Try this: Collect all the bulletins you get from other churches for 13 weeks. Figure their average attendance. Then compare that average to the most recent reported number in Mac Lynn’s directory.

When I did that, I found that among the churches I knew, the margin of error was plus or minus 4%.

The numbers may be moving, but not nearly enough to indicate significant growth or decline.

Grace and peace,

Rex

I agree with you about the number of church attendance not equating with discipleship and discipleship should be our goal. However, nor matter how great or poor our level of discipleship is, making disciples will not happen apart from Christian community and so I do think there is some merit in understanding how much membership participation we have. The question should be now that we have X percentage of committed participants, what can we do make better disciples out of them (and us)?
As for church planting and the reason for planting new churches… The failure of existing churches to be evangelistic and disciple making communities (however great or small that number is) is all the more reason to plant new churches. The research that I have read indicates that church planting is the number one tool (if you will) for evangelism and disciple making. The reason is that a new church plant does not have all of the baggage from the existing church that impedes the goal of evangelism and disciple making. Will some of these church plants eventually fail? Yes but some will suceed as well. And even the ones that failed…at least they tried, for we cannot accomplish anything if we do not try.
So I am not trying to defend Dr. Flavil Yeakley’s research as the best thing since mom’s apple pie but I do believe there is some value to it. Like all statistical research, we must look at it with a discerning mind and ask how does this help us understand the bigger picture. As you have suggested, it might help us understand that we have a good number of partipants in our congregation but since nothing is said about discipleship then we might have a problem with leading our rank and file membership into mature disciples (especially given the drop out percentages). With this conclusion, we would then want to pursue more research on the discipleship angle in hopes of identifying the precise problem and finding a solution. So that is how I see Dr. Yeakley’s research as valuable…it gives us somewhere to start.

Grace and peace,

Rex

I have met with Dr.Yeakley on more than one occasion. I was actually a student at ACU when Dr. Galyn VanRehenan who is now the main guy at mission alive was getting started. Why would we plant more churches when most of the existing ones have failed? What very few of us have heard of, are the many church plants that have failed. I can list many for you. Most church plants wind up being mostly made up in membership from people who were previously members at other churches of Christ. They do baptize a few that assimilate into the church culture but this is a relatively low percentage. Many of my friends at ACU are now helping church plants with mission alive. When Flavil says that we have better attendance than all other denominations at (99% of membership), that is score keeping. It tells nothing of discipleship. People can be great attendees but be spiritually dead. This is why most of Flavil’s research is irrelevant. It is an expired method of measurement. We can have lots of baptisms and members and never make one single disciple. We can have more children remain as adherents of the churches of Christ but not really faith. The worst thing that Flavil’s recent research has brought about is the idea that we are really ok, the average little church of Christ listens to him and says to themselves; “I guess things are really not that bad”. Here is an example we can increase in membership and still not make disciples of all people. Most (not all) churches of Christ are overwhelmingly white middle class in a world that has been changing to be anything but that for the last 30 years. Religious researchers such as Flavil must rethink their paradigm and perspective, because we can measure well in all their methods and still be a group of people that are spiritually dead.

He is an academic, and he doesn’t labour the point in terms of practical applications or how to apply the research in a local church… but I do see his findings as a useful a grid to use when responding to people pastorally.

I listened to Flavil Yeakley many times in my undergraduate and I never saw his research as “score-keeping.” Nor was is producing division. It simply made those of us training to serve churches in various means of leadership where the problems were, prompting us to ask the questions that might lead to a resolution of the problem. Though the problems are not resolved so easily (and we may create more problems than we resolve), I do see viable solutions begining to take place. For instance, the work of Flavil Yeakley and others prompted the leaders at the universities to begin looking at church planting again as a serious need and through the assistance of para-church organizations like Kairos, Mission Alive, and perhaps a few others, there new churches planted and some of those church plants are preparing to plant new churches. So I do see some value in what Flavil Yeakley and the other statiticians (sp?) do.

Grace and peace,

Rex

I must have mis-communicated something because I was not responding to your post. I was just responding to a general willingness among many in the CoC to extend fellowship to others restorationist’s outside the CoC but still hesitant to open that fellowship up to other fellowships striving to take Jesus seriously. Like you, I find no fellowship with those who deny the historic confession of our faith. I am hesitant to use the words conservative and liberal, prefering to use the phrase “confessionally commited” for those who believe in the historic confession of Jesus and strive to live out that confession but whether that is a better way of labeling is for another discussion. I am glad that your congregation holds that youth night, for not only does it promote Christian unity but it also is an opportunity to influence Christians who may be missing something that we in the Restoration Movement and the CoC can offer (and I do believe we have something about Christianity to offer that others may be missing just as much as they have something to offer us). Any ways, I hope that helps clarify.

Grace and peace,

Rex

I don’t know if you’ve read “Stages of Faith” by James Fowler, but I think his research provides interesting clues why conservative churches are more likely to “burn their bridges” with those who leave than more middle of the road churches. I think this can be related to the strong impulse to argue correct doctrine rather than allowing those with serious questions about faith time to sit with their questions. For questionning, and the desire to think faith issues through for oneself, is a pretty typical stage of young adulthood… a tendency toward dogmatism doesn’t help people through this “stage of faith” as Fowler describes it.