From FACT to Impact: 
Research Based Resources for Congregational Development
By David A. Roozen
This article is adapted from Hartford Seminary's magazine Praxis

Some of you may recall an old television series called, Mission Impossible. Toward the end of each episode, once the seeming impossible for the day had become possible, and typically after a series of heroic near-failures, you would hear the refrain, "I love it when a plan comes together." 

Well, a year ago you heard the plan in a Praxis article titled: Seminary Supports Partnership To Assist Congregations. It told the story of how the coalition of denominations and faith groups that conducted the Faith Communities Today 2000 (FACT 2000) national survey of congregations formalized their continued Cooperative Congregational Study Partnership (CCSP), with the approval of the seminary faculty and board of trustees, as a dues-paying, membership-based program located within Hartford Institute for Religion Research. 

It also told how at the first annual meeting of partners to this new program the group set forth an ambitious set of plans including:

(1) Creating and testing a financially viable methodology for a biennial national survey of congregations, each survey to include three layers of questions: 
   a. A repeated set of items to track changes and trends, 
   b. A specific set of topical items tied to a congregational resource, and 
   c. A unique set of new items of immediate public interest; 
(2) Developing an approach to congregational resources that begins with a congregational situation requiring self-reflection, and then builds a topical module of supporting national survey items for inclusion in one of the biennial surveys, the results from which get built back into the congregational resource;
(3) Building a capacity for and experience with qualitative approaches to studying congregations that would complement the organization's survey work; 
(4) Developing a subscription-based electronic parish development newsletter targeted to congregational leadership and also linked to a website to continue established media contacts; and 
(5) Extending the annual meeting to combine organizational business, review of recent research, and the exploration of new resource topics.

I love it when a plan comes together! A little more than half way through its first year the new program has already exceeded its projected membership income. 

More importantly, its first biennial, national survey of congregations - FACT 2005 -- will go into the field immediately after Easter. The uses an innovative sampling methodology that combines mass marketing mailing lists with the careful screening of addresses by denominational partners. It will be fielded through the Center for Social Research at Calvin College, a closely related school of the Christian Reformed Church, which is a program partners. 

The survey will track trends by replicating key items in the original FACT 2000 survey, contain a special module of items related to numerical growth, and will include several items to measure the extent of interfaith cooperation among congregations since 9/11. We all owe our deep thanks to the CCSP Research Taskforce for their tireless effort to make this happen - chaired by our own Cynthia Woolever, and including C. Kirk Hadaway from the Episcopal Research Office and Perry Cunningham from the Research Information Division Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

As the survey is in the field, program partners will also be piloting a new methodology that uses FACT national surveys to identify congregations of interest, which are then pursued by more qualitative approaches such as in-depth telephone interviews and case studies. The intent is two-fold. One is to provide a test of the validity of responses to national survey items. The second is to obtain a more nuanced understanding than is possible through a national survey of a congregational situation of special interest. At least one partner, for example, is using the pilot to learn more about its congregations that combine high spiritual vitality and a strong connection to the denomination. 

Findings from the pilot and from FACT 2005 will be presented at the program's newly expanded, annual meeting this August in Chicago. Lyle Schaller, often appreciatively referred to as the dean of church consultants, will also be a featured guest at the meeting. He is joining us for an extended conversation about changing congregational practices, which along with worship and clergy competencies are the leading candidates for the FACT 2007 survey resource module.

As is often the case with seminary programs, most of what goes on is not very visible to anyone except the immediate participants. That is not the kind of impact we hope for from FACT and its related ventures. Indeed, our two primary audiences are, first, leaders and those who resource of congregations - lay and ordained; and second, the public, particularly through the media. 

Hopefully you will connect the latter phrasing with the exceptional work that our own Scott Thumma led in our parallel development of the HIRR and FACT 2000 websites. Scott will continue this pioneering effort to use electronic technologies to make newly emerging FACT-related information and resources immediately accessible by as broad a range of people as possible. 

So add the fact.hartsem.edu web address to your "Favorites" list. But there is an even more direct and automatic way of keeping up with the emerging developments from the Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership. 

It is the program's new subscription-based electronic parish development newsletter, edited by Terry Bascom and targeted to congregational leadership - Leadership and Transformation. Its debut is timed to the fielding of FACT 2005, during the summer. Not only will it contain the latest findings and resources from FACT-related research, but also provide a variety of articles and perspectives on the latest developments in congregational development more broadly. And where else except from Hartford Seminary will one find a parish development resource with a regular interfaith voice and cross faith perspectives.