Beyond the Ordinary

Key to a spiritually alive church: Support your fellow church members

By David Briggs

My wife and I had just moved to Fairfield County in Connecticut, and were searching for a church. We were impressed when as visitors to an Episcopal congregation, the priest invited my wife to work with other volunteers at a craft fair.

She looked forward to the opportunity to meet people in a new town. Until it was time for lunch, and all of the women from the church working with her went to eat together, leaving only my wife behind to staff the table.

We never went back.

In a religious world that can often seem hierarchical, from clergy leading services to regional and national offices making decisions that impact local churches, the significance of the role played by each person in the pews can often be overlooked.

Yet a growing body of research is showing how worshipers treat one another can have a significant impact on the congregation and the spiritual life and physical health of its members.

In a new study using data from the U.S. Congregational Life Survey, researchers found informal support from church members was more associated with spiritual growth than worship service attendance or belonging to formal church groups.

Conversations before services or at church suppers may be even more effective than Bible study groups or Sunday School classes in that they provide give-and-take opportunities with trusted companions that can directly address the spiritual needs of individuals, say researchers Neal Krause of  the University of Michigan and Cynthia Woolever of the US CLS.

Several other studies also uphold the benefits of this type of positive social support within the congregation.

For example, a study of older adults over time found that greater spiritual support appeared to be associated with having fewer doubts about religion. In contrast, older people who encountered more negative interaction with other church members reported having more doubts.

 Those people who have negative experiences with others also are more likely to suppress those doubts, an action associated with less favorable health, researchers Neal Krause and Christopher Ellison of the University of Texas at San Antonio reported in an article on “the doubting process” in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

 In a separate study on self-forgiveness reported in the Review of Religious Research, Krause found results suggesting older adults who were more satisfied with the emotional support they received from church members were more likely to forgive themselves than those who were not satisfied with the support they received.

 At their best, what worshippers say to one another at coffee hour or in the grocery store reflects the prayers they recite during services.

When other church members model messages of love and forgiveness that are at the foundation of a faith’s teachings, it reinforces belief and the value of being part of a congregation, Krause says. If the messages are contradictory, with church members gossiping about or criticizing one another, it can place those beliefs in question.

Amid other pressing concerns such as church finances and programming, congregations need to evaluate how members are expressing their faith in their relationships with one another, Krause advises.

“Are the people in our congregation getting along? Are they supporting one another” are among the questions that need to be asked, he said.

The choices members make when they are together matter, whether it is to offer spiritual support in an environment of trust and mutual caring or even for a group of church friends to decide to go to lunch in two groups so a newcomer will not be left alone at a church fair.

It is in those settings, Krause says, "where the real business of religion takes place.”

 

Challenge for next pope: Reaching out to Catholic women

By David Briggs

There are two gender gaps in many U.S. congregations.

One gap is the stained-glass ceiling in many churches. While social and cultural changes have allowed women to reach the top in numerous secular arenas, the 2006-2007 National Congregations Study found women lead less than 10 percent of congregations.

The second gap is that women greatly outnumber men in the pews. The 2008-2009 wave of the U.S. Congregational Life Survey found that 61 percent of worshipers were women, the same ratio as in the 2001 survey. Just 2 percent of congregations do not have more women than men.

As researcher Cynthia Woolever has pointed out, the imbalance is not due to the fact that women live longer than men. It shows up in every age group, with women making up 61 percent of worshipers ages 45 to 64, 60 percent of those ages 25 to 44 and 57 percent of people ages 15 to 24.  

And women in many other ways are more active in their faith lives. Women are more likely than men to pray daily and say religion is very important in their lives, according to the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.

But there are signs the second gap may be fraying.

As U.S. Catholics await the election of a new pope, one area of concern is new evidence that non-Hispanic women are no longer so different from men in their spiritual practices.

In 1987, more than half of Catholic women reported attending Catholic Mass weekly, compared to 38 percent of men. By 2011, the gender gap was gone, University of New Hampshire sociologist Michele Dillon reported at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. She used data from the American Catholic Laity Project, a national survey taken every six years since 1987.

And, for the first time in the 2011 survey, women were less likely than men to say the Catholic Church was among the most important parts of their lives. They also were less likely to declare, “I would never leave the Catholic church.”

If tension over women’s exclusion from leadership roles is in part driving the diminishing gender gap, it is unlikely that issue will be resolved soon. None of the candidates mentioned as possibilities for the papacy would be expected to allow women priests.

What do Catholic worshipers think about that topic?

