Quantitative Eccesiology!

A new era has dawned in theology. Quantitative Eccesiology!

Thanks to Jared Benge, the brilliant former student of mine, church studies just won't be the same.

Pictured here, Jared plotted the EcQ, mapping the set of scores defined by the function. That is, plug in your respective scores (the MET, and the SIT comprised of the Connector, Maven, and Salesmen Terms) and you'll find yourself plotted somewhere on the green surface. It is a map of the eccesial contribution of all possible people.

Now all Jared and I need to do is write a book, Quantitative Eccesiology, where we set forth equations capturing all sorts of eccesial dynamics and plot them in multidimensional spaces.

Sound crazy? Not so fast. John Gottman, the recognized world authority on marriage and marital therapy, has published a book full of graphs just like the one Jared plotted here. Check out Gottman's book The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models. In The Mathematics of Marriage, Gottman plots all sorts of variables concerning the husband and wife using nonlinear mathematics to model and predict the dynamics of the marriage. The EcQ is baby stuff compared to Gottman's work. But the point is this: What Gottman has done with marriage should be applicable to eccesiology. It should be possible to identify variables in eccesial communities and model their dynamics: The ups and downs, the growth and collapse, the ebb and flow.