Findings
Each year, the Research Services office develops the Congregational Annual Report form, a two- page questionnaire that the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) distributes, as a supplement to the Session Annual Statistical Report form, to all congregations. Research Services staff work with other entities of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to develop questions for inclusion in the Congregational Annual Report form. Instructions that accompany the form suggest the clerk of session of each congregation complete it, reporting pertinent information for the congregation.
The Congregational Annual Report form for 1998 included questions in the following areas: (a) mission statements and goals; (b) computer usage; (c) health ministries activities; (d) financial issues; and (e) curriculum usage.
For 1998, 9,552 of the denomination's 11,260 congregations reported a slightly lower response rate of 85% in comparison to last year's response rate of 92%. A total of 166 of the 173 presbyteries reported. No responses were received from congregations in the following seven presbyteries: Blackhawk, Dakota, Hanmi, Lackawanna, Midwest Hanmi, Monmouth, and Upper Ohio Valley. Within each reporting presbytery, at least 50% of congregations reported, with the majority of presbyteries (88%) having at least 75% representation from their congregations. The presbyteries in which the smallest percentage of their congregations reported were: Del Suroeste, New York City, St. Andrew, Transylvania, Eastern Oklahoma, Tres Rios, Atlantic Korean-American, San Juan, Pines, National Capital, Riverside, and Sheppards and Lapsley.
A large majority of responding congregations (71%) have a mission statement or statement of purpose. Larger congregations are more likely than smaller congregations to have a mission statement or statement of purpose: 92% of congregations with more than 600 members, 88% of congregations with between 251 and 600 members, and 64% of congregations with up to 250 members reported having a mission statement of statement of purpose.
Congregations with such mission statements were asked to report the extent to which they were used by the session or other church groups in church planning and programming during the last year. In almost all congregations with mission statements, the mission statement was used at least to some extent for planning: 20% "to a small extent," 46% "to some extent," and 29% "to a great extent."
Large congregations use their mission statement to a greater extent relative to medium and small congregations: while 24% of the smallest congregations (with up to 250 members) use their mission statements "to a great extent," almost half of the largest congregations (with more than 600 members) do so (45%).
A slight majority of congregations (52%) reported setting explicit ministry or evangelistic goals for 1999. Large congregations are more likely than smaller ones to set evangelistic goals: 71% of 600-plus membership congregations, 61% of 250-to-600 membership congregations, and 47% of congregations with 250 or fewer members reported setting explicit ministry goals for 1999.
Those congregations that set goals were asked to indicate which of 16 possible goals they had set, and for each, what kind of priority level it was given. As can be seen in Table 1, attracting and enlisting new members was a top priority goal for a large majority of congregations (74%). Four other goals that were high on the top priority list included increasing ministries to and with youth (64%), increasing worship attendance (64%), assisting members in their spiritual growth/commitment to Christ (64%), and strengthening Christian education opportunities for children (60%). Lower priority goals included increasing involvement in U.S. mission projects outside of the local church community (29%); increasing involvement in foreign mission projects (28%); increasing giving to presbytery, synod, and General Assembly mission (25%); and increasing racial-ethnic ministries (24%). It is interesting to note that "helping to start a new church" and "increasing our racial-ethnic ministries" were not explicit goals of 78% and 42%, respectively, of the congregations with goals.
| An Explicit Goal That Is: | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top Priority |
Medium Priority |
Low Priority |
Not an Explicit Priority |
|||
| Attract and enlist new members | 74% | 21% | 1% | 3% | ||
| Increase ministries to and with youth | 64% | 28% | 2% | 5% | ||
| Assist our members in their spiritual growth /commitment to Christ | 64% | 29% | 2% | 5% | ||
| Increase worship attendance | 64% | 25% | 4% | 7% | ||
| Strengthen Christian education opportunities for children | 60% | 32% | 3% | 6% | ||
| Identify and meet the needs of people in the congregation | 49% | 38% | 5% | 8% | ||
| Improve our worship service(s) | 48% | 33% | 7% | 12% | ||
| Involve more members in active discipleship roles | 46% | 36% | 8% | 11% | ||
| Increase the recruitment, training, and empowerment of lay leaders | 39% | 35% | 11% | 14% | ||
| Identify and meet the needs of people in the local community | 29% | 48% | 13% | 9% | ||
| Increase our giving to local mission projects | 26% | 45% | 16% | 13% | ||
| Increase our giving to presbytery, synod, and General Assembly mission | 16% | 37% | 25% | 22% | ||
| Increase our involvement in foreign mission projects | 13% | 30% | 28% | 29% | ||
| Increase our involvement in U.S. mission projects outside of our community | 11% | 32% | 29% | 28% | ||
| Increase our racial-ethnic ministries | 11% | 22% | 24% | 42% | ||
| Help start a new church | 3% | 6% | 13% | 78% | ||
| Other | 46% | 6% | 1% | 46% | ||
Several interesting findings about congregations' explicit goals can be seen in the following figure. As can be seen, for 6 of the 16 goals that were rated, larger congregations were more likely than smaller ones to rate each as a "top priority": increasing ministries for youth; increasing local mission giving; increasing recruitment, training, and empowerment of laity; and involving more members in active discipleship. For one of the goals increasing worship attendance smaller congregations were more likely than larger ones to respond "top priority." (There were no other statistically significant differences based on membership size.)
