most of those who respond do so within the first few days that they become aware of it.

Only five people on the REVEAL team have access to church reports and we treat your information as highly confidential. No one outside of the REVEAL team will see your results without your permission. The report for your church will be emailed to the Senior Pastor.

No. Your congregation’s responses are collected anonymously by an independent research organization.

We will equip you to be able to respond to issues. For major technical problems or questions, you can call 224.512.1933 or email for assistance.

As long as we receive 30 responses, we will generate a report. However, we will recommend caution regarding taking action based on findings from response rates lower than 20% or, in the case of smaller churches, based on fewer than 100 responses.

We prefer to field the survey with congregations no smaller than 150.

We do not make available the raw data from the survey. However we provide a comprehensive appendix in addition to the REVEAL church report. Between the appendix and the report, you’ll receive all significant data on your church.

There is a short 2-minute demonstration video you can watch at /video/

Each workshop is designed for 9 to 24 participants.

All workshop materials (templates, facilitator guide, videos, devotionals, and participant workbook) are available online. Download the files and print them.

These templates should be printed on 3’x4’ paper. These can be printed in-house on a plotter or through a third party printing service such as FedEx Office.

If you would rather not handle the printing of these files yourself, the WCA has an exclusive agreement with Thomas Reprographics to print these at an additional cost to you. To order your paper copies, please call #972-697-7239 and ask for Bob Higgins.

This program is designed to be self-guided. However, additional coaching and guidance is a great benefit for some groups. We have partnered with a number of consultants to provide whatever level of assistance you need. We are actively certifying new partners on the REVEAL experience on a regular basis. Contact Cally Parkinson at #224-512-1004 for the most up-todate list.

This is a great question! So often initiatives wind up gathering dust because they don’t get implemented. That’s why Workshop #4 is so important. This workshop is specially designed for teams who are responsible for making things happen. It helps them create an action plan around what it’s going to take to implement their initiative successfully. The process helps them identify barriers to success and the resources they need to overcome the barriers.

In fact, you can look at Workshop #4 as a bonus. Its facilitator guide and templates can work for teams charged with implementing actions beyond the scope of REVEALWORKS, like creating a new children’s ministry strategy or even repaving the parking lot! It’s useful anytime you have a team responsible for taking an idea from vision to reality.

While we recommend waiting to field the survey once every two years the decision as to when to field subsequent survey waves is totally up to you. It is just that our experience shows us that it usually takes time for any changes you implement to begin to have an impact on people's lives.

The tracking report is intended to add to the information you are receiving by highlighting meaningful differences from one wave of the survey to the next. It is not intended to replace your standard summary report but provide you with a quick overview of any changes that have occurred on the key measures in the survey.

The tracking report is always comparing the two most recent waves of the survey. So for example, if you have taken the survey three times the tracking report will highlight meaningful differences on key measures between wave 2 and wave 3.

We define a meaningful change as a change of one-half of a standard deviation from one wave to the next. Standard deviation is a unit of measure commonly used in statistics. One use of this statistic is to measure change over time. The standard deviations used to define meaningful change in this report come from the pooled data in our comparative database of churches who have taken the REVEAL survey since August 2008.