In the U.S. Congregational Life Survey, 43 percent of Catholics said they support the ordination of women, and 22 percent said they were unsure of where they stood. Just one-third opposed women priests.

At the same time, most Catholics in the pews indicated they would be OK if their next minister was a woman. Fifty-six percent said they would be accepting or very accepting of a woman leader, while just 14 percent said they would be “not at all accepting.”

Something for the next pope to think about?

 

Mental health of clergy requires balancing stress and success

By David Briggs

"God does temper the wind to the shorn lamb. To how many has it not seemed, at some one period of their lives, that all was over for them ... And yet they have lived to laugh again, to feel that the air was warm and the earth fair, and that God in giving them ever-springing hope has given everything."

--  Anthony Trollope

Stress comes with the job for most clergy. Long hours, the many demands on their time and addressing the often conflicting needs and desires of congregation members are major challenges.

And while pastors in troubled congregations may be the most vulnerable, even the road to success can be paved with additional stress and anxiety.

Congregations that are strong in welcoming new people, focusing on the community and increasing participation in church activities tend to add greater stress for pastors as some in the congregation resist moving out of their comfort zones, Cynthia Woolever and Deborah Bruce report in their book, "Leadership That Fits Your Church."

The good news is that for many pastors the blessings of their ministry outweigh the pressures of the job.

In studying data from the U.S. Congregational Life Survey, Woolever and Bruce found pastors reporting the highest satisfaction with their ministry rarely thought about leaving their current congregation regardless of their stress level.

"The sense that their ministry is going well makes these pastors able to tolerate higher stress levels," the researchers say.

At the other extreme, however, pastors who are relatively dissatisfied with their ministry and face more job-related stress are the most likely to think about leaving and suffer burnout.

The challenge for congregations and their spiritual leaders becomes how to increase the clergy's satisfaction with their ministry and decrease pastoral stress.

The U.S. Congregational Life Survey provides some important insights. In addition to enjoying good mental health and being satisfied with their ministry, other factors found to contribute to lower job stress for clergy include:

• Lack of conflict. Serving in congregations that
  have experienced little or no internal tensions in recent years helps keep
  stress low.
•  Personal time. Clergy who are able to maintain a
  personal life separate from ministry experience less stress.
• Regular time off: Pastors who regularly take a day
  off each week report less stress.
• Smaller congregations: Pastors who
  serve smaller churches also report less stress, as do pastors who only serve
  one congregation.

More personal time, high satisfaction with their spiritual lives and a lack of church conflict also were found to be associated with clergy having a higher degree of satisfaction with their ministry.

Satisfaction with salary and benefits and a sense of accomplishment and enthusiasm also were linked to greater satisfaction.

Protecting the mental health of clergy is a responsibility shared throughout the congregation, the research indicates.

“Congregational leaders should be sensitive to the responsibilities they ask their pastors to meet,” Woolever and Bruce write. “Providing the pastor with regular time away from the congregation, encouraging the pastor to take steps toward self-care, and limiting the pastor’s workload all help to combat stress.”

Signs of ever-springing hope among the daily stresses of congregational life can come from the pew as well as the pulpit.

 

Who Pastors Growing Churches?

By Cynthia Woolever

The general outlines of a growing church probably won’t surprise you. Representing 25% of congregations in the United States, growing churches:

• Have fewer worshipers older than 65 years of age compared to other churches.
• Attract many new worshipers, staying ahead of member departures and deaths.
• Attract more of the unchurched or first-time worshipers.
• Offer an engaging vision for the church’s future.
• Experience some conflict as the congregation deals with change.

But is what you think you know about the pastors who lead these growing congregations true?

Not young or old. One assumption is that younger pastors, under the age of 45, serve growing or soon-to-be growing churches. As the chart below shows, that’s not true. In fact, pastors of all ages lead in growing churches! The largest age group serving growing churches are those pastors who are between 51 and 60 years old.[i]  

Overall, young pastors are a relatively small demographic group. Only 12% of pastors are 40 years old or younger. Yet one in four (26%) of these younger pastors serves as the senior or solo pastor in a growing church. That margin is even greater among pastors in their fifties, however, with almost one in three (30%) leading a growing church.

First-career or second-career?  Historically, the traditional path to ministry meant attending seminary immediately following graduation from college, university, or Bible college. Today, though, a growing number of pastoral leaders worked in another occupation before entering ministry. About 40% of pastors currently serving local churches are classified as second-career. The sad thing is these second-career pastors are overrepresented in declining churches. Our research shows that growing and stable churches have more first-career pastors (64%) than declining congregations. Given that information, it seems that growing congregations may prefer to call a first-career pastor, if all else is equal.

