Over the last couple years, my co-author, colleague and Epicenter associate Kim Shockley led a landmark study of church vitality in The United Methodist Church. The project was named Toward Vitality. Her team interviewed hundreds of churches in all parts of the United States. The study was jointly sponsored by four of our church's general agencies. The biggest headline was the role of pastoral leadership in church vitality - not a surprise, exactly, but well documented. However, they learned a lot more than that!
