Arnie Cole is a social scientist and researcher at Back to the Bible, who has studied the spiritual lives of over 1.5 million people over the past 20 years. In this insightful episode, he challenges ministries to truly understand the spiritual state of the people they serve in order to help move them closer to Jesus.
The Importance of Asking "How Are You Doing Spiritually?"
Through examples from his own family's equestrian ministry, Arnie highlights how children are remarkably open about their spiritual struggles, but something happens as they become adults and stop sharing. He argues it is critical for ministries to directly ask people how they are doing spiritually.
Introducing the Personalized Engagement Prioritization Model
Arnie presents a 25-dimensional model that identifies 17 trillion potential spiritual data points for where a person could be in their walk. The methodology includes:
1. The "Death Question" to assess their salvation
2. Their level of Bible engagement, which predicts spiritual trajectory
3. Prioritizing people into 4 categories: Need for Evangelism, Discipleship, Activation, or Mature Believer
Measuring Spiritual Transformation and Discipleship Impact
The critical metric is whether people are engaging the Bible regularly, which research shows leads to transformed lives. Arnie also emphasizes the need to measure if people are actively discipling others.
Addressing the "Hard Issues" People Face
The model accounts for the real spiritual struggles people face like anger, anxiety, pornography use, gender identity issues, and more. Arnie laments that many ministries are unwilling to even ask about these "hard" areas people need help with.
A Free Resource to Increase Ministry Effectiveness
Arnie's team offers ministries a free scientific study and impact assessment to truly understand the spiritual state of the people they serve. The goal is to equip ministries to more effectively help people find and follow Jesus.
This is a powerful framework for personalizing ministry engagement in a way that leads to real spiritual transformation. To learn more about implementing this model, be sure to listen to Arnie's full engaging and eye-opening presentation!