A new pastor or one with longer service? Another common notion is that an exciting new pastor will make the church grow—practically overnight! While the number of years a pastor serves a church is related to numerical growth, it does not fit the above assumption. Pastors in growing churches are not new to the congregation. In fact, they have served there longer, than average, than leaders in stable churches.[ii] To help a church grow, takes time—to build trust, develop allies, reach consensus about robust strategies, and achieve results.

So do pastors get the credit for church growth? While pastoral leadership is important, it’s not the only factor in church growth. When a congregation is healthy and becoming more vital in every way, there is plenty of credit to go around. All lay or clergy, who are involved in the congregation, play a part. So pastors and members alike need to acknowledge and embrace their shared responsibility in discerning what God has called the church to be and do, to make it possible for the church to offer Christ to a new generation.

 

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[i] The average time a pastor serves, across all denominations and faith groups, is five years. Average pastoral tenure varies by denomination.

[ii] The data included in this blog post comes from Cynthia Woolever and Deborah Bruce, Leadership That Fits Your Church: What Kind of Pastor for What Kind of Congregation? (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2012).

New Resource Available – Leader Guide for Leadership That Fits Your Church

Church leaders can now access a new resource that will help them involve their members in new conversations about finding the best leadership for their congregation’s ministries. J. Brent Bill, who currently serves as the Project Director for the New Meetings Project of Friends General Conference in Philadelphia, PA, authored the guide. For many years he was the executive vice president of the Indianapolis Center for Congregations. A Quaker minister, Brent has also served as a pastor in three congregations. He is a writer, retreat leader, and congregational consultant.

The guide will help your congregation to:

• process the information contained in Leadership That Fits Your Church:

What Kind of Pastor for What Kind of Congregation in a way that is useful for your setting;

• gain new insights into pastor-congregation dynamics;
• understand where some tweaks might be needed to improve or fix issues in this crucial relationship between the pastor and the congregation;
• assist pastoral search or clergy relations committees; and
• learn to care for each other in fresh ways.

The material in the study guide is

• organized into six, ninety-minute sessions; it can also be adapted for use at a leadership retreat; and
• filled with interactive exercises and discussion questions for small groups.

You can download the Leader Guide for Leadership That Fits Your Church on our project website:

http://uscongregations.org/

http://uscongregations.org/pdf/Leadership-That-Fits-Your-Church-Leader-Guide.pdf

Any questions? Call 800-728-7228 ext. 2040; or email us at uscongregations@pcusa.org

 

How to Find Leadership that Fits Your Church: Buy the book!

by Cynthia Woolever

Most church members report a high level of satisfaction with their church’s current leadership. In fact, only a very small number—3%—stated that they believed their pastor and congregation are not a match. That’s encouraging news for churches facing one of the most daunting decisions a congregation can make: finding the right pastor. In Leadership that Fits Your Church: What Kind of Pastor for What Kind of Congregation (Chalice Press, $19.99 paper, November 2012), Deborah Bruce and I (coauthors) offer insights into making a successful match.

The book is based on findings from the U.S. Congregational Life Survey (USCLS). The survey, funded by grants from Lilly Endowment, Inc. and the Louisville Institute, records the views of more than half a million people who regularly participate in worship. In addition, one key pastoral leader in each church responded to a survey about their ministry tasks, job satisfaction, sources of support and stress, compensation, and theological education.

The scope of the USCLS allows for a comprehensive portrait of pastoral leadership, drawing upon a large representative national sample of pastoral leaders, congregations, and parishes; a broad range of denominations and faith groups; the experiences of pastors in congregations of all sizes; and the opinions of both pastoral leaders and worshipers in the same congregations. This book presents a 360-degree data driven view of all that is involved in congregational vitality: the values, commitments, experiences, and perceptions of members, lay leaders, and pastors.

Leadership in the congregational context is particularly complex and difficult. Yet most pastors who participated in the study reported that they are enthusiastic about their ministry and feel they’ve accomplished a lot. High ministry satisfaction can be a buffer against the high stress levels that accompany pastoral work, and can prevent burnout.

We show how a strong match might be made between pastor and congregation. Then, we follow the pastoral transition experiences of three churches: mainline Protestant, Catholic, and conservative Protestant. The book outlines pastor and church types, and then we dig more deeply into the dynamics that yield a successful match.

