Dr. Stanley E. Granberg is the project leader for Church Research Council. Dr. Granberg also is a trustee for Heritage21. He has spent his career in the mission fields of Kenya and the United States, where he taught Bible and missions at Lubbock Christian University, Cascade College, and Harding School of Theology. He founded and led Kairos Church Planting as well as co-founding Heritage21.
Churches of Christ are one of the largest religious bodies in America. We also have several very distinct and isolated groups within this fellowship. Our autonomy, independence, geographic distribution, and lack of awareness makes gathering information about churches difficult. This is the story of how we have attempted to survey 10,000 churches.
The church website is the new front door. Most likely, any guest that shows up to your worship event has looked at your website first. Websites communicate who we are to people. From a review of over 500 Church of Christ websites Dr. Granberg sees three distinct identity streams of mainline Churches of Christ.
I believe Jesus’s three parables about lost things in Luke 15 are not talking about church members that have slipped out of our pews. I believe these parables direct us to God’s focus, to those people who are lost to His presence and our role to be seekers of them.
Conducting a nationwide survey of Churches of Christ is, obviously, a big task! We began with the mailing list from 2018 that had 10,890 congregations listed. So why try to do a nationwide survey?
Ryan Burge has become one of the best know and most active demographers of American religion and politics. Burge is a faculty member of Eastern Illinois University. Through his substack @ryanburge, Burge sends out twice weekly, informative posts on statistical… Read More »Interview with Ryan Burge
Today, we want to break out some exciting news to you: Church Research Councill was formed to both update and upgrade Churches of Christ in the United States!