Not only multidenominational church researchers, but also parish and diocesan strategists and even interested lay people attended December’s second annual gathering of the Canadian Institute for Empirical Church Research (CIECR), a research institute at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto. It’s a sign that in an increasingly uncertain faith landscape, people are looking for clarity and data to guide their decision-making, ministry and outreach, Canon Neil Elliot, the Anglican Church of Canada’s statistics and research officer, told the Anglican Journal at the event.
The conference, held at Wycliffe Dec. 12-13, included presentations on global and regional demographic trends in Christianity over the past century; gratitude as an indicator of health in parishes; methods of transmitting faith between generations; machine learning-assisted research aimed at identifying trends in congregational growth and shrinkage at the local level; and a host of other topics.
Scott Mealey, associate director of the CIECR, presented findings showing that while North American attendance in mainline denominations like Anglicanism has been trending downward for decades, that fall has been countered by rising numbers in newer traditions of Christianity. This is a vital point to bear in mind amid conversations that assert secularism is rising and religiosity is falling in Western countries, he told the Anglican Journal, as accurate data are essential to good policy.
“If we use data that are not representative of the actual situation around us or in our communities, then consequently we are going to be making decisions based on poor information,” he said. That’s also why it was so heartening to see both lay people and denominational leaders taking an interest in the researchers’ work, he added.
“I’ve worked in the leadership of man kinds of churches. I have been involved in national policy choices. And one of the reasons I have this job is because I was shocked and dismayed at the kind of data that is adopted and then guides policy choices.”
Barbara Ladner, a parishioner at Bayview Glen Church, a Markham, Ont. church in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, said she came to the gathering looking for a deeper understanding of the reasons some congregations grow and others shrink. After a period of substantial growth in her home congregation, which has gone from around 900 to 1,500 people since the pandemic, Ladner said, she became curious about how and why that happened.
“Why is that happening in our church and not in other churches?” she asked. “And then how can they put that into practice in other churches?”
She believes churches with a strong identity seem to do well, while ones that get what she calls “wishy-washy” about what they stand for seem to be suffering.
Another attendee, Jon Fuller, is both lead pastor at Melrose Community Church, an evangelical Baptist church in Toronto, and chief missiologist for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. He said he came to the gathering looking for knowledge to help him understand faith trends at the national level and to improve ministry and outreach in his local parish. One important thing he took away from the event, he said, is the idea that churches do better when they are able to reach outside their walls and form meaningful bonds with their surrounding communities.
Mealey pointed to a presentation by Elizabeth Millar, a doctor of practical theology and sessional instructor at Tyndale University, in which she told attendees that clarity of vision was one commonality of great church congre-gations, mirroring Ladner and Fuller’s observations. Mealey said he believes there’s much to be learned from that fact.
“One of the things we joked a bit about behind the scenes is that all of these churches and congregations and parishes think that their theology is super important. But we joke about that because they’re all radically different. And so the thing that I think is more important is that they are very clear about who they are, and so can rally behind that,” he said. “One of the big pieces that is winsome for people is when a church knows what they are and invites people to join that particular thing.”
