CMR Church Research

Evangelism as Answering People's Questions
NAMB's Center for Missional Research recently partnered with Zogby International to learn what questions Americans are asking about spiritual issues. Results are now available from the 1,200 telephone interviews conducted by Zogby in late March, 2006.

The standard evangelistic approach for several decades has begun with the question, “If you were to die today do you know for sure you would go to heaven?” I must confess, I typically do not use this approach because I have assumed that there are few people outside of hospital beds or foxholes actually asking the question. My assumption was that our survey would prove that to be the case. I was wrong.  Read more.

The Rise of Alternative Faith Communities
The “revolution” has recently become big news—many committed believers are rethinking (or leaving) the established church. Barna’s Revolution describes many trends, but the main focus is the move to non-traditional expressions of church (marketplace faith communities,house church, arts, etc.)." Read More.  

Research on Churches & Children's Evangelism: Not Just Playtime
According to our research, the children being baptized are coming from both inside and outside the church. There is a fairly even distribution among the numbers from those in the church family (33%), regular attendees (38%), and those new to the church (29%). Whether the church is small, medium, large, or very large, there remains an even distribution. Read more.
        

Popular research summaries and downloads in the Knowing Church Fact File
(updated July 20, 2006)

1. When is average not average? The quick answer:  When you are talking about the average congregation. Educated consumers of congregational survey results must learn to read between the lines if they want to understand the situation of an "average" congregation.
2. House Church Involvement is Growing (Barna Research)
3. Special Report: The American Church in Crisis
4. Southern Baptist Congregations and Worshipers

Archived Research Reports from the Research Team (Center for Missional Research)

• America's Largest Metropolitan Areas 1990-2000 
• America's Midlevel Metropolitan Areas 
• Assessing the Nation's Religious Composition 
• Conversion and Witnessing in Southern Baptist Congregations 
• Hispanic Trends 
• Southern Baptist Congregations and Worship 
• Southern Baptist Congregations Today  
       

Other Articles, Research, and Dissertation

• Church Planting Obervations on the State of North American Mission Strategies 
• The Effect of Sponsoring a Church Plant on the Sponsor Church  by Jeffrey C. Farmer
• A Survey of (Very) Small Congregations Of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, James Alexander, Ph.D., 22 May 2004
• A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Selected Church Planting Models Measured by Conversion Growth and New Church Starts  by Joel Owens Rainey
• New People in U.S. Congregations: Who are They and Why Do they Come?  by Deborah A Bruce, Research Services, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) presentation at the Religious Research Association (RRA), Kansas City, 2004.
• Lay Leadership Development in the Context of Church Planting in California Southern Baptist Churches
  by Darren D. Hulbert
• Sponsor Church D.Min. Project byMcCrary
• Church Planting Programs of Similar Sized Denominations in the U.S.  
  by Dennis Duane Powell
• Reformed Theological Seminary - Small Churches Can Plant Churches by Bruce R. Finn 
                     

* More research reports are available throughout the FACT FILE section.  You can browse by topic or go to "Search CMR" and enter a subject of interest.  Please let CMR know of a any research projects, dissertations, or research websites that you do not see here. Contact us.  If you have written a dissertation about the local church or a topic that you see here and would like for it to be published on this site, please send your information and a copy of the abstract to cmr@namb.net.

The Research Team of the North American Mission Board, SBC, exists to serve churches so they might be more effective in their mission.  We do this by helping church leaders to understand their communities, churches, and cultures.