Lighthouse Trails’ Survey

 

In January, Lighthouse Trails Research ran its first survey. We thought
you might like to see the results. However, we would
like to make a couple comments about this survey and
surveys in general.

 
While we recognize that surveys can be helpful in
gaining insight through gathered information, we have
seen what we consider an abuse and misuse of surveys by
many groups, both secular and religious. Within the
church-growth, seeker-friendly movement, and the
emerging church movement as well, surveys have been used
to convince Christians that Christianity must be
completely restructured because the Christianity of the
past has failed. Unfortunately, within these movements
this restructuring has resulted in a de-emphasis of the
Word of God, and in some cases, such as the emerging
church, an actual destruction of the Word of God.
 
Discernment Ministries and Herescope have written about
the use of surveys to change and manipulate society. We
hope you will get the chance to read what they have
said. We are posting a couple of their articles on this
topic below.
 
With that said, we want to clarify that the reason for
the Lighthouse Trails survey was to help us better
understand our own readers and how we can best serve
them. We are not using these survey results to make
proclamations about trends in the church or the world.
We are also not using them to manipulate people into
some particular action.
 
If you are one of the ones who took the survey, we want
to once again thank you. And whether you took it or not,
we hope you find the results interesting and helpful in
some way.
 
On another note, our latest article we posted is titled:

“Trevecca Nazarene University Promoting Contemplative
Spirituality in No Small Way.” For some, it will
come as a shock to see how far a Nazarene school has
gone into contemplative spirituality. But this is the
direction many many Christian colleges, universities,
and seminaries are going, and it is indeed very
troubling.
 
When one realizes the true nature of contemplative and
that in its essence it is a rejection of the Creator and
of the Savior (i.e., New Age), then one realizes how
serious the embracing of contemplative/emerging
spirituality by so many proclaiming Christians really
is. Could there be a more effective way for Satan to
bring such deception than through the schools where
future pastors, missionaries, and lay leaders are
trained. 

urvey Synopsis

 
Lighthouse Trails sent out the survey to 9935
people, and approximately 2500 responded. Currently, our
readers are from 98 different countries. Of those who
responded, about 48% said they had been reading
Lighthouse Trails for 1-3 years. Almost 100% of the
responders said they read our material at least once a
month, with 70% who read LT once a week and nearly 10%
once a day. Out of 11 topics listed, the topics that
readers were most interested in were as follows: 1) the
emergent church movement; 2) contemplative spirituality;
3) signs of the times/eschatology; 4) the Purpose Driven
movement.
 
Survey responses showed a high satisfaction for our
customer service, but we learned that ease of navigation
on the sites is still difficult for some. This is
important for us to know, and we want to continue
improving that. We are currently working on the search
engine to make it more user-friendly.
 
Perhaps the most interesting part of the survey for you
will be the question which asked readers about their
current church situation. Thirty-nine percent (988
people) of the responders said they were currently in
Bible-based churches that understood the present day
spiritual deception taking place. This number is
encouraging in the fact that it shows there are still
churches that are standing for truth. Twenty-one percent
(547) of those who responded said they attended
Bible-based churches, but they had some concerns that
deception was entering in. Nearly 15% said their former
church had become contemplative, emerging, and/or
Purpose Driven, and they had not yet been able to find a
Bible-based church. This suggests that there may be a
lot of communities where Bible believing Christians have
no church to attend. Phone calls and emails to
Lighthouse Trails over the past several years would
confirm this. Seven percent (almost 200) of our
responders said, for one reason or another, they were
attending some kind of Bible-based home fellowship.
 
In the survey, over 700 people gave comments or
suggestions, and we are very grateful for all of them.
We are still reading them and hope to implement many of
these ideas. For the most part, the comments were
gracious and encouraging to us. We are very humbled and
moved to receive such kind comments from so many. 
 
Some of the most common suggestions included: 1)
improving our search engine; 2) adding research about
alternative health and medicine; 3) making our material
more printer-friendly;  4) linking to other ministries
and resources.
 
On this fourth point of linking to others, we actually
do have a links page and thought perhaps many people are
not aware of it. You can get to it by

clicking here. On that page, there are several
ministries, people, and groups whom we list. We have
broken them up into the following categories: Research
sites, blogs, print newsletters, the persecuted church,
Bible prophecy/world events, radio programs, book
reviews, pastors’ teachings, free online books, and
more. We add to this list from time to time once we have
become familiar with a particular group. While we
believe the ministries listed offer biblically sound
research and information, please use discernment
whenever you research. As Christians, we must “Test all
things” and “Try the spirits” through the screen of the
Word of God  (1 Thessalonians 5:21; 1 John 4:1).
 
In the survey suggestion area, we were exhorted by some
to be more loving and to not name names. A few people
suggested we shut down altogether. While we have no
plans of shutting down, and we believe we must name
names in order to effectively identify spiritual
deception in the church, we do strive to speak the truth
in love, and we will put forth even greater effort to do
this in the future. While our articles and books are
hard-hitting and strongly worded, it has always been our
intention to refrain from vitriolic or mean-spirited
reporting and writing. In addition, we do not call
names, say who or who is not saved, and we do not attack
the personal being of any individual. We think the
authors we represent have maintained this standard in
their books and articles. And we hope the editors at
Lighthouse Trails have done this as well.
 

For the complete survey results,

please click here. 


Source article




http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/index.php?p=1368&more=1&c=1

See also

Deceived by a counterfeit “Jesus”
– The twisted “truths” of The Shack & A Course in Miracles


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