Our initial findings on what helps disciples grow are now published! On 19th April 2016 over 100 friends and colleagues gathered in Birmingham for an celebration and exploration event to explore the findings. Read on for a link to the report…
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 aims 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, with participating churches receiving an anonymised results from their own congregation. We’re working with churches from a range of denominations (or none).
On Tuesday 19th April 2016 we shared our findings from this initial phase of work in an celebration and exploration event at Carrs Lane Church Centre.
We’ll continue to share tables and analysis here. Meanwhile you can…
Download The final report.
Download Table of results.
Download Table of results by gender.
Download Table of results by age band.
Download The original questionnaire.
Download 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!