Church of England begins major study on Church growth

23 May 2012

Research teams have been appointed to start work on an 18-month project on growth in the Anglican Church, supported by funding set aside by the Archbishops' Council and Church Commissioners.

The Church Growth Research Programme will focus on a range of growth areas including cathedrals, church plants, different patterns of deploying clergy and the union of parishes.

The organisations running the programme were appointed through a competitive tendering process which, the Church says, attracted a good number of high quality proposals.

A team from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, led by Professor David Voas, has been appointed to undertake the data analysis and church profiling strands of the research. These strands will involve extensive analysis of existing data to test hypotheses around factors relating to church growth and in depth profiling of churches through a survey of 4,000 churches (from a wide variety of contexts and traditions) and some follow up interviews. It will involve a comprehensive investigation into the wide range of factors which might encourage or prevent growth. the rest