We highlight several implications for pastors, lay leaders and other members of the congregation, including the importance of:

• Learning from the past by reflecting on the ministry of previous pastors.
• Allowing unstated assumptions to surface.
• Clarity about financial responsibilities.
• Recognizing how conflict damages congregations and pastors.
• Providing ongoing clergy support.
• Identifying and building on strengths.
• Seeking to understand and articulate what God is calling that particular church to be.

Leadership That Fits Your Church is the latest volume in The Columbia Partnership (TCP) Leadership Series.

How can you get your hands on this great new book? Available in Kindle form or hard copy at ChalicePress.com (or call 1-800-366-3383). You can even save 30% off all TCP books, including this one, with the code TCP2012 (offer expires on November 30, 2012).

 

New Presbyterian Churches: Full Offering Plates but Few Endowment Dollars

By Cynthia Woolever

Old money and older congregations.  New money and newer congregations.  What’s the difference?  That’s what we wanted to learn.  To do that we surveyed Presbyterian churches organized in 1990 or later and compared them to a random sample of 521 older Presbyterian churches and their 40,555 worshipers.  Around 90 new congregations agreed to participate in the U.S. Congregational Life Survey in the fall of 2011 and they gave our  survey to all 8,071 of their worshipers.

One thing we learned is that there are some huge differences.  One was in the age of the congregation.  That may not sound surprising – but the older congregations were more than 100 years older than their newer counterparts.  The average older Presbyterian congregation was organized in 1890 (median year across all churches).   The typical new PC(USA) congregation was founded in 1993. About 15% of the new Presbyterian churches surveyed began as a result of “church planting” and were established in the past five years. Almost 20% of the new congregations in the national sample moved to a new location sometime in the past five years.

More money in the plate. We were surprised to learn that the new PC(USA) churches have fuller offering plates than the older Presbyterian churches. As Table 1 shows, the new churches receive more contributions, have larger budgets and more staff than the typical older Presbyterian congregation. However, contributions per person are about the same.

A larger percentage of the overall income in the new Presbyterian churches (94%) comes from what individuals donate to the congregation than in the older churches (88%). New churches also use a larger slice of their budget for operating expenses (89%) than do the older congregations (86% goes to operating expenses).

Fewer dollars from an endowment. Perhaps not surprisingly, we learned that income from investments or bequests is relatively common among the older Presbyterian churches. About half of all of the older PC(USA) congregations receive endowment income. This is not the case for new congregations. Only one in ten of the newer PC(USA) churches (11%) has any endowment income.

Building a financial base. More new PC(USA) churches (22%) than older PC(USA) churches (15%) describe their congregation as having an increasing financial base. Three in ten new churches (28%) and four in ten older churches (38%) have a declining financial base (see Table 2).

Building a church’s ministry. So is it financially better to be older or newer?  It depends.  The typical older Presbyterian church has more than a one-hundred-year head start in securing a financial base to support the congregation’s ministry.  The upside translates into having endowment funds to tap.  The downside is often a declining financial base.

Building a solid and growing financial base in the midst of building new ministries is one of the big challenges for new churches.  The upside for them is higher contributions and budgets.  The downside is lack of endowments for future funding.

Regardless of whether your congregation is older or newer, our study shows that congregants in both new and old congregations support their churches financially.  That may not be surprising news – but it certainly is reassuring. 

 

Back to Church Sunday: Six New Strategies Announced

By Cynthia Woolever

Fewer worshipers today say they attend worship services on a weekly basis than did just a decade ago. In our 2001 research of worshipers attending congregations in a national random sample, we found that 83% came to worship services “usually every week” or “more than once a week.” That number dropped to 76% in our most recent national study.[i] Much of that decline is among Catholic worshipers. However, these percentages reflect people who were attending a worship service on the day of the survey. In reality, less than 22% of the U.S. population report attending worship services any given week.[ii]  

Over the course of an average month, the percentage of worshipers in attendance at all weekend services is less than the percentage a decade ago. The average church in the United States now has fewer than 100 people attending worship services. 

So, how can pastors and members address this trend in declining church attendance? One answer comes from information about how people find a new congregation. The U.S. Congregational Life Survey asked worshipers who began attending their congregation in the past five years how they first found out about the church before they visited. The biggest draw? A personal invitation! Almost half of visitors came for the first time because someone invited them.
One way your congregation can be effective in inviting others is by participating in National Back to Church Sunday. National Back to Church Sunday is a tool your congregation can use to join with thousands of other churches across the country to invite visitors to church on September 16, 2012. The Back to Church website provides numerous resources and tools to help you get started. Over 14,000 congregations are expected to participate!

