Disciple Maker Index: Leveraging Data to Advance Spiritual Growth in the Catholic Church

According to a study by the Dynamic Catholic Institute: 6.4% of registered parishioners contribute 80% of the volunteer hours, 6.8% of registered parishioners contribute 80% of financial contributions. There is an 84% overlap between the 2 groups. According to CARA, only 17.8 million of the 96 million people in the U.S. who describe themselves as “Catholic at some point in their life” attend Mass weekly, & fewer than 3 million are involved in the parish outside of Mass. The data is disturbing. We need a re-proposing of the Gospel to Catholics who see their faith as irrelevant or ineffectively led. In order to make progress, the Catholic Church needs to move highly engaged Catholics to become, in the words of Pope Francis, “missionary disciples” who are re-engaging lapsed Catholics & moving Catholics practicing a faith of habit to highly engaged in their Catholic faith. In response to this challenge, Catholic Leadership Institute is piloting its Disciple Maker Index, an online assessment of individual spirituality & parish effectiveness that will provide concrete data to help drive decision-making at the parish level. Through data collection & analysis, a parish will receive a score to indicate current effectiveness & allow benchmarking with other parishes in the diocese and nationwide. Parishes will administer the assessment every two years with new practices and response interventions between assessments to support continuous learning and improvement and, ultimately, increased discipleship.