Praise bands and informality are rising, along with
Hispanic leaders and unaffiliated churches, finds latest National Congregations
Study.
BY: Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra [ POSTED 1/6/2016 02:36PM ]
AllStars Youth / Flickr |
Out: Organs, bulletins, and choirs.
In: Spoken amens, raising hands during worship, and using
projection equipment for song lyrics and sermon notes.
This change to the American church is deeper than just a
formality swap, said the authors of the latest National Congregations Study
(NCS).
Instead, it’s part of a “decades-long trend in American
religion away from an emphasis on belief and doctrine and toward an emphasis on
experience, emotion, and the search for a least-common-denominator kind of
worship in a time of ever less salient denominationally specific liturgical and
theological content,” wrote the authors of the latest wave of
the three-part NCS, one of the most rigorous surveys of local religious
congregations in the US.
National Congregations Study |
In the last 17 years, traditional service elements like
using organs, bulletins, and choirs have dropped by about 10 percent.
At the same time, more informal elements are on the rise.
Saying “amen” spontaneously in the worship service is up by 6 percent, hearing
testimony from members is up 7 percent, and jumping or shouting is up 8
percent.
Applause is up 10 percent, while raising hands and using
drums are both up 14 percent. And the use of projection equipment is up by 23
percent.
While the study encompasses all religious congregations,
the use of organs “decreased significantly only among evangelical
congregations, while fewer choirs and more raising of hands happened only in
evangelical and mainline Protestant congregations.”
The change in choirs is driven by larger churches. In
evangelical congregations with fewer than 100 people, one-third had a choir
both in 1998 and in 2012. But the nearly 7 in 10 churches (69%) with more than
100 people that had a choir in 1998 dropped to about 3 in 10 churches (36%) in
2012.
Meanwhile, the use of electric guitars, which jumped from
about 24 percent in 2000 to 33 percent in 2005, has remained steady, according
to a new survey from Faith Communities Today (FCT). In 2015,
nearly 35 percent of congregations were using electric guitars.
More evidence that the worship wars are fading: holding
multiple services in order to accommodate different worship styles is less
common, according to NCS.
While almost all (90%) of larger congregations—those with
more than 150 adult participants—held multiple weekend worship services in 1998
and 2012, smaller congregations saw a significant decrease.
Seven in 10 congregations with less than 150 adult
participants said they had more than one worship service each weekend in 1998.
In 2012, that number fell to 57 percent.
When congregations do have more than one service, they’re
less likely to separate them by traditional and contemporary worship styles.
In 2006, about half of congregations (48%) with more than
one service reported important differences between these services. Six years
later, only 30 percent reported such differences.
“Perhaps the ‘worship wars’ are less of an issue for
congregations than they once were,” the study authors wrote.
The
battle may be waning, but it isn’t completely finished.
“When multiple services do differ from each other, it is
mainly because of differences in formality and music,” the report said. In
2012, 15 percent of congregations with more than one weekend service said the
music was significantly different in each one; 22 percent said the level of
formality was a marked difference.
Other differences were much smaller. For example, only
three percent of congregations said language was a significant difference
between their multiple services.
What is giving praise bands and informal practices the
upper hand?
It might be a wider acceptance of Pentecostal-style
worship—speaking in tongues is now present in 30 percent of congregations, up
from 24 percent in 1998—or the spread of evangelical worship style, made
popular by megachurches and contemporary worship music, the study said.
Or it might be that the decline of mainline and Catholic
congregations are shrinking the number of more formally-worshiping
congregations.
But it’s likely broader than that.
“More likely, congregations share in a wider cultural trend
towards informality,” the report said. “People dress more informally at work
and social events as well as at churches and synagogues. When talking with each
other, we are less likely to use titles like Mr. or Mrs., Doctor, or Professor,
and more likely to use a first name, or even a nickname.”
Whatever the causes, increasingly informal worship is part
of a movement away from belief and doctrine, the study said. And "its rise
does not seem to have peaked."
The
study also noted:
- The number of congregations that aren’t affiliated with a denomination rose from 18 percent in 1998 to 24 percent in 2012. White evangelical (30%) and black Protestants congregations (25%) have the highest rate of non-denominationalism.
- White
evangelical congregations are, on average, about 30 years old. By
comparison, the average black Protestant congregations is 68 years old,
the average Catholic parish is 96, and the median mainline Protestant
congregation is 122. The evangelical church-planting culture means that
more new congregations appear each year, but they don’t all last for many
years, the study said.
- As a result, white evangelical churches are more likely to be led by their founding pastor (21%, compared with 27% of black Protestants, 3% of Catholics, and 1% of white mainline churches).
National Congregation Study |
- As
a church grows past 200 members, it is likely to add more staff, changing
its staff/participant ratio. For evangelical churches, that ratio
stabilizes when a church reaches 600 adults or more, keeping the staff to
participant ratio to about 1 to 200.
- The
average length of a white evangelical or black Protestant worship service
is 90 minutes, with sermons averaging 35 minutes.
- Nearly
three quarters of head clergy in white evangelical churches (72%) and
about half (47%) of black Protestant church are full time. In 14 percent
of white evangelical and 22 percent of black Protestant churches, the head
pastor is a volunteer.
- About
10 percent of evangelical pastors and 2 percent of black Protestant church
pastors were born outside of the US. About 43 percent of white
evangelicals and 17 percent of black Protestants belong to a congregation
with at least some recent immigrants.
- In
addition, the number of Hispanic evangelical leaders rose from 4 percent
in 1998 to 10 percent in 2012. While most Hispanic churchgoers (63%) are
in Catholic churches, about a third (31%) are evangelical.
- About
4 in 10 evangelical congregations (41%) and 7 in 10 black Protestant
churches (70%) said they accept women senior pastors in theory, but only
about 3 percent of evangelical churches and 16 percent of black Protestant
churches are led by women. The number rises for support staff: about 27
percent of evangelical churches employ women as secondary ministers, while
47 percent hire women for part-time positions.
- The
average evangelical senior pastor was 51 years old in 1998, 52 in 2006,
and 53 in 2012. Assistant pastors are quite a bit younger: more than half
of evangelical secondary clergy (52%) were under 40 years old in 2012;
just 9 percent were over 60.
- About
2 in 5 white evangelical senior pastors (41%) hold a graduate degree. So
do 29 percent of senior pastors at black Protestant churches. In both
categories, about 30 percent of senior pastors did not go to college.
- About
23 percent of evangelical churches are politically active, considerably
less than mainline (33%), black Protestant (45%), and Catholic (75%)
churches. Evangelicals’ most popular political action: handing out voter
guides.
- The
larger the church, the less each member gives. An evangelical congregation
of 100 adults receives an average of $1,750 per member, while a
congregation of 400 receives $1,480, and a congregation of 1,000 receives
$1,140.
- Very
few evangelical pastors (6%) serve more than one congregation, compared
with nearly 2 in 10 black Protestant pastors (18%). However, 2 in 5
evangelical pastors (39%) and well over half of black Protestant pastors
(57%) also hold a second job outside the ministry.
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