How many visitors will your congregation have that day? That depends. Look at ways of using Facebook, Twitter, your website, sending news releases to your local paper, posting announcements in local grocery stores and hair salons. You might even issue an old-fashioned printed invitation – unless that’s too retro for your church. Of course, as our research shows, the best way of is all—invite a friend!

National Back to Church Sunday is sponsored by LifeWay Research.

Other resources:

• Myths and Facts About Evangelism and Church Growth
• How to Attract First-Time Worship Visitors

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[i] Mark Chaves, “The Decline of American Religion?” Guiding Paper Series, Association of Religion Data Archives (http://www.thearda.com/rrh/papers/guidingpapers/Chaves.asp). Also, see Cynthia Woolever and Deborah Bruce, A Field Guide to U.S. Congregations (second edition; Louisville, KY: Westminister John Knox Press), 115.  

[ii] C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler, “How Many Americans Attend Worship Each Week? An Alternative Approach to Measurement,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44, no. 3 (2005): 307-22.

Switchers in the Pulpit and Pew

By Cynthia Woolever

One United Methodist pastor tells a church member who was formerly a Baptist, “It’s okay! I was raised a Baptist too!” How common is it for pastors to grow up in a different denomination or faith tradition than the church where they preach each Sunday? More common than you might think.

Protestant pastors are switchers. Almost all Catholic priests (96%) were raised as Catholics. However, the picture is quite different among Protestants:

• Conservative Protestant pastors: Less than half of conservative Protestant pastors (41%) were raised in the same denomination as their current one. One in four (26%) were raised in a conservative Protestant church other than the type where they currently serve. Finally, one in three conservative Protestant pastors (33%) actually switched their affiliation from another faith group (such as a mainline Protestant or Catholic).
• Mainline Protestant pastors: Slightly less than half (44%) of these pastors are currently serving in the same denomination as the one they were raised in. This means that 56% serve in a denomination that is different than their childhood background. One in four mainline Protestant pastors changed to their current denomination from a different faith group since their youth.

Some Presbyterian pastors have switched, too. The majority of Presbyterian pastors (57%) grew up Presbyterian, yet four in ten (43%) are switchers. Associate pastors were slightly more likely to grow up Presbyterian (63%). Fewer Presbyterian pastors than pastors in other mainline denominations have switched.

More second-career than first-career Presbyterian pastors have switched:

• First-career pastoral leaders: These pastors, who typically feel called to ministry in early adulthood, more often remain within the faith tradition in which they were raised. A majority of Presbyterian key leaders (either solo pastor or head of staff) (62%) had a childhood background in a Presbyterian church; first-career Presbyterian associate pastors (71%) were even more likely to have a same-denomination upbringing.
• Second-career pastoral leaders: More second-career than first-career pastoral leaders have switched. Half of the Presbyterian senior/solo pastors came to ministry from a different denomination. A roughly equal percentage (47%) of associate PC(USA) pastors entered ministry with a non-Presbyterian religious background.

 
Worshipers are switching too! We cannot directly compare worshipers’ switching patterns over their lifetime. However, we can look at new people who began attending a congregation in the previous five-year period. These statistics reflect recent switching behavior. Overall, about one in four new worshipers (22%) say they now attend a different “brand” of congregation than the one where they attended previously.[1]

• Again, Protestants are the big switchers—38% of these new worshipers say they switched from attending church in one denomination to attending services in a different denomination.
• Only a small percentage of Catholic worshipers (5%) are denominational switchers. 

Making a switching stew. Imagine a typical congregation where 22 percent of worshipers grew up in or transferred their membership from a church in another denomination. Now imagine that the pastor of this congregation also has a church background that differs from the congregation’s affiliation. This diversity makes quite a stew, flavored with spicy opinions! Switchers—both pastors and worshipers—bring numerous expectations to their new congregation. They might differ in their definitions of good leadership and effective ministry. Having arrived from different paths, they may want to go in several directions simultaneously. This significant trend makes church leadership more difficult than ever.  

 

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[1] New people are those attending the congregation for five years or less.

Email, Websites, and Facebook Pages: Major and Marginal Users

By Cynthia Woolever

In the past decade, religious communities have embraced electronic communication in a big way. As the latest report from Faith Communities Today (FACT) by Scott Thumma indicates—“The use of both websites and email by congregations has more than doubled in the past decade.”

