• Carl Dudley on Stronger Congregations  
• Resources Designed To Help
  
  

Join our Email Mailing List       Contact Us      Review past newsletters

Dayton Is Site for Pilot Survey

Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Bahai congregations in the Dayton, Ohio, area will be the first in the country to get the results of Faith Communities Today, a far-reaching survey of religious life.

Dayton and its surrounding Montgomery County are serving as a pilot site for the research and educational effort. Questionnaires went out to more than 200 religious gathering places in October. The survey results from the area will be announced on February 3, 2000.

Soon afterwards the national survey will be distributed by nearly 40 faith groups. Among Christians, the questionnaires will go to Roman Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant and Evangelical groups. Results of the national research will be returned by May 2000 and will first be announced in August.

According to Craig This, a United Methodist researcher, Dayton was chosen for the pilot "because there is a good cross-section of faith groups in the area." Leaders of Dayton-area churches, mosques and synagogues cooperated in planning for the local research project that is being directed by the United Methodist Office of Research, which is located in the Ohio city.

National teams of researchers, teachers and communicators will arrive in Dayton to observe how local congregations begin to make use of the data. A series of interfaith and local congregation discussion sites is being planned. Prof. Carl S. Dudley of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research said "a wide spectrum of national religious groups considers the efforts in Dayton as a pre-test of their own work." Dudley is co-director of the project which has the financial support of the Lilly Endowment.

Paralleling the U.S. Census for the Year 2000, the congregational research will seek to measure the presence and vitality of religious groups across the United States.

Prof. David A. Roozen, a sociologist who helped design Faith Communities Today, told the Dayton Daily News that although "congregations are such a dominant part of the American nonprofit structure, we don't have a comprehensive portrait of them." He noted that churches "are a massive part of the American social service delivery system: food pantries, daycare centers, etc. But no one knows for sure how this delivery gets done." He believes that this information will be of interest to the Federal government, and that regulatory changes might make it easier for religious organizations to do this kind of work. Roozen is co-director of the project and also is part of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

Among the workshops at which the data will be reported and discussed are events being hosted by the Greater Dayton Christian Connection, Church Women United, and the Urban-Suburban Partnership. By providing data on the participating congregations, it is hoped that these groups, also, will be able to build on their strengths and overcome their limitations or weaknesses.

Another series of workshops will be conducted with religious education (Sunday school) groups that are seeking to understand the diversity of the Miami Valley.

From a co-director:

David Roozen says 
Its all about Questions…

A colleague asked what it was like to chair the FACT questionnaire process.

"Three parts seminar in comparative religion and one part negotiator at the World Economic Summit," I replied. "Twenty-five years in the business and its the most amazing project I’ve ever been involved in."

What does a questionnaire look like that’s been put together over four years of deliberations by a "committee" of Mormon and Muslim, Bahai and Baptist, Orthodox and Reformed, Catholic and Jewish, Holiness and high church, trinitarians and unitarians, oldline and new wave? It looks deceptively familiar. But you can’t really appreciate it until you see it, so take a look at <http://fact.hartsem.edu>.

The time has been well spent. We can look forward to receiving and analyzing the responses, confident that they will give us a more complete picture of American congregations than we have ever had.

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

Workbooks Developed for Congregations

A self-guiding workbook to help congregations interpret and apply the findings of the Faith Communities Today study will be tested in Dayton, Ohio when the results of the pilot survey are announced next February.

The workbook is designed to stimulate conversation on the future of the congregation in order to lay a foundation for more deliberate planning and renewed vision and action.

The congregational workbook is being developed by a committee of Key Teachers headed by Dirk J. Hart of the Christian Reformed Church in North America and Richard S. Krivanka of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland. The workbook will be known as "Seeing and Strengthening Faith Communities: A Workbook for Your Congregation."

As part of the massive interfaith research and educational project the committee has outlined a workshop in which local religious groups can reflect on their own congregational life in comparison to that of other local organizations in their own faith group. The goal is to help congregations analyze their own activities and unique gifts and strengthen their community life.

Local groups will be encouraged to compare themselves to neighboring religious bodies in an effort to foster greater understanding and appreciation of themselves and others.

The new workbook is based on certain core questions that will be asked by all of the faith groups cooperating in the research effort. The questionnaires will be distributed early in the year 2000 and the first findings will be released in August.

The workbook is designed to be used by local religious groups beginning in the late fall of 2000. It is anticipated that most local groups will begin their analysis during 2001.

A Facilitator's Guide is being prepared to accompany the Workbook. It is expected that some of the participating denominations (faith communities) will tailor the Workbook and Facilitator's Guide for use within their own community. Copies of the generic materials will be available through the FACT website after it is tested in Dayton and any needed revisions are made.

Similar self-guiding workbooks are being developed for use in interfaith settings, in theological seminaries, and with national leaders of the faith communities.

FACT: on the Web
By Scott Thumma

Faith Communities Today is always at your fingertips. Much of the general information and learning's derived from this extensive study of American religion are, or will soon be, accessible through the World Wide Web.

The project web site http://fact.hartsem.edu presently contains basic material about the study, such as its history, the guiding vision, press releases, and a list of participating groups.

In the Fall of 2000, this project site will offer additional summary findings from the entire survey as well as topical explorations into the role congregational size, region, and other characteristics have on worship and outreach patterns of religious communities. This page will also link with other websites where the findings of specific denominations or religious groups will be available.

Scott Thumma is a Key Researcher working with some of the Independent Christian Churches in the Faith Communities Today study. He is research associate at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research and manages the Institute's website and that of FACT.

Billie Alban on 
How Congregations Learn

What really helps congregations learn is the opportunity for all the members to engage with each other concerning the strategic issues that have to do with the life, purpose, and calling of that congregation.

I am frequently asked to do strategic planning for parishes. I will do this only if the whole congregation is involved. The pastor has to agree and be part of the effort. I prefer to work with a design team that is a cross section of the congregation. I generally recommend two all day meetings that include several steps:

· Understanding and analyzing our history, in conjunction with denominational history, and global and societal history.

· Moving from the past to look at current reality: What are the trends that are impacting our church and our community today? What are we currently doing about these trends? What would we like to do? If economic or demographic data is available, we then generate comparable data within the congregation. Having reviewed an external scan, people are asked to do an internal scan. What are the things within the congregation that we are proud about? Sad about?

· Then the congregation moves into the future and develops scenarios about what they would like to see five years hence. As key themes from these scenarios are agreed upon, they become a preferred future.

The second session is on alignment: How do we need to structure ourselves, organize, train and develop people in order to align ourselves with our preferred future.

There are many advantages to involving the whole congregation. People learn together in strategic dialogues about issues that matter for their congregations and the future. They build a common base of information. Most important, people tend to support what they help create. This is congregational learning.

Billie Alban is a management consultant who teaches in executive development programs at several universities. She is president of Alban and Williams Ltd., and a consultant to the Cooperative Congregational Studies Project.