A Report and Observations on the most recent surveys

from Dale Jenkins

We put surveys out there often without saying much about the results. The three most recent seem to merit some comment:

383 congregations are represented with the TJI Survey on Sunday night services. This survey reminds me that people often speak with authority when they don’t have a clue what they are talking about. Recently I heard a speaker say: “COVID killed Sunday night services. Nobody is doing them anymore.” Well, over 80% of the responding congregations still have Sunday evening services. Over 90% still have them at the more traditional times of somewhere between 5-7pm. About 35% have something other than what they had in the past. They have Bible classes, Small Groups, or some mixture of the three. To take the survey and see the results go to: https://www.thejenkinsinstitute.com/research/2023/9/sunday-evenings or to see the realtime results go to: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1MFghxbr9rBs9408539Y1U_uYgZMch1pYV8a54fDXCaQ/viewanalytics

That survey caused me to wonder about the numbers that have come back. It seems to me as I travel around that I often hear that the numbers are not back, but just as often I hear that they are. So, we asked. The numbers were almost right down the middle 51.8% being about the same or larger as they were pre-pandemic and 48.2% being smaller or much smaller. I wondered did a change in what was offered affected the percentage of return. So we asked both those who are struggling in their return and those who have come back strong if they made changes in their Sunday evening offerings. The numbers were interesting: 20% of those who are struggling in their return made changes to their Sunday evening services and 23% of those who came back strong made changes - so, I’d say that, while I would have believed that those who were flexible and made changes to Sunday evenings would have come back stronger, the numbers do not bear that out. To be a part of this second survey go to: https://www.thejenkinsinstitute.com/research/2023/9/sunday-evening-attendance.

Let me comment on one more survey we’ve conducted recently. This one dealt with congregational baptisms. I was especially interested in this one because, observationally, it has seemed to me that there have been more baptisms lately than I’ve seen in the past. Among all sized congregations the number that report an increase in baptisms 2022 over past years as compared to those who report a decrease is roughly 4 to 1. In other words for every congregation that says their number is down in baptisms roughly four congregations say their number of baptisms is up. AND, among all size congregations only 8.44% have experienced a decrease in number of baptisms. This seems very encouraging. If you would like to be a part of that survey go to: https://www.thejenkinsinstitute.com/research/2023/9/baptisms

Note: Statistics can be misused or misrepresented. And in churches of Christ it is especially challenging to do surveys since we have no governing or reporting body and we are autonomous (sometimes stubbornly so). We appreciate all of those who participate in these surveys and hope more will in the future.