Churches of Christ were reported by the Association of Religion Data Archives in 2020 as number 15 of only 19 religious bodies in America having over 1 million adherents and were 8th of 8 religious bodies with over 10,000 congregations. We were also one of the most geographically wide spread religious bodies with congregations in 92% of the 2,590 U.S. counties.
Adding another layer of complexity, Churches of Christ are separated into several distinct and independent streams that often have little crossover with one another. These include congregations that are considered mainline, non-institutional, African-American, and Hispanic, with other, smaller sub-divisions1. All this means when we speak of Churches of Christ we are speaking about a complex body of autonomous and distinctly identified churches.
All this complexity raises the thorny question: how does one gather information from over 10,000 churches across America? This is the challenge that the Heritage21 ministry faced in the fall of 2024 as we asked the question, “What is the current state of Churches of Christ in America?
Historically, the answer to this question would be found in the Churches of Christ in the United States directory, the most comprehensive listing of Churches of Christ. Unfortunately, the latest edition was published in 2018, and much of that data was out of date, having been carried over across several editions. After some investigation and a number of conversations with people who know our fellowship well, the Church Research Council (CRC) was formed as an independent group to update and upgrade what will be the 2026 edition of Churches of Christ in the United States.2
How has CRC gathered the survey information?
From the outset, we knew gathering the information would require a multi-pronged approach which would need a central point for collecting the data. Thus, in June 2024 we launched the CRC-CoC.org website where congregations could learn about the survey, download a pdf hardcopy, and complete the survey electronically.
Next, we needed to get the word out to those 10,000 churches. One of the obvious means to do this was to advertise in our partner, The Christian Chronicle, which has over 330,000 readers across its print and electronic platforms, the most widely distributed and read publication among Churches of Christ. We ran a Count Us In campaign ad for August, September, and October of 2024 which was supplemented by an article on the formation of the CRC in the August 2024 issue. The CRC also appeared in subsequent Chronicle news articles.3 We supplemented the newspaper ads with a press release about the CRC and the national survey to 83 contacts in 14 colleges and universities associated with Churches of Christ.
Our next step was to mail out a paper copy of the questionnaire to every congregation in the United States. In September 2024 we sent the survey to 10,892 addresses the USPS deemed active from the 2018 listing of 11,264 church addresses available from the Churches of Christ in the United States database.
With the word going out through The Christian Chronicle and the national mailing, surveys began to come in, mostly via the paper copies. The ten-person CRC project team guessed we might end of up with as small as a 15% response rate to a highly optimistic 50%. To help us set a reasonable expectation, we met with Ryan Burge, the most well-known religious/political demographic statistician in the nation, who assured us that surveying was hard and that 15% would be a wonderful return! By the end of 2024, six months after launching the website, 1,500 surveys had been completed. That met Burge’s 15% expectation. How could we help more churches respond? Maybe 25% should be goal to try for?
Another avenue we used to spread the word was advertising at specific events. We presented or were sponsors at the New Day Momentum Workshops in Eugene, OR and Melbourne, FL. We were on the program of Harding University’s Inspire lectureship and MidSouth Shepherding Conference. We also had a group of 25 informants who agreed to work their regions or states to get the word out via emails, phone calls, and personal visits. The CRC also presented at several Empty Church workshops organized by Heritage21 in Minnesota and California. By the end of March 2025 the survey count stood at 1,845.
Attempting to reach more African-American churches, the CRC was a sponsor for the 49th Annual Texas State Lectureship of the African-American churches and we put an ad in The Christian Reach magazine. We then mailed a postcard of The Christian Reach ad to 1,165 African-American congregations of Churches of Christ.
That same month of March 2025, Mike Cope from Pepperdine University, contacted us about a Lilly Foundation grant Pepperdine was applying to study and support small churches, or more specifically, churches located in small communities across America. Joining forces for this project, the CRC sent out a specifically designed postcard to 4,677 Churches of Christ that were listed as having 60 or fewer persons in attendance in 2018. By the end of June 2025 we had surveys in hand from 2,160 churches.
Still a bit short of our goal of 25%, on July 8, 2025 we sent a final postcard to 9,650 congregations that, by our records, had yet to complete a survey. That was a good performing postcard. By the end of August we had reached our 25% goal (using a round number of 10,000 churches) with 2,570 surveys. In August we also asked 45 people around the country to look over their state lists to let us know which congregations they were aware of that had closed and any new congregations that had started since 2018. These two categories are particularly hard to get information about.
There you have it; this is our story of how we attempted to reach 10,000 churches. We have had to overcome geographic distribution, identity barriers, attention deficit (church staff and members are busy and just forget), and lapsed time (many churches have not done a survey in many years). We will continue to keep the survey portal open so churches will still be able to complete surveys. Who knows, by the end of 2025 perhaps we will have surveys from 3,000 congregations?
I hope you have enjoyed and learned from our journey to reach 10,000 churches.
PS: if your congregation has not completed a survey–the portal is still open!
- C. Leonard Allen is currently editing a 3-volume series on Churches of Christ in the twentieth century. The first volume, to be published in the fall of 2025, is Divided We Stand, which identifies 5 distinct divisions among those identifying as Churches of Christ: 1) traditional, 2) mainline, 3) African-American, 4) non-institutional, and 5) International Churches of Christ. ↩︎
- The Church Research Council was formed by Heritage 21, The Christian Chronicle, and 21st Century Christian. It has been generously funded for the work by the above ministries along with the Siburt Institute for Church Ministry, Harding University, and Pepperdine University. ↩︎
- These articles appeared in October 2024, January 2025, and April 2025. ↩︎