Sunday, January 17, 2010

Church survey

We took a survey at church today. There weren't a lot of responses, but I said they didn't need to decide today. So these are preliminary results; I'm sure more will be coming in.

Question 1 was:
a. Keep all the pews and simply re-pad/re-upholster.
b. Replace all the pews with chairs.
c. Keep the front, long pews (and re-pad/upholster), and get chairs for the back section.

Results: a - 14; b - 4; c - 9

Question 2 was:
Yes, let's get new, updated hymnals.
No, let's keep the ones we have.

Results: yes - 8; no - 15

I don't know how many more I expect to get back, but I wasn't really surprised by these results. I'm not really sure what I was even looking for. It's not like majority is going to rule or anything (it will be a council decision). Especially when hardly anyone put their name on the surveys. I don't know if it was all little kids who turned them in, or if some people turned in more than one. It was just for some added input I guess. And some people did make some really good observations. So I appreciated the feedback.

As far as the pews/chairs... I don't really care. I know they are really hard to sit on right now. They're 30 years old and the padding is almost completely gone. The easy thing would be to just repad/upholster what we have. But it would add a little versatility and perhaps be better in the long run to keep the front pews and get chairs in the back.

I was kind of surprised there were some other people interested in new hymnals besides me. I would like to get The Celebration Hymnal, because of the readings, the selection of hymns/choruses, plus I have a copy that has all the guitar chords. We rarely use the hymnal we have now though. Partly because it's old, but also because we almost exclusively project the words on a screen. But also, so many of the readings are in King James or The Living Bible, and I don't particularly care for the song selections in our current hymnal. And... I don't know if I'm just getting old or what, but - not that I would ever go away from the screen entirely - but sometimes it would just be nice to use the hymnal more. I think it helps to actually "hold something" in your hand; and I do like responsive readings and such. But... whatever. I just decided to throw in the hymn question at the last minute. The one we really need to decide on is the pew situation.

TOTAL RESULTS AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY:
Pews/Chairs:
a. 20
b. 4
c. 12

Hymnals:
yes - 9
no - 22

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