Every year, one fifth of CRCNA congregations are actively invited to participate in a survey that examines who we are as a denomination and how we are doing on our main ministry plan goals. The survey is conducted in partnership with Calvin University's social research center. Attached is a summary report of the data gathered from 2017-2020.
Data from 2017-2020 includes 6,067 responses from 451 churches. 5,675 of these responses come from 349 churches in the scheduled, randomly selected cohorts. 113 churches returned 20 or more responses each, and each received a custom report. About 9.1 percent of the 113 fully participating churches’ members participated (see Table 2 on page 8).
An important caveat for this entire report is that there was very little response to substantial efforts to recruit responses from congregations with a primary ethnicity other than Anglo/Caucasian, including many that speak languages other than English. This report necessarily does not well represent these important demographics. See Table 3 on page 10 for estimates of the degree of bias.
At the end of this report are some trends that were noticed in the data as well as some recommendations. Leaders at all levels of the CRCNA are now using this data to understand trends and patterns in the composition of the church and the beliefs and practices of the people.
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