# #77 - Personalized Engagement: The Key to Spiritual Transformation with Arnie Cole Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/ministry-at-scale-1132181/77-personalized-engagement-the-key-to-spiritual-transformation-with-arnie-cole Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/ministry-at-scale-1132181/77-personalized-engagement-the-key-to-spiritual-transformation-with-arnie-cole.md Podcast: [Ministry At Scale](https://stenobird.com/podcast/ministry-at-scale-1132181) Published: 2024-04-25T14:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://ministry-at-scale.captivate.fm Audio file: https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/af70fed8-5719-4ab1-8a08-abffb90a5e33/ArnieCole-MinistryAtScalePodcast.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/ministry-at-scale-1132181/episodes/77-personalized-engagement-the-key-to-spiritual-transformation-with-arnie-cole Duration seconds: 1309 ## Resource Arnie Cole is a social scientist and researcher at Back to the Bible, who has studied the spiritual lives of over 1.5 million people over the past 20 years. In this insightful episode, he challenges ministries to truly understand the spiritual state of the people they serve in order to help move them closer to Jesus. The Importance of Asking "How Are You Doing Spiritually?" Through examples from his own family's equestrian ministry, Arnie highlights how children are remarkably open about their spiritual struggles, but something happens as they become adults and stop sharing. He argues it is critical for ministries to directly ask people how they are doing spiritually. Introducing the Personalized Engagement Prioritization Model Arnie presents a 25-dimensional model that identifies 17 trillion potential spiritual data points for where a person could be in their walk. The methodology includes: 1. The "Death Question" to assess their salvation 2. Their level of Bible engagement, which predicts spiritual trajectory 3. Prioritizing people into 4 categories: Need for Evangelism, Discipleship, Activation, or Mature Believer Measuring Spiritual Transformation and Discipleship Impact The critical metric is whether people are engaging the Bible regularly, which research shows leads to transformed lives. Arnie also emphasizes the need to measure if people are actively discipling others. Addressing the "Hard Issues" People Face The model accounts for the real spiritual struggles people face like anger, anxiety, pornography use, gender identity issues, and more. Arnie laments that many ministries are unwilling to even ask about these "hard" areas people need help with. A Free Resource to Increase Ministry Effectiveness Arnie's team offers ministries a free scientific study and impa… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/ministry-at-scale-1132181/episodes/77-personalized-engagement-the-key-to-spiritual-transformation-with-arnie-cole/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/ministry-at-scale-1132181/77-personalized-engagement-the-key-to-spiritual-transformation-with-arnie-cole.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.