There’s surprisingly little UK-based research on what really helps people develop as Christian disciples. One of St Peter’s Saltley Trust’s current key priorities concerns understanding and sharing what actually supports discipleship development. We’ve begun by asking churchgoers what they think…
The Saltley Trust’s What Helps Disciples Grow project aimed to provide churches and denominations in the region with social research information about how Christians view their own spiritual growth and the role of churches and other factors in that growth.
The research has been mainly carried out by congregational survey, working with churches from a range of denominations and traditions. Participating churches received a report on the anonymised results from their own congregation.
On Tuesday 19th April 2016 we shared our findings from this initial phase of work with over 100 friends and colleagues at a celebration and exploration event at Carrs Lane Church Centre, Birmingham.
Click below to access various resources from the project:
[ddownload id=”760″] The final report.
[ddownload id=”782″] Table of results.
[ddownload id=”806″] Table of results by gender.
[ddownload id=”808″] Table of results by age band.
[ddownload id=”2748″] The original questionnaire.
[ddownload id=”789″] Notes from the launch event Workshop Five (Experience and Testimony).
Read more on the project blog, including a write-up and photos from the launch event: https://watchingtheflocks.wordpress.com/ .
To date, What Helps Disciples Grow? has been downloaded over 4000 times since its publication! Since then, several further pieces of research have used or adapted questions from the original survey, providing a stronger basis of reliability and validity for some of the core concepts and survey instruments:
- Francis, L.J., Foster, S., Lankshear, D.W., and Jones, I. 2019. ‘What Helps Christians Grow? An Exploratory Study Distinguishing among Four Distinctive Pathways’. Pastoral Psychology 68, 379–392. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-019-00866-5
- Francis, L. J., Fawcett, B.G., Freeze, T., Embree, R., and Lankshear, D. W. 2021. ‘What helps young Christians grow in discipleship? Exploring connections between discipleship pathways and psychological type’. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 24(6), 563–580. https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2020.1767556
- Francis, L.J., Lankshear, D.W., McKenna, U., Jones I. and Eccles, E.L. 2025. ‘Assessing pathways and challenges to growth in discipleship: a study among members of the Student Christian Movement in the UK’. Journal of Religious Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40839-025-00280-5
If the findings spark you off with ideas for further work around ‘what helps disciples grow?’, contact us for a further conversation!