What I’ve Learned about Listening to Our People

Watermark Community Church of Dallas uses periodic surveys to better understand congregants’ experiences, hearts, and opinions regarding COVID. Watermark is an enormous church with diverse members. For the past nine years, Benson has also been involved in surveying Watermark’s thousands of members in a variety of ways—including building surveys from scratch and analyzing, reporting, and using survey results. Over time, the surveys expanded to encompass discipleship and two-way communication.

Key areas for learning

• Who of our members are coming in-person vs. their online attendance—and how often do they stream? When they haven’t been attending in-person, why is that? Are community groups are meeting in-person or not?
• Current serving status. Impact of the recent sermon series
• How well we’ve communicated about key things. Plus, a healthy dose of free response questions, segmented out, to get a feel for (1) our Members’ hopes for 2022, (2) thoughts about all the recent leadership changes, or (3) generally “what’s on their mind.”

Join us for a discussion on using surveys to learn more about your congregation. And, of course, bring your questions!

Resources

• Slide Deck: What I’ve Learned from Surveys

Benson has written an insightful article. He begins by saying:

Watermark Community Church saw its membership decline in the most sudden fashion imaginable. Only weeks before the Dallas church had counted its membership at several thousand; now that number had been wiped out. Even more surprisingly, this sudden decline did not come as the result of a church split, a leader’s fall from grace, a record-setting application of church discipline, or even nefarious dealings by a disgruntled staff member with access to the membership database.

This is in “The Condition of Our Flocks and the Common Good” in Essays for the Common Good, produced by Made to Flourish. You can purchase that digital resource or get Benson’s chapter for free.

About Benson

Benson Hines is the Director of Serving at Watermark Community Church in Dallas. He coaches ministry areas on their use of volunteers, helps members find their best service opportunities, and builds tools and systems for all of the above. Benson received his B.A. in Psychology from Texas A&M, followed by a Master of Arts in Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He’s also a certified Strengths Coach through Gallup. He and his wife Catherine live in the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch and are raising a six-year-old and a four-year-old (who is quick to let everyone know he’s really four-and-a-half).