Congregational Studies, Worship and Region Behaviour

2018 ◽  
pp. 108-118
Keyword(s):  
Congregational Studies

God is Doing a New Thing in the ELCA: Trends from the FACT Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-266
Author(s):  
Deborah L. Coe ◽  
Brad Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
Congregational Studies ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
The Past ◽  
Evangelical Lutheran Church ◽  
Protestant Denominations ◽  
Evangelical Lutheran ◽  
The Church

For decades, mainline Protestant denominations in the United States have experienced steady membership declines. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is no different, and our research team has been exploring this topic for years. Faith Communities Today (FACT) is an interfaith project consisting of a series of surveys conducted by the Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership, of which the ELCA is a long-standing member. In this article, we examine data collected from the three decennial FACT surveys to discern where, despite declining membership, God is, to quote the prophet Isaiah, “doing a new thing.” We find that over the past twenty years, the typical ELCA congregation has had a gradually increasing: sense of vitality, belief that it is financially healthy, desire to become more diverse, willingness to call women to serve as pastors, openness to change, and clarity of mission and purpose. Because there are multiple possible explanations for these positive trends, we recommend approaching such trend lines cautiously, viewing them through a critical-thinking lens. Even though there is an increased perception of congregational well-being, overall finances and the number of people involved in the church continue to decline. There is still much work to be done.

Megachurch: An American Original (Almost)

High on God ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 37-62
Author(s):  
James K. Wellman ◽  
Katie E. Corcoran ◽  
Kate J. Stockly
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Congregational Studies ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
Aimee Semple Mcpherson ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Charles Haddon Spurgeon ◽  
George Whitefield

Megachurches are not a new phenomenon; in fact, they have been around for a long time in some form. We trace their history back to the beginning of the Christian faith and describe their trajectory through key historical figures, examining how the Wesley brothers, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, D. L. Moody, Charles Grandison Finney, Russell H. Conwell, and Aimee Semple McPherson produced and nurtured megachurch forms. We describe and argue that Christian churches, and megachurches in particular, are particularly potent in illumining American religious history, and that congregational studies reveal and explain core attributes of American social life.

American Parishes

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Congregational Studies ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sociological Studies ◽  
Relationship Of

Parishes are the missing middle in studies of American Catholicism. Between individual Catholics and a global institution, the thousands of local parishes are where Catholicism gets remade. American Parishes showcases what social forces shape parishes, what parishes do, how they do it, and what this says about the future of Catholicism in the United States. Expounding an embedded field approach, this book displays the forces currently reshaping American parishes. It draws from sociology of religion, culture, organizations, and race to illuminate basic parish processes—like leadership and education—and ongoing parish struggles—like conflict and multiculturalism. American Parishes brings together contemporary data, methods, and questions to establish a sociological reengagement with Catholic parishes and a Catholic reengagement with sociological analysis. This book highlights how community, geography, and authority intersect within parishes. It illuminates and analyzes how growing racial diversity, an aging religious population, and neighborhood change influence the inner workings of parishes. Five parts explore thematic topics: (1) seeing parishes with a sociological lens; (2) parish trends; (3) race, class, and diversity in parish life; (4) young Catholics in (and out) of parishes; and (5) the practice and future of a sociology of Catholic parishes. Contributors explore the history of sociological studies on parishes; consider parish research vis-à-vis the larger field of congregational studies; empirically examine parishes using multiple methods; highlight parish diversity and particularity; explore cultural and identity production within parishes; consider the tenuous relationship of younger Catholics to parishes; and provide direction for future sociological research on parishes.

Singing the Congregation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monique M. Ingalls
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Local Churches ◽  
Congregational Studies ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
Contemporary Worship ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Congregational Music

Singing the Congregation examines how contemporary worship music shapes the way evangelical Christians understand worship and argues that participatory worship-music performances have brought into being new religious social constellations (“modes of congregating”). Through ethnographic investigation of five of these modes—concert, conference, church, public, and networked congregations—this book seeks to reinvigorate the analytic categories of “congregation” and “congregational music.” Drawing from theoretical models in ethnomusicology, congregational studies, and ecclesiology, Singing the Congregation reconceives the congregation as a fluid, contingent social constellation that is actively performed into being through communal practice—in this case, the musically structured participatory activity known as “worship.” By extension, “congregational music-making” is recast as a participatory religious musical practice capable of weaving together a religious community inside and outside local institutional churches. Congregational music-making is not only a means of expressing local concerns and constituting the local religious community; it is also a potent way to identify with far-flung individuals, institutions, and networks that this global religious community comprises. The unique congregations examined in each chapter include but extend far beyond local churches, revealing widespread conflicts over religious authority and far-ranging implications for how evangelicals position themselves relative to other groups in North America and beyond.

Faith Communities Today:

2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 198-211
Author(s):  
David Roozen
Keyword(s):  
Faith Communities ◽  
Research Association ◽  
Church Member ◽  
Congregational Development ◽  
Congregational Studies ◽  
National Surveys ◽  
Regular Cycle ◽  
Faith Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Unique Experience

The Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership is the sponsor of the Faith Communities Today series of national surveys of American congregations. It started out as a conversation about “church” member surveys at the 1995 annual meeting of the Religious Research Association and by 2000 had grown into a multi-faith coalition of 27 denominations and faith traditions that, assisted with matching funds from the Lilly Endowment, conducted the largest national survey of American congregations ever undertaken, as a research-based resource for congregational development. In 2003 the partnership became a self-sustaining program of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, and established a regular cycle of decadal and mid-decadal such surveys, with an occasional qualitative study sprinkled in, which has continued to this day. This article tells the history of how this unique experience of practical ecclesiology came to be, how it evolved, and what it has produced.

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