The Reveal Study
I just read the Reveal Study by
- Page 53 - "..they still want the church to help keep them on track..A tool like a personal spiritual growth plan might address some of those needs. But they also seem to want a personal growth or spiritual mentor."
- Page 54 - "..the responsibility for their spiritual growth belongs to them."
- Page 59 - "We hope to be able to understand, in depth and in detail, the impact of things like Internet-based products and services on people's spiritual lives, as well as different approaches to prayer, journaling, solitude and other personal spiritual practices."
- Page 66 - "..one of our new initiatives is to create a tool everyone can use to assess the current state of their relationship with Christ ('spiritual fitness"), and then to recommend a customized growth or "workout" plan that provides direction for their next step spiritually. We believe it is essential for us to help everyone answer the question, "What's next for me?" THIS TOOL IS CURRENTLY IN DEVELOPMENT.
- Page 73 - "..we discovered that we had NO ministry that trained people in personal spiritual disciplines. It's a huge miss we are in the process of addressing."
- Page 103 - "More than half of those surveyed said that they used the Internet at some point in the last year to advance their spiritual growth."
After reading Reveal, I came away with a sense that you were working on an Web 2.0 type tool that would:
- Acknowledge, educate, and encourage the concept that the individual is responsible for their own spiritual growth and the church is merely a coach.
- Use social networking to connect people with similar interests (virtual small groups) and provide a platform for mentoring/coaching
- Provides a blog-like tool that allows someone to Journal--allowing for privacy controls (i.e. myself only, mentor, friends, church, public, etc.)
- Facilitates self-assessment along the 4-stages of their growth
- Provides assessment and suggestion for the next step in their personal journey. This needs to cover faith, fitness, family, finance and friends with specific and measurable goals (short term and long term) and assigned accountability partners who can read their goals and keep them accountable.
- Facilitates ongoing learning via podcasts, vcasts, and webcasts.
- Facilitates virtual mentoring via Video conferencing. Supplements face-to-face interaction.
- For those in stage 4, the tool needs to help them in their specific calling by surrounding them with encouragement, networks, and knowledge.
