Wave 1 - 1998 NCS Survey
Details
The NCS gathered data using a one-hour interview with a key informant from each of 1236 congregations. Ninety-two percent of these interviews were conducted over the telephone, and the remaining 8% were done in person. The response rate was 80 percent (1236 out of 1480 asked). This study was directed by Dr. Mark Chaves, then at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
Wave 1 Questionnaire • MS Word |
Wave 1 Codebook • MS Word |
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A Few Selected Findings from the National Congregations Study
- Size and resource distributions are quite skewed.
Although most congregations are small, most people are in congregations that are large. The median congregation has only 75 regular participants (and an annual budget of only $55,000), but the median person is in a congregation with 400 regular participants (and an annual budget of about $210,000). From another angle, only 10% of American congregations have more than 350 regular participants, but those congregations contain almost half of the religious service attendees in the country. Size and resources influence almost every aspect of congregational life, and these findings make clear that the typical congregation's situation is not at all equivalent to the congregational situation of the typical churchgoer.
- Worship and religious education are the core activities of religious congregations.
Significant minorities of congregations engage in social services and political activities in serious ways: about 12 percent of congregations have a staff person devoting at least 25 percent time to social services; about 17 percent have distributed voter guides. But virtually all congregations regularly produce worship services and virtually all hold religious education classes of some sort. For all the attention that congregations' social service and political activities have received, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that these do not represent the core activities of most congregations.
- The secular arenas with which congregations have most interaction are not politics or social services but rather education and culture/arts.
This might be an important fact to keep in mind when considering the sorts of community activities and secular organizations with which seminary students should be encouraged to develop familiarity and expertise.
- Congregations are not necessarily community or neighborhood organizations.
Most congregations (61 percent) draw at least half their people from within a 10-minute drive, but only 20 percent draw as many as a third of their people from within a 10-minute walk, and 20 percent of congregations have at least a quarter of their people living more than a 30-minute drive away. The extent to which congregations are truly neighborhood based is variable and is likely to influence a wide range of congregational activities.
- More recently founded congregations are different than older congregations.
Two differences have emerged in analyses to date: controlling for other things, more recently founded congregations have more informal and enthusiastic worship, and more recently founded congregations are less likely to engage in activities that build bridges between congregations and communities outside the congregation. It is difficult to tell whether these findings indicate trends in American religious culture or, rather, a perennial difference between younger congregations and older, more established ones. Either way, the meaning of these differences is worth pondering.
The 1998 data can be downloaded from the Association of Religion Data Archives.