Almost all congregations (91%) have at least one computer at their disposal, with a majority (59%) indicating one to three computers in their possession. In close to one-third of congregations, pastors (31%) and staff (30%) do not have access to a computer. In over half of congregations (56%) Christian educators do not have access to computers, and in a very large majority of congregations (79%), students in church school classes lack access to a computer as well. Overall, responding Presbyterian congregations have a total of 34,244 computers, an average of 4.5 to a congregation. Table 2 shows the breakdown of computer systems used by church position and processing speed.
| 486 | Pentium | Pentium 133 MHZ or Faster | Other/ | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Or Slower | 120MHZ | Without | With | Apple/ | Unknown | |
| Computer | or Slower | CD ROM | CD ROM | Macintosh | Computer | |
| Pastor | 24% | 8% | 3% | 33% | 7% | 5% |
| Christian Educators | 16% | 5% | 2% | 19% | 4% | 3% |
| Students in Church School Classes | 10% | 2% | 1% | 7% | 2% | 2% |
| Staff | 23% | 10% | 4% | 38% | 5% | 5% |
When asked to identify the person associated with their congregation's Christian education program who is the most "computer-savvy or computer-literate," a total of 7,737 names were collected.
Pastors in smaller congregations have less access to a computer than pastors in larger congregations: Pastors in 97% of large congregations and 90% of medium-sized congregations have access to a computer. Only 58% of congregations with 250 or fewer members provide computer access to their pastors.
Respondents were asked to report whether certain health-related activities were part of the congregation's health ministry in the past year. Table 3 reveals that health education (17%) and partnering with community health agencies on health promotion activities (14%) were the two most prominent components of congregational health ministries. It is worth noting, however, that 42% of the congregations indicated that none of the ten listed health-related activities were part of their overall ministries.
| Activity | Percent |
|---|---|
| Providing education on health-related issues | 17% |
| Partnering with a community health agency or institution to promote a healthy congregation or community | 14% |
| Observing HIV/AIDS Awareness Sunday (as scheduled in October or at another time) | 8% |
| Observing Health Awareness Sunday (as scheduled in April or at another time) | 7% |
| Observing Mental Health Awareness Sunday (as scheduled in October or May or at another time) | 6% |
| Employing a paid or volunteer parish nurse | 6% |
| Observing Addiction Awareness Sunday (as scheduled in November or at another time) | 4% |
| Conducting a congregational health assessment | 4% |
| Advocating for change in health-related policies on the national, state, or local level | 3% |
| Holding one or more health fairs | 1% |
| Other | 13% |
When asked if their congregation currently has "a mortgage loan either from a bank or other financial institution, from the Presbyterian Investment & Loan Program, from the General Assembly (Church Loan Program), and/or from your presbytery or synod," only one-fifth of responding congregations (20%) indicated that they currently have a mortgage loan. Large churches are more likely to have mortgage loans relative to small and medium sized churches (see figure).
| Balance: | Current Interest Rate: |
Type of Rate: | Amounts Reported Are: |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PILP | $236,198 | $30,000 | 5.846 | 6.450 | 91% | 9% | 76% | 24% |
| GA Church Loan | $180,831 | $81,250 | 5.360 | 6.000 | 92% | 8% | 78% | 22% |
| Synod-Presbytery | $122,773 | $25,888 | 5.881 | 6.000 | 84% | 16% | 79% | 21% |
| Bank or other financial institution | $385,498 | $151,329 | 7.869 | 8.000 | 76% | 24% | 77% | 23% |
When asked whether their congregation expects "to begin a capital construction project (i.e., either new construction or renovation of existing buildings) in the next two years," close to two-thirds of congregations (64%) indicated that they did not expect such a project to be undertaken. Of the 36% that responded "yes" to this query, only 13% of that group responded "definitely."
Almost three-quarters of congregations (73%) stated that they reported investment income or expenditures on lines 18c or 20d of the Session Annual Statistical Report. The total investment income reported was $1,339,673,268. The average and the median were $291,995 and $68,085, respectively.
Table 5 displays the breakdown by investment category. Savings and checking accounts (including money market accounts) were the preferred investment option (57%); followed by CD, bonds, and fixed return investments (48%); and stocks/mutual funds (35%).
| Amount Invested: | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Congregations |
Total Investment | ||||
| Savings/checking/money market | 57% | $74,572 | $21,493 | $217,676,195 | |
| CD, bonds | 48% | $132,436 | $33,342 | $315,991,979 | |
| Stocks, mutual funds | 35% | $202,913 | $75,000 | $348,604,489 | |
As can be seen in Table 6, for all age levels, about half of responding congregations use curriculum packages other than Bible Discovery, Celebrate, or a lectionary-based curriculum package. Among these specific curriculum packages, Bible Discovery appears to be the preferred curriculum package. It is employed across all age levels by 20%-35% of congregations.
| Bible Discovery |
Celebrate | A Lectionary-Based Curriculum |
Other Package(s) |
No Educational Program for this Age Group |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Children (up to grade 6) | 27% | 8% | 14% | 51% | 9% |
| Youth (grades 7-12) | 20% | 7% | 13% | 49% | 17% |
| Adults | 35% | 2% | 13% | 51% | 12% |