Congregational Vitality
We plan to focus on the work of Diana Butler Bass and her research on congregational vitality. You can get a feel for Bass's work by reading this short, early
article from the Alban Institute publication
Congregations.
She has engaged in extensive research on the topic of what she calls "practicing congregations " in her books
The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church and
From Nomads to Pilgrims and most recently in
Christianity for the Rest of Us.
What I like about her writing is that it reminds us that there is more to congregational vitality than numbers and it offers an alternative to thinking of congregational development in terms of marketing tricks and instead sees it in terms of spiritual growth. You can learn more about Dr. Bass
here.
LOOK AT YOUR CONGREGATION
LOOK UP YOUR CONGREGATION in the form at the bottom of the page
here.
You can see a 10 yr perspective on your congregation in terms of numbers (baptized and average Sunday Attendance -ASA, plate and pledge giving), you can compare it to the diocese a whole (are you doing better in terms of attendance than the diocesan average, for example) and to individual other congregations.
LOOK AT YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
The other thing you can do is "view zip code profile."
For those of us who remember the days when the diocese swore by Percept ethographic data, this Zip Code view is from the same people, Census Data enhanced by marketing data. It is a little hard to interpret since many of us draw from beyond our zip code and Percept doesn't provide certain types of data (e.g. how many gay couples with children are in the area,) but some of it is helpful. For example you see that your zipcode is 75% made up of people under 40 and the people under 40 in your congregation are that nice couple who visited once, you need to reflect on the statistics.
STATISTICS AND GRAPHS
2008 Summary of congregational research:
http://episcopalchurch.org/documents/Episcopal_Overview_FACT_2008%281%29.pdf
Ecumenical statistics from the same period:
http://episcopalchurch.org/documents/FACTs_on_Growth_%28Ecumenical_Report%29.pdf
Wisdom about statistics from the 2004 study by Kirk Hadaway:
It is easy to look at the unadjusted membership trends for the Episcopal Church
and say the sky is falling. But to do so would be irresponsible and inaccurate. A
more sober look at the statistics (membership and attendance) reveals that we
have reached a plateau of sorts—from which we can slide into a new decline or
begin growing again. The problems facing the Episcopal Church are daunting
due to the nature of our main constituency. As long as we are a predominantly
white denomination with aging, affluent, highly educated members, growth will be
increasingly difficult. There is hope, however, because the Episcopal Church is
attractive to people brought up in other religious traditions and to unchurched
seekers, and statistically the Episcopal Church is the healthiest denomination in
the mainline. But it will require much more than business as usual to expand into
other constituencies (the less educated, immigrants, Hispanics, the unchurched).
It will take new churches and a new openness among our existing parishes. It
will take having something to offer newcomers that changes lives.
The degree to which our statistics reflect the “state of the mainline” and mirror
population trends could be taken as an excuse for all of our membership
problems. Demographic trends provide an explanation for the much of the
decline, but they also suggest that much of what we have done during the last 50
years is to ride a series of cultural waves. Like all other denominations we
started many new churches in the 1950s and like all other denominations we cut
back severely on new church development during the 1960s and 1970s.
Evangelism became an embarrassment and adult religious education was
relegated to obscurity. Even the renewed culture-wide interest in spirituality
caught us by surprise and we remain largely unprepared to deal with the interest
that unchurched seekers are directing toward our churches.
Finally, it should be noted that denominational growth (and decline) is not the
same as congregational growth (and decline). The Episcopal Church declined by
8,201 members in 2002. That represents an average loss of 1.1 member per
church—too few to be noticed in most congregations. We have many vibrant
healthy churches and also many declining congregations. Unfortunately,
declines among the latter tend to cancel out growth among the former. Clearly
we need more vibrant healthy churches, but growing as a denomination will
require systemic changes, so that the average loss of 1.1 might turn into an
average gain of 1.1, 2.2, or even more. Even tiny gains across a denomination
of 7,300 churches would produce growth of a kind that we have not seen since
1966.
The quotation above comes from the 2004 Analysis by Kirk Hadaway:
http://episcopalchurch.org/documents/2004GrowthReport%281%29.pdf