One of the surprising results is congregational use of Facebook (over 40% of the congregations in the study report its use). Given the young age of Facebook—only four years of general public use when the study was conducted in 2000—the adoption rate is stunning. At the same time, use of church websites has leveled off—about three in four congregations maintain a website.

The following figure from the report reveals that many congregations take a “both/and” approach with electronic technology—one in three churches have both a website and a Facebook page.

Thumma points out that few congregational websites are interactive and many are not updated regularly. On the other hand, Facebook pages are more dynamic, easily updated, and interactive for “friends” of the page. However, Facebook features do not suit congregations particularly well for reaching out to potential worshipers as much as a well-designed website does.

Use of email. Email communication is the most adopted technology by congregations. With few exceptions, eight or nine out of every ten congregations report using email to conduct church business, stay in touch with members, or contact visitors. Here are some of the top users (percent of congregations reporting use):

• Unitarian Universalists (100%)
• Baha’is of the United States (100%)
• Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (98%)
• Episcopal Church (98%)
• Mennonite Church USA (97%)
• Reformed Church in America (96%)
• Churches of Christ (96%)
• Christian Reformed Church (96%)
• Church of the Nazarene (96%)
• Southern Baptist Convention (95%)
• United Methodist Church (93%)
• Roman Catholic Church (91%)
• Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (86%)

Facebook use. In only seven of the 27 participating denominations and faith groups did at least half of congregations indicate they had a Facebook page. Certainly, Facebook puts the congregation and its members and “friends” in the public domain, which means some potential for compromised privacy for individuals. Here are the seven groups where at least half of congregations reported having a Facebook page (percent of congregations reporting use):

• Assemblies of God (69%)
• Unitarian Universalists (66%)
• Church of the Nazarene (60%)
• Southern Baptist Convention (57%)
• Nondenominational (56%)*
• Muslim (52%)*
• Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (50%)

*Author Scott Thumma notes low response rate for these groups and warrants caution for data interpretation.

About one in four (26%) Presbyterian congregations use Facebook pages to represent their church.

Congregational websites. As the chart above illustrates, some congregations utilize multiple electronic formats for outreach and mission. The average adoption of websites as a tool across groups is 74%. Several denominations and faith groups show adoption rates that exceed this overall average. Here are the 11 groups in which website use exceeds the average (percent of congregations reporting usage):

• Unitarian Universalists (97%)
• Orthodox Christian (92%)
• Episcopal Church (91%)
• Reformed Church in America (92%)
• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (81%)
• Christian Reformed Church (80%)
• Churches of Christ (80%)
• Nondenominational (78%)*
• Southern Baptist Convention (78%)
• Roman Catholic Church (76%)
• Mennonite Church (76%)

*Author Scott Thumma notes low response rate for these groups and warrants caution for data interpretation.

In comparison, about two in three Presbyterian churches (64%) maintain a church website, slightly below the overall average.

Marginal users. FACT researchers developed a three-point scale of Internet and computer-aided technologies—no or marginal technology use, modest use of technology, and major use. The scale became a tool to rank congregations in each of the participating denominations. Here are the faith groups with the highest percentages of congregations identified as marginal users of electronic technology:

• Conservative Judaism (83%)
• Reform Judaism (78%)
• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (66%)
• Muslim (65%)*
• Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (59%)
• Roman Catholic Church (58%)

*Author Scott Thumma notes low response rate for these groups and warrants caution for data interpretation.

The project rated less than half of congregations in the remaining 21 groups, including Presbyterians, as marginal users. One in three Presbyterian churches (35%) were identified as marginal users in this research.

Benefits of adopting new technology. Technology is just one tool among many for congregations seeking to build on their strengths. Scott Thumma links the adoption of technology to church innovativeness, distinctiveness, vitality, and numerical growth. Compared to others, more congregations that are technologically savvy are innovative, different from other neighborhood churches, and experience vitality and church growth.

Where does your congregation stand in this picture? Is your church among the early adopters of technological strategies? If your congregation makes use of technology, do church leaders engage in ongoing conversations about how this tool enhances congregational life?

In your church seeking to enter the Facebook/web world, but not sure where to start? Consider resources from:

Congregational Resource Guide

Center for Congregations

Church Tech Review

 

Previous related posts:

Pastors and Technology

Are Pastors Wired

Surfing for God

Surfing for God, part 2

Congregational Websites

How do Congregations Use Email?