A Question Most Church Leaders Avoid

And How It's Hurting Us.

This morning I pulled up one of my favorite podcasts as I began my commute. A calm voice welcomes her guest and shares a brief biography. The interview begins.

“I’d like to start where I always start by wondering about how you think about the spiritual background of your life, of your childhood.”[1]

The great Krista Tippett, perhaps one of the best listeners alive, begins every episode of On Being with a version of this question. Some folks respond with their religious upbringing, others with experiences in nature, or with art, but everyone has an answer for her. The answers are always rich and give direction to the rest of the conversation.

It makes me wonder why church leaders are so nervous to ask their neighbors similar questions.

Asking Spiritual Questions

When my doctoral research began, I saw a clear problem: many churches are disconnected from their immediate neighbors and are not a spiritual home for their community.

Often this is a result of failing to understand the cultural and spiritual lives of these neighbors.

In 15 years of church-based community engagement work, I’ve noticed there are significant gaps in resources to address this problem. There is an over-reliance on demographic studies in community assessment. There are needs assessment resources that set churches up for toxic charity by focusing on the needs of neighbors and failing to see their neighbors as gifted people with strengths and complex dreams. There are more effective community assessment resources borrowed from social sciences, but they fail to incorporate spirituality.

Community development assessment resources—even those released by Christian organizations—tend to focus on mapping social capital and fail to consider the spiritual role of churches in their communities.

What we ask influences what we hear, and what we hear influences how we respond.

When we conduct a needs assessment, we will identify a need and seek to address that need. When we engage in Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) on a purely social level we will identify strengths in the social connections of the community and build social collaborations upon those strengths. When we draw insights from consumer reporting we will identify what our neighbors want to consume.

None of this information is inherently bad, but churches are uniquely called to develop spiritual community, and therefore we need to collect spiritual information and this is identified by asking spiritual questions of our neighbors and listening to the Holy Spirit.

A Challenge for 2025

So this coming year I have a challenge for you and every church leader: ask more spiritual questions. Questions like:

• Hey, we’ve been friends a while, but I don’t know much about your spiritual life. Would you be willing to tell me about it?

• Do you have any spiritual practices you’d be willing to share about with me?

• How would you describe the spiritual aspects of your life?

• What brings you closer to God?

If the person you’re talking to is uncomfortable with the question, change the subject and move on. If they’re willing to share, be curious. Learn as much as you can. This likely won’t be the time to invite them to your church. The person you’re talking to might ask you to share about your spiritual life.

This is not a practice of proselytization. This is a practice of deep listening. This is a practice of collecting information that will help your church make the changes it needs to make to once again become a spiritual home for your immediate neighbors. This is a practice of discernment.

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[1] https://onbeing.org/programs/joan-baez-this-gift-of-a-voice/