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DIY Membership Surveys

Last month we began looking at how often we attend church and discovered that information of this sort is not collected routinely so we often have to rely on the surveys of others.  Having a knowledge of attendance patterns within a local church prompts questions about practical issues such as communication, the form of a sermon series and the organisation of a pastoral care system.

I said that I would be pleased to hear from parishes which have an analysis of the attendance patterns of their members and was delighted when the editor responded that he would be pleased to include such results in future editions of The Month.

As a starter I reported how some members of the St Osyth Deanery Standing Committee attempted desk research using the new 2007 Electoral Rolls for their parishes. The survey covered 400 members and gave the results in this pie chart for which there wasn’t room last month.

We didn’t keep registers so we may not have got things exactly right, and clearly regulars not on the roll and casual visitors were not included. Nevertheless the results were interesting.

Parishes often think that the age or gender profiles of their congregations are unusual so to finish this month here are some simple facts discovered when a number of deaneries conducted surveys of church members back in 2002 and 2003. Since parishes will have issued the survey forms only to those in attendance, many less frequent attenders will have been missed. Completed forms were collected from over 4000 members, roughly 50% of the numbers on the electoral rolls. Of the 3479 completing the gender question 65% (almost 2/3rds) were female and 35% male.  This same group had also indicated their age (by age-band) and this showed that 55% of our adult membership is over 60.  According to the 2001 Census the over-60s make up 25% of our general adult population so this age-group seems to be well over-represented in our congregations.

Don Cardy
30th June 2008

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