The 2000 Anabaptist Church Planting Survey

Survey Results
Part 1 - Introduction

Angela Zizak

This study on Anabaptist church plants was initiated by the New Life Ministries Management Team in 2000. It was decided that a survey would be designed inquiring about the church planting process. This survey would then be sent to all churches in the New Life Ministries partnering denominations whose doors opened between 1990 and 2000. Christian Community was given the task of creating, implementing, and analyzing the results of this study. We thank the New Life Ministries Management Team for reviewing the survey draft and making recommendations. We sent out surveys with introductory letters from the denominations and reminder letters later, and phone calls were made to encourage churches that had not responded to send them in. We subsequently called a few churches to conduct a more in-depth inquiry into the nature of their experiences. We thank all the participating churches for their time and input in this study.

We would like to first present some basic demographics about the churches in general and what they recorded for the significant survey items, including structural issues, leadership, and their own planting processes, as well as the issues and advice in their own words for future church planting efforts. Steve Clapp, president of Christian Community and a member of New Life Ministries board of directors, will then give further insight about what we discovered and address the question of what may be done differently in the future.

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We received 51 surveys back out of 157 church plants that were listed in denominational databases, for a 32% response rate. The Brethren Church had the highest response rate, with 13 out of 15 churches (87%) responding. The following figures represent denominational affiliations that church respondents claimed to have (8 of the following had more than one conference affiliation and those churches are included 2 or 3 times where applicable):

Six churches checked "other," and some claimed no particular denominational affiliation, including an Independent Anabaptist Church and an Independent Mennonite Church. The locations of these churches is spread out geographically in the United States and Canada, with more in small towns (15) and urban cities (17) and fewer in rural (8) and suburban (8) areas.

Average membership is 45 members per church. The attendance patterns are naturally higher, with an average of 64 people per church, but Sunday school is lower at 40 people per church. Twenty churches have cells that are part of the ministry (39%) with the number of cells ranging from 1 to 12. The largest age group of members for most churches consists of young and middle-aged adults. The second highest category consists of children and teens. All but 5 churches reported having fewer than 20 people older than 56 years of age.

Most churches have worship on Sunday mornings, although many have additional prayer meetings or services throughout the week. At least 5 churches are bilingual, and 9 worship only in their non-English native language (among those are Japanese, Vietnamese, French, Indonesian, and Spanish). One church that is bilingual (Spanish and English) reports few problems in their mixed worship services, but they find it harder to translate and interpret for membership meetings. Fifty-five percent are ethnically mixed congregations, while only 25% are solely white churches. The rest of the congregations are comprised of a single ethnic group (6 Hispanic and 4 Asian). For the most part, worship services are either "always contemporary/ alternative" (45%) or a "blend of contemporary and traditional" (41%). Only 2 churches reported their worship services are "always traditional."

Continue to Next Section: Structure

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1. According to their database, the General Conference Mennonite Church had 23 churches respond, but only 12 of the 23 actually claimed it as their denominational affiliation.

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