Measuring spiritual impact

Five key principles for measuring spiritual impact

Measuring spiritual impact is both a major challenge and opportunity for Christian organisations. But is it possible? And how should we go about it? We believe there are five key principles involved.

“Relational”: Measures should be seen in terms of four relationships

Measures of spirituality should not been seen as isolated categories. Rather they are integrated into four relational dimensions: relationship with self, with others, with God, and with the environment (‘Spirituality and impact evaluation design’ - Deneulin, 2019). Whilst it is possible to further divide these relational dimensions (e.g. relationship with Church or relationship with vocation), Eido typically approaches the question with these four relationships in mind. A great example of this approach can be found in the Kingdom Impact Framework.

  • Relationship with God (e.g. belief in God’s love)

  • Relationship with self (e.g. belief in spiritual purpose) 

  • Relationship with others (e.g. prayer with others) 

  • Relationship with the environment (e.g. sustainable living)

“Fruitful”: Measures should look to identify the fruit of these relationships

Measures of spirituality (discipleship etc) are by definition “impossible”, as it is impossible to systematically measure God. However, we believe it is possible to measure indicators of this space: the changed beliefs, behaviours, and experiences of individuals and communities. These indicators of change can be thought of as the tangible fruit of a changed relationship with God.

  • Beliefs (e.g. belief in God’s existence)

  • Practices (e.g. prayer and worship)

  • Experiences (e.g. feeling God’s love)

Measures of spirituality should be adaptable to the context of Christian organisation and the communities they serve. This should involve a flexibility between open and closed questions, as well as a flexibility of the level of depth these questions are asking. Eido believes that spiritual change is a journey, and therefore measures should be adaptable depending on where an individual is in this process.

  • Contextual to what stage of their spiritual journey individuals are on

  • Combination of both open and closed questions to capture quantitative and qualitative evidence

“Contextual”: Measures should be adaptable to context and maturity

“Causal”: Measures should look to identify both change and cause

Measures of spirituality should look to identify the journey, as well as the causes behind these changes. This should ideally be done in parallel. By measuring and identifying the causes behind spiritual change, we are able to prove, replicate, and increase this impact in the future. There are three main methodologies involved in measuring cause.

  • Counterfactual (i.e. what would have happened if participants hadn’t attended the programme?)

  • Consistency of evidence (i.e. does this change align with your Theory of Change?)

  • Ruling out alternatives (i.e. to what extent do other causes explain this change?)

“Transcendental”: Measures aren’t an end in themselves, and should be interpreted with discernment

Measures of spirituality should not been seen as an end in themselves. As they are indicators of a deeper relationship, they should be interpreted with and in reference to this relationship. Learning should be transcendental rather than transactional. A transactional approach interprets the data at face value, whereas a transcendental approach combines interpretation with discernment and consequently greater meaning. Data should be connected to a theological and theoretical framework to make sense of the data (‘Toward Building Evidence of Kingdom Impact’ - Kumar, 2022).

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