Wow! A lot has happened since I last talked about my Birmingham fellowship project that explores the relationship between people’s perceptions of God and their aspirations towards living well. Jessica and I finished collecting and analysing our first set of data (thank you everyone who shared and/or completed the questionnaire!) and we presented our findings at the Ecclesiology and Ethnography conference in Durham. Just like last year, it was a pleasure to be part of the conference. There was so much to learn and so many good papers from presenters across the world.

In our presentation, we described the pilot study we have completed – what we did and what we discovered – and outlined what our next steps along this research journey will be. In summary, our pilot study, consisting of an online questionnaire completed by adults baptised in NZ Baptist churches in the last five years, found that people do want to be like God… The things they wrote they wanted to be like (for instance, more graceful, less “for myself”, and less independent) matched the attributes of God they most appreciated (the same person said: God is graceful, Jesus is servant-like, Jesus is fatherly, God is friend). Each of the seventeen people who responded to the qualitative questions showed at least one match between their aspirations and the attributes of God they appreciated.

We found matches within twelve different categories: self-giving, active, Christ-like, loving, faithful, mental wellbeing, patient, generous, relational, authenticity, forgiving, and other spiritual. Of these different categories, matches were most prominent in the self-giving (self-control, humble, self-less, obedient) category. Which is something we are very interested in! 

Just as interesting was that each of the twelve participants who responded to the question said that “reflecting on what God is like” made them “want to be more like God.” All but one also indicated that “reflecting on what God is like” made them “want to be a better person.” While five respondents noted that reflecting on God made them “realize that they weren’t very good,” three said that reflecting on God made them “realize that they [are] very good.” In fact, one of these respondents indicated that reflecting on God made them realize that they are both not very good and very good. Such a nuanced understanding of one’s humanity can certainly be understood theologically!  

So where to from here? We didn’t get enough responses to statistically analyse the quantitative data, so (having refined and simplified the questionnaire and our God Attributes Measure) we started gathering more data from anyone aged over 18 who considers themselves to be of Christian faith.

We’d love you to let others know about it:

Research on faith and spirituality

Are you aged over eighteen years and a person of Christian faith? If so, Dr Lynne Taylor and Dr Jessica Bent (from the Theology Programme, University of Otago) invite you to take part in a research study on faith and spirituality. It is part of ongoing research on contemporary faith formation.

If you choose to take part in our research, you will be asked to complete an online questionnaire (it will take approximately 15 minutes) that asks you questions about your perceptions of God and yourself.

You’ll find more information and the questionnaire here: https://otago.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1SVVC6AzVPdcwtg