March 13 release set for data, digital workbook

As their hard drives whirred, researchers across the country began studying the results of the massive study of 14,301 congregations in 42 denominations and combinations of faith groups. Because of the comprehensive nature of their common questionnaire, most groups were discovering new information about their local bodies.

Nowhere was there more excitement than in the Hartford, CT, office where Professor David Roozen had assembled data sets from all participants and, with his co-director Professor Carl Dudley, was completing an analysis of what is the most broadly-based survey of churches, synagogues and mosques ever conducted in the United States.

Roozen and Dudley announced that their initial report will be released publicly at a March 13 media event at Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral in New York. The project, known as Faith Communities Today, is coordinated at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

The New York media conference will feature several religious leaders as well as the co-directors. Within days several faith groups will also report their research at press conferences in cities across the country.

Roozen offered three early findings, "as a kind of appetizer to the feast of information we’ll spread out across the country on March 13." He announced that the "FACT weighted data" indicates that half of all congregations in the U.S. have fewer than 100 regularly participating adults. 

The research also indicates that more than half the congregations studied are located in town and country situations.

Another significant finding, according to Roozen, is that roughly half of the congregations were founded before 1945 and half since that time. That year marked the first post-World War II housing boom when many congregations also were begun. He is fascinated by the figures that show the periods in which various faith groups established congregations in the U.S. 

Roozen explained that by weighting the data, "each denomination or faith group’s congregations are represented in the FACT reports proportionate to their representation in the total membership of participating congregations." Each of the groups that conducted surveys targeted their work to achieve an error rate within plus or minus 4%.

A draft of the initial report, called Faith Communities in the U.S. Today, will be circulated among top leaders in the various faith groups in late February. Many of these leaders and their specialists in congregational development will announce new denominational insights and follow-up programs simultaneously with the New York media event.

Meanwhile, Dudley and Faculty Associate Scott Thumma put the finishing touches on a self-guiding workbook for local congregations. After several years of refinement, Interact with FACT will be available on the FACT website and on several denominational websites. 

According to Dirk Hart, who chaired the committee that developed the guide for congregational use of the data, "the workbook-on-the-web will not only provide interesting statistics, but will enable local congregations to do their own planning based on sound information." In Hart’s own denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, the interactive workbook will be used by congregations as part of a package of resources currently being developed. National and regional leaders in the CRC already are looking at what FACT says about their denomination as they plan resources.

Workbook for local groups to be available online
Carl Dudley describes an exciting, interactive vehicle to help congregations study themselves in light of FACT research.

As FACT prepares to release the data gathered from 14,301 congregations in 42 faith groups, the Key Teachers met to disassemble the pages of the workbook on which they had been laboring for two years.

This act of dismantling what has taken so long to develop and test did not reflect a lack of interest in the project. Nor was it evidence of doubts about the data. Rather, the Key Teachers began a transition from the old linear, print mode to new, interactive vehicles of information dissemination and utilization

The new electronic version of the workbook will accommodate the diverse needs of literally thousands of congregations, denominational leaders, seminary faculty, consultants, journalists and others will use this research.

The Key Teachers are shaping their material to take advantage of the amazing flexibility of electronic access.

The carefully-designed self-guiding workbook, like worm to butterfly, is being transformed for a fresh, fast and colorful life.

All the pages, all the questions, all the findings, and all the graphics remain. But in electronic form, individual pages can be accessed separately by touching a button, an icon, or a by clicking on a hyperlinked (underlined) word on virtually any computer screen.

All elements of the workbook remain available. But now these elements can be downloaded to a disk or printed in hard copy. The resource can thus be customized to meet the specific needs of particular users.

One section, for example, offers four questions from the core questionnaire related to each of five themes: Worship, Spiritual Growth, Including and Belonging, Community Outreach, Managing and Leading.

Data related to any one--or all five--of these themes will be available online for users to view or download.

When this electronic resource is ready, individuals or groups can "Interact with FACT" by posting their local scores for the questions directly into forms provided on the FACT website.

With these scores in place for any or all of the themes, users will be invited to specify their faith group, a cluster of denominations, and other characteristics for comparison (such as congregational size, location, date of founding, etc.)

Then, at the touch of a key, information will be tallied and appear with the comparisons the user has requested. These comparisons come with graphics to make the data more understandable and user-friendly, and with questions for further discussion. Each local group thus constructs a unique workbook.

At the conclusion of each theme, users will find suggestions for next steps. They will be offered links to denominational web sites, and to a variety of other relevant materials.

They may wish to study other themes or work with data in the FACT research report, Faith Communities in the U.S. Today, which also will be available online.

In addition to the interactive "pages" of questions and comparative information, Key Teachers are providing a menu-driven FACT Facilitator’s Guide that offers study plans, group activities, a glossary of terms, and other information.

The old linear, printed workbook is being transformed so that users with a wide variety of interests can create the customized FACT workbook that suits their purpose at the moment. Users can create workbooks from the FACT data as needed differently by the great array of faith communities that made this research possible.

Professor Carl S. Dudley of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford Seminary is co-director of the research and educational program known as Faith Communities Today.

Variety of approaches planned by faith groups

A variety of approaches will be used by 42 religious organizations as they share the information gathered through their collaborative research program. The study, known as Faith Communities Today, was coordinated by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

After careful advance planning, the U.S. faith groups utilized a common "core questionnaire" to obtain the most comprehensive picture of the life and activities of local congregations ever assembled. With their research completed and analytical reflection now underway, the denominations are making elaborate plans to share the information.

Initially most groups will interpret the data for national and regional leaders. Eventually the groups will pass the information along to local fellowships in the hope that congregations will look at themselves with an eye to self-evaluation and strategic planning.

A cluster of Eastern Orthodox churches, for example, conducted their research together and the first report on findings will go to the Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops in America (SCOBA). This prestigious group is expected to receive the information and suggest ways in which the several Orthodox jurisdictions can utilize the data in congregational development.

Fr. Charles Joanides of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese believes that Orthodox congregations have been "somewhat isolated," and that the FACT research will help them both "capture some of their own reality" and then "tell their own story."

In addition to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, the other cooperating jurisdictions are the Albanian, American Carpatho-Russian, Ukranian, Antiochian, Serbian, Romanian, and Bulgarian Orthodox churches as well as the Orthodox Church in America.

Part of the strategy of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) is to present the FACT findings when the General Assembly meets in July. According to J. Bruce Fowlkes, of the Disciples’ Center for Congregational Growth, local churches will be encouraged to integrate FACT research in the denominationally-sponsored Faithful Planning Process.

Don Luidens of the Reformed Church in America is preparing an analysis to be published in The Church Herald, the denominational magazine. The RCA also has invited a student at Hope College, Don Roger, to develop a website so that the church’s FACT research can be introduced along with data from the 2000 census tracts.

Theresa Mullen of the Baha’i National Center reports that FACT findings are integral to priorities identified in the Baha’i Community Development Program. "This research fits in nicely," she says, reporting that 123 trainers who meet with local groups will utilize the data. A team of national staff persons is working with the Baha’i data and will find ways to adapt the workbook—especially so that the language and nomenclature will make sense to members of that community.

Kirk Hadaway, United Church of Christ researcher, is working with several denominations that want to correlate information gathered by church Yearbooks on congregations with that obtained by FACT.

These mostly mainline denominations are especially interested in looking at church growth and decline in the light of objective criteria.

In the UCC itself, Hadaway is working with the evangelism for local church development staff in planning ways that FACT materials can be helpful to UCC congregations.