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AEC2001 The 2000 Anabaptist Church
Planting Survey:
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 | Reaching more unchurched persons than established churches. Twenty-eight percent of these new congregations are composed of 50% or more previously unchurched persons. Only 10% indicate that they have reached no previously unchurched persons. |
| Reaching more young adults than established churches. While established congregations in the Anabaptist tradition in North America are often composed heavily of persons who are 55 years of age and older, young adults and middle-aged adults dominate the active membership of these new congregations. |
| Using friend-to-friend outreach strategies as a major part of their outreach efforts. More established congregations in our North American Anabaptist tradition are far more reluctant to do substantial person-to-person outreach (based on other research projects of Christian Community and New Life Ministries). These church plants, in fact, utilize a wide range of strategies for outreach, and they are doing even more with those strategies now than at the time the churches were first planted. |
| Showing considerable effectiveness, as a group, in multi-cultural outreach. Five of the churches are bilingual, and nine worship only in their non-English native language (Japanese, Vietnamese, French, Indonesian, and Spanish). Fifty-five percent are ethnically mixed congregations, and only 25% are all white churches. |
| Committed to planting future congregations, even though they are less than a decade old themselves! They take mission seriously, and most are also exploring how to more effectively reach out to the community through recovery programs, homeless shelters, English as a Second Language classes, and other programs. |
There is perhaps one significant qualification, which should be added to this listing of good news. We do not know what the responses would have been from the congregations that did not return the surveys. The one-third response rate that we received is a good rate for studies like this one (and is due to the diligence with which Angela pursued getting churches to return surveys). There are obviously many reasons why church leaders may choose not to return a survey including: not feeling a strong connection to the denomination from which the original request for the survey to be returned came; the pressure of too many responsibilities on the pastors, who were the ones normally completing the survey on behalf of the church; and a dislike of surveys in general or this one in particular. It is also possible, however, that some of those not returning surveys may be experiencing less success than those who did.
2000-2008 New Life
Ministries (www.NewLifeMinistries-NLM.org).
All Rights Reserved.
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