Andy Rowell

Church Leadership Conversations

  • Free Churches and Liturgical Churches: Behind the Numbers

    My post is up at Christianity Today's Leadership Journal Out of Ur blog:

    Catalyst, Liturgy, and Innovation What liturgical church leaders and the Catalyst Conference can learn from each other.

    It has also been published in a slightly different form at Duke Divinity School's Faith & Leadership website on the Call & Response blog:

    What Liturgical and Free Church leaders can learn from each other.

    Make your comments there.  Thanks.  


    Free Churches and Liturgical Churches: Behind the Numbers

    The first two sentences in the post attempt to show that there is a significant split in the United States between liturgical churches and free churches. 

    According to data from the National Congregations Study (2006-2007), 38%
    of people in the United States associate themselves with     liturgical
    churches (Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, etc.)    ; while 46%
    associate themselves with     free churches (Baptist, Pentecostal,
    non-denominational, etc.).     The 14% of people associated with Methodist
    and Reformed/Presbyterian churches     sit atop this watershed—some sliding
    down the liturgical slope, others down the free church slope.

    The data I draw from in these sentences is from the following chart.  I have marked the liturgical numbers yellow, free church numbers pink and Reformed/Methodist green.

    Explore the Data: Wave 2 – 2006/07


    Denomination
    Response Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
    ROMAN CATHOLIC 421 27.9 27.9        
    BAPTIST 312 20.7 20.7 48.7
    METHODIST 136 9.1 9.1 57.7
    LUTHERAN 77 5.1 5.1 62.9
    PRESBYTERIAN OR REFORMED 68 4.5 4.5 67.3
    PENTECOSTAL 84 5.6 5.6 73.0
    OTHER MODERATE OR LIBERAL PROTESTANTS 26 1.7 1.7 74.6
    EPISCOPAL CHURCH 43 2.9 2.9 77.5
    OTHER CONSERVATIVE, EVANGELICAL, OR SECTARIAN PROTESTANTS 97 6.5 6.5 84.0
    OTHER CHRISTIAN, NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED 191 12.7 12.7 96.7
    NON-CHRISTIAN 50 3.3 3.3 100.0

    NOTE: this table reflects the number of persons in congregations.

    To get it:

    1. I went to the National Congregations home page.
    2. Clicked explore the data 
    3. Clicked on Basic Findings for each Variable in the Surveys: Wave 2: 2006-2007 data 
    4. Clicked under the Variables.  "Denomiation." 
    5. Clicked: "I want my tables to reflect the number of persons in congregations"
    6. Clicked: Create Frequency Table. 

    The same information is presented slightly differently on page 27 of The National Congregations Study report "American Congregations at the Beginning of the 21st Century" by Mark Chaves

    RELIGIOUS TRADITION:
    Percent with no denominational affiliation                         13.9   

        Percent associated with each denomination or tradition:
    Roman Catholic                                                                 27.9       
    Baptist conventions/denominations                                   20.7       
    Methodist denominations                                                    9.1         
    Lutheran/Episcopal denominations                                     7.9
    Pentecostal                                                                         5.6
    Denominations in the reformed tradition                             4.5
    Other Christian                                                                  20.9
    Jewish                                                                                  1.6
    Non-Christian and Non-Jewish                                             1.7

    I reflected on the Report at:

    Two new reports: Thumma / Bird on Megachurches and Chaves on American Congregations

    Duke sociologist Mark Chaves has written the 2004 Harvard University Press book:

    More raw unweighted data is available at:

    National Congregations Study, Cumulative Dataset (1998 and 2006-2007)

    From this type of data (if it was properly weighted), one would begin to form the chart above. 

    9) Denominational affiliation (collapsed 1) (DENCODE)
    TOTAL %
    0) No denomination 313 11.4
    1) Roman Catholic 663 24.2
    2) Southern Baptist Convention 285 10.4
    3) Black Baptist 91 3.3
    4) American Baptist Churches 26 0.9
    5) Other Baptist 120 4.4
    6) United Methodist Church 245 8.9
    7) Black Methodist 23 0.8
    8) Other Methodist 9 0.3
    9) Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 111 4.1
    10) Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod 52 1.9
    11) Other Lutheran 19 0.7
    12) Presbyterian Church (USA) 82 3.0
    13) Other Presbyterian 9 0.3
    14) Assembly of God 48 1.8
    15) Other Pentecostal 54 2.0
    16) Church of God in Christ 21 0.8
    17) Disciples of Christ 17 0.6
    18) Episcopal Church 77 2.8
    19) United Church of Christ 51 1.9
    20) Reformed Church in America 8 0.3
    21) Church of the Brethren 7 0.3
    22) Jehovah's Witness 28 1.0
    23) Mennonite 7 0.3
    24) Church of the Nazarene 20 0.7
    25) Seventh-day Adventists 15 0.5
    26) Unitarian Universalist Association 16 0.6
    27) Eastern Orthodox 13 0.5
    28) Church/Churches of Christ 16 0.6
    29) Various Church of God 26 0.9
    30) Latter-day Saints (LDS, Mormon) 45 1.6
    31) Jewish 45 1.6
    32) Non-Christian/non-Jewish 53 1.9
    35) Evangelical 13 0.5
    36) Christian and Missionary Alliance 13 0.5
    37) Other Mainline/Liberal 9 0.3
    38) Other Conservative/Evangelical 34 1.2
    39) Other Christian, nec 56 2.0
    TOTAL 2740 100.0
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  • Lesslie Newbigin on Communicating the Gospel

    I am a teaching assistant in Geoffrey Wainwright's class on Newbigin at Duke Divinity School.  (Wainwright wrote Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life).  Yesterday we dealt with Lesslie Newbigin's book Foolishness to the Greeks.

    At the beginning of the book, Newbigin explains the importance of communicating the gospel "in the language of the receptor culture" (5)  But the gospel should also "radically call into question" that receptor culture (6).  In the final analysis, conversion "can only be the work of God" (6).  Some of us fail to communicate the gospel in language people can understand and others of us are not sufficiently aware of the way we have capitulated to the culture around us.  Thanks be to God for working through us in spite of our shortcomings.  Here is Newbigin's marvelous longer explanation of this concept.   

    The same threefold pattern is exemplified in the experience of a missionary who, nurtured in one culture, seeks to communicate the gospel among people of another culture whose world has been shaped by a vision of the totality of things quite different from that of the Bible.  He must first of all struggle to master the language.  To begin with, he will think of the words he hears simply as the equivalent of the words he uses in his own tongue and are listed in his dictionary as equivalents.  But if he really immerses himself in the talk, the songs and folk tales, and the literature of the people, he will discover that there are no exact equivalents.  All the words in any language derive their meaning, their resonance in the minds of those who use them, from a whole world of experience and a whole way of grasping that experience.  So there are no exact translations.  He has to render the message as best he can, drawing as fully as he can upon the tradition of the people to whom he speaks. 

    Clearly he has to find the path between two dangers.  On the one hand, he may simply fail to communicate: he uses the words of the language, but in such a way that he sounds like a foreigner; his message is heard as the babblings of a man who really has nothing to say.  Or, on the other hand, he may so far succeed in talking the language of his hearers that he is accepted all too easily as a familiar character–a moralist calling for greater purity of conduct or a guru offering a path to the salvation that all human beings want.  His message is simply absorbed into the existing world-view and heard as a call to be more pious or better behaved.  In the attempt to be "relevant" one may fall into syncretism, and in the effort to avoid syncretism one may become irrelevant. 

    In spite of these dangers, which so often reduce the effort of the missionary to futility, it can happen that, in the mysterious providence of God, a word spoken comes with the kind of power of the word that was spoken to Saul on the road to Damascus.  Perhaps it is as sudden and cataclysmic as that.  Or perhaps it is the last piece that suddenly causes the pattern to make sense, the last experience of a long series that tips the scales decisively.  However, that may be, it causes the hearer to stop, turn around, and go in a new direction, to accept Jesus as his Lord, Guide, and Savior.

    Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 7-8.

    This section from Newbigin is also excerpted in the excellent book:

    I have also reviewed some other Newbigin books:

  • My Microsoft Publisher document with my blog banner and Twitter profile background

    I just thought I would post my Microsoft Publisher document with my blog banner and Twitter profile background.

    In other words, with the Publisher document above, you can make your own version of these:

    My Twitter profile background:

    TwitterBackground22
     

    and my blog banner

    BannerNovember2008n

    Many of you probably have Microsoft Publisher on your computers with Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.)  You could modify my document in Publisher and make your own. 

    In Publisher, you have to learn to group and ungroup objects. 

    1. You ungroup the objects. 

    2. Then you make any changes. 

    3. Then you hold down the shift key and select all of the objects that form your header and then click "Group."

    4.  Then you right click and "Save as Picture." 

    Twitter background photos have to be less than 700 KB (or 800 KB?) or Twitter will not upload them.  Mine is 657KB. 

    You can change your Twitter background by going to Settings / Design / Change Background Image. 

    I am no designer but I just thought I would share with you how I've muddled through. 

    Another option that Michael Hyatt used is to pay a small fee for a template at tweetpages.com

    I also like the twitter profile backgrounds of Tony Morgan and Kent Shaffer and Andy Crouch.