Stetzer, Ed. Chicken Little was Wrong. Christianity Today, January 2010.
Meet the Author
Ed Stetzer is the President and Missiologist in Residence of LifeWay Research. Ed is a contributing editor for Christianity Today, a columnist for Outreach Magazine and Catalyst Monthly, serves on the advisory council of Sermon Central and Christianity Today’s Building Church Leaders, and is frequently cited or interviewed in news outlets such as USA Today and CNN. Additionally, he is a visiting professor of research and missiology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, visiting professor of research at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and has taught at fifteen other colleges and seminaries. He also serves on the Church Services Team at the International Mission Board. Visit his blog to browse hundreds of relevant posts.
Article Basics
Chicken Little was Wrong should be required reading for anyone who cites statistics in preaching, teaching or fundraising in the church or for parachurch ministries. Stetzer summarizes his article succinctly: “the statistics we most love to repeat may be leading us to make bad choices about the church.”
Within the article Stetzer explores several commonly quoted statistics, which are typically used incorrectly and spread misinformation. For example, a summit marketed itself as critical because “only 4 percent of today’s teenagers would be evangelical believers by the time they became adults.” This misinformation comes from “an informal survey of 211 young people in three states conducted by a seminary professor nine years earlier.” Surely no one would assume that the only research supporting this claim came from such a small sample so many years earlier.
So What?
Have you ever passed on a statistic you heard without first verifying it or understanding the size or scope of the research? Teachers, preachers, educators and those responsible for marketing should utilize statistical research, but must not pass on data until they first know and understand it.
In the words of Ed Stetzer, ” . . . bad and misinterpreted data must not convince us that organized Christianity in America is dead and gone. Facts are our friends. The facts tell us that the church in North America is struggling but also, in many places, growing. Discerning research can help us diagnose our condition.”