From Lay Ministers to the Pulpit
While the main research question in the Religious Workforce Project interview deals with how congregations in the Washington, D.C., area harness their financial and human…
Fieldnotes. /fēld nōt/ Noun. 1. Notes recorded in the field by researchers. In qualitative research, field notes may also include early insights or self-reflexive observations.
Here at The Fieldnotes Blog, you will find updates on our project as well as behind-the-scenes reports on our research process as it unfolds.
While the main research question in the Religious Workforce Project interview deals with how congregations in the Washington, D.C., area harness their financial and human…
“…I believe that we are in a wilderness moment. … Just as the people of Israel were in a wilderness moment long ago, we are…
Lutheran women in the United States first gained the right to become ordained clergy in 1970 when the conventions of two predecessor denominations to the…
By Dr. Ann A. Michel Religious communities through history have always found ways to care for and support clergy. And this need is arguably greater…
By Lovett H. Weems Jr. As congregations seek to carry out their missions faithfully, they will want to assess their spending on personnel. In that…
By Lovett H. Weems Jr. Church leaders often ask if their spending on personnel is reasonable in relation to comparable churches. This question is not…