Take part in our survey
What do Christians believe? “The Bible” is the obvious answer. But what does the Bible say? Although we all read the same Bible, we may end up believing different things, whether through the limitations of our own understanding, legitimate differences about the interpretation of tricky passages, our own misunderstanding and inconsistency, or (sadly) because of indwelling sin and the residual influence of the world on our thinking.
More specifically, what do we believe at St John’s & Emmanuel? How firm a grip do we have on God’s character, how we’re saved, prayer, who the Holy Spirit is, what our hopes for the future are, or what the Bible is?
‘Ligonier Ministries’ (– named after a place in Pennsylvania) conducts a survey of both practising Christians and the general public every few years in the US. It’s called “The State of Theology” (a rather grand sounding title). In 2018 they surveyed the UK too. Results for their 2025 US survey have just come out.
Now here’s the interesting bit … this year they have made it possible for churches to create their own survey using the same questions as they did, to find out what the spread of belief is within their own congregation. I’ve set up the survey for our church.
We’d love to know what people in St John’s & Emmanuel believe – not to catch you out or rank you for ‘soundness’ (!), but so that we understand what areas might be helpful to teach on to build up the church.
It’s easy to take part – simply follow this link to our own private survey. You don’t need to write anything in your own words. Instead there are 35 statements, and for each you must respond ‘Strongly agree / agree / no sure / disagree / strongly disagree’.
The survey is completely anonymous. Ligonier collect the responses. All we’ll be able to see is the summary results (i.e. combining all responses).
Please complete the survey on your own, rather than as a couple/family/group – the results are more useful if we each take part individually. You can take your time thinking, or just speed through clicking ‘don’t know’ where necessary if you prefer.
Try to complete it by the end of November, and we’ll feed back the results in the New Year!
Here’s the link again: https://thestateoftheology.com/groups/-zFRsrs_A
If you would like us to know that you took part, please email peter@stjohnswoking.uk, or tell me in person. This isn’t so that we can figure out who gave which answers (which would be impossible anyway), but it will give us an idea of whether responses came mainly from a certain demographic (men/women, younger/older, etc.). We may then encourage others to add their response to make the sample more representative.
Thanks for taking part!