Limited Enthusiasm Model

Basic Assumptions of the Limited Enthusiasm Model

The model consists of three groups of people: unbelievers, active believers (or enthusiasts) who alone are responsible for spreading the faith, and inactive believers.

For simplicity all church members are assumed to be believers and vice versa. This is because there is no data on who among a church membership are true believers in Jesus Christ. It is difficult to see how such data could be reliably determined.

It is further assumed that members are identical with the attenders of the church. This is because there is only reliable data for attendance. Membership data is less reliable as different denominations and churches use different definitions of membership. Thus the model is dealing with attendance and recruitment issues only. Sometimes membership data needs to be used because no attendance data is available.

In reality there will be members and attenders who are not believers. Members who do not attend and attenders who are not members. There may even be believers who are neither members or attenders. However these effects will tend to cancel each other out and the above assumptions imply that their net effect is negligible.

Summary of Limited Enthusiasm Model

Unbelievers convert to believers through contact with active believers who have "spread the faith" to them. Some new converts are become active believers whereas some become inactive believers. Active believers only remain active for a limited length of time before becoming inactive and taking no further part in spreading the faith.

What is meant by "Spreading the Faith"?

Spreading the faith means an unbeliever becoming a believer, a process called conversion. It is measured by the new convert becoming an attender at church, or by becoming a member of a church. Thus if membership has increased or attendance has increased then the corresponding number of conversions are deemed to have occurred. In this model there is no other method of recruitment. Such as transfers from other churches or those born into the church.

Such conversion is usually accompanied by other observable changes in the convert such as enthusiasm for the Christian faith, adoption of a new moral code and resulting behavioral changes. Thus a believer is easily distinguished from an unbeliever.

How is the Faith Spread?

In this model it is assumed the faith is spread by word of mouth contact alone. The contact being between an active believer and an unbeliever through a network or friends, relatives, work colleagues and acquaintances. The active believer may be the person who "leads the unbeliever to Christ" as in saying a prayer of commitment in some evangelistic methods. It may be the person who explains the gospel to them. However it more likely the key contact is where the convert is invited to a meeting, or church where the conversion occurs some time later at the hands of others.

The active believer is not necessarily a theological expert, or an evangelist, but a believer with enough enthusiasm to use their network of contacts to give people a positive attitude to Christ, Christian things or church. Something about them makes Christ attractive - attractive enough that the unbeliever may read something they would never have read otherwise, or go to a church meeting they would never have considered.

Why do believers stop spreading the faith?

Here are a number of possible reasons:

• The believers have been recruiting through their network of friends and relatives which is now exhausted. There are three scenarios: -
  • the people in this network have become believers themselves;
  • People in this network have become immune to any further pressure to join the church;
  • The active believers have ceased to have meaningful contact with unbelievers. Many new converts find after a year or so that they have a new set of friends in the church and their old unbelieving set have drifted away. Often the new convert does this subconsciously because being part of the church means taking on a new set of values leaving them uncomfortable with the values of their old friends. In strict churches they may even be encouraged to distance themselves from the world, inadvertently losing their recruitment potential.
• Churches do not just recruit or evangelise. After a while new converts find other work to do within the church and spend less time on recruitment activities.
• In periods of intense growth the pastoral demands of dealing with new converts prevent ministers from spending as much time on evangelism as they might like and thus their recruitment potential drops.
• Often believers run out of enthusiasm for recruitment and settle into a more subdued version of belief where the zeal to see new converts has declined to the point of inactivity. Again there are a number of scenarios behind this:
  • The believer has forgotten why they converted from unbelief to belief. They now have no desire to see others converted;
  • Often the believers gain status within the church and loses the real reasons why they joined in the first place. Any enthusiasm they now have is centred on their own advancement within the church;
  • In non-strict churches the lifestyle is so close to the world that the new convert quickly sees little point in attempting to win people to the church. Believers are so similar to unbelievers that they have little to offer and so stop seeking converts;
  • The believers may find the church so enjoyable that their enthusiasm is for their own experience of it, or of God, rather than to see others converted;
  • It may be that the church has not lived up to expectation and the believer has lost enthusiasm for anything to do with the beliefs. Instead they have settled into a nominal church life.
    

Many of these reasons are summed up in Wesley's Law of the decline of pure religion. "Taking up the religion has produced benefits which makes missionary zeal to costly to engage in." (Kelley) Thus the assumption is that a believer's enthusiasm to recruit only last for a limited time after their conversion.

Why do some new converts never spread the faith?

There are a number of reasons for this:

• They may be naturally shy and unwilling to engage in any form of recruitment;
• They may be a social isolate and have virtually no network of friends to influence;
• They may be a secondary convert, the spouse or child of a primary convert, who has"converted" for social reasons. Often such secondary converts have little real enthusiasm for the actual faith;
• It is possible for people to be converted to the ethos of the church - its services, customs, and morality - without ever being converted to the truth of the faith. As such they may have little desire to see others converted. Their "conversion" has been a purely social phenomena rather than one of deep religious conviction. Nevertheless they are part of the church, albeit an inactive believer.

Systems Dynamics Model for the Limited Enthusiasm Model

Any systems dynamicists viewing this site might be interested in the Stella version of the limited enthusiams model. Further explantion is available at the Modelling and Analysis research page, University of Glamorgan. Just follow the link to Church Growth Modelling.

A Stella version of this model is available for download.

Equations of the Limited Enthusiasm Model

Any mathematicians viewing this site might be interested in the mathematicalequations of the limited enthusiasm model.

Let U be the number of unbelievers, A the number of active believers (enthusiasts) and B the number of inactive believers. Then the equations of the system are:

g is the fraction of the new converts who become believers. is the duration of the enthusiastic period. is the actual number of conversions per believer per unit time:

is the number converted by one believer during the whole of their active period.

The conversion potential is the potential number converted per believer during their active period, i.e. how many would be converted by that believer if all the remainder of the population were unbelievers. Thus:

where the probability of finding an unbeliever is

Further information is available at the Modelling and Analysis research page, University of Glamorgan. Just follow the link to Church Growth Modelling.

Parameters

• The reproduction potential. This is the number of unbelievers converted and made enthusiasts through one existing active believer (enthusiast). It measures how much an enthusiast can "reproduce" themselves out of the pool of unbelievers. It is composed of two independent parameters:
  
  • The potential number of people converted through one active believer during their enthusiastic phase - the conversion potential:
    
  • The fraction who become active believers on conversion rather than inactive: g
    
• The duration of the enthusiastic phase:

Results of the Limited Enthusiasm Model

The results can only apply over short periods, up to about 15 years, as births and deaths are not included in the model. Thus the model is particularly suited to short intense periods of growth as is often seen during a revival. The solutions exhibits the typical steep rise in the growth of the church eventually slowing down before the whole community is converted. Such growth only occurs if the reproduction potential f exceeds a theshold of revival-type growth which depends on the proportion of unbelievers in society only. For more details see Short term revival . results only