08-10 2020 16:10
wrote:
One of the many things I remember about Daniel came from the time when we were working together on a special reflection exercise for church. This was 2016.
We wanted to better understand what the Sunday experience was like for people who worship at True Way. One of the things that frustrates church leaders was we didn’t often know what people truly felt about things that happen in church. We rely on assumptions and unprocessed comments. When people came on Sunday, did they feel a sense of anticipation or welcome? Did they identify with the public prayers, or did they feel the prayers were distant? What did they feel when they heard the benediction?
What type of worshipper felt what things?
A group of us got the go-ahead to run a 24-question reflection exercise. We worked on the questions. We picked the best ones. We persuaded our people to buy in. We obtained a big set of data.
Daniel was a data scientist, he understood research, so he became our statistician. Data is not useful until it is analysed. Going in, we already knew what types of analyses we wanted to see. We had designed the study to measure experiences quantitatively by attaching a numerical value to each response.
At one meeting, Daniel, who worked in natural language processing and artificial intelligence, told me about sentiment analysis. I’d never heard of sentiment analysis before. He told me that sentiment analysis, or emotion AI, was a tool to study sentiment-laden language. You could theoretically analyse how an organisation, or an interest group felt about any given topic by hearing the words they chose.
Listening to Daniel, I felt excited. Our reflection document did not just involve ticking off boxes. It allowed respondents to share their thoughts with prose. For example, you could write: “I don’t like modern worship songs. I think we should only sing hymns.” Or “I don’t really like latecomers. They disrupt the service. Do we have to make room for them?”
These words expressed emotions. But beyond the raw emotion of human words, could sentiment analysis help us understand more thoroughly how our people feel? If so, can we persuade people more effectively, love them more?
Many people had ticked the boxes, but they also wrote down their thoughts for us. In our hands, we had what could help us uncover some answers.
God gives every one of us unique gifts, gifts to serve each other. This was one gift that God gave Daniel. And Daniel was God's gift to us.
08-10 2020 16:10
wrote:
One of the many things I remember about Daniel came from the time when we were working together on a special reflection exercise for church. This was 2016.
We wanted to better understand what the Sunday experience was like for people who worship at True Way. One of the things that frustrates church leaders was we didn’t often know what people truly felt about things that happen in church. We rely on assumptions and unprocessed comments. When people came on Sunday, did they feel a sense of anticipation or welcome? Did they identify with the public prayers, or did they feel the prayers were distant? What did they feel when they heard the benediction?
What type of worshipper felt what things?
A group of us got the go-ahead to run a 24-question reflection exercise. We worked on the questions. We picked the best ones. We persuaded our people to buy in. We obtained a big set of data.
Daniel was a data scientist, he understood research, so he became our statistician. Data is not useful until it is analysed. Going in, we already knew what types of analyses we wanted to see. We had designed the study to measure experiences quantitatively by attaching a numerical value to each response.
At one meeting, Daniel, who worked in natural language processing and artificial intelligence, told me about sentiment analysis. I’d never heard of sentiment analysis before. He told me that sentiment analysis, or emotion AI, was a tool to study sentiment-laden language. You could theoretically analyse how an organisation, or an interest group felt about any given topic by hearing the words they chose.
Listening to Daniel, I felt excited. Our reflection document did not just involve ticking off boxes. It allowed respondents to share their thoughts with prose. For example, you could write: “I don’t like modern worship songs. I think we should only sing hymns.” Or “I don’t really like latecomers. They disrupt the service. Do we have to make room for them?”
These words expressed emotions. But beyond the raw emotion of human words, could sentiment analysis help us understand more thoroughly how our people feel? If so, can we persuade people more effectively, love them more?
Many people had ticked the boxes, but they also wrote down their thoughts for us. In our hands, we had what could help us uncover some answers.
God gives every one of us unique gifts, gifts to serve each other. This was one gift that God gave Daniel. And Daniel was God's gift to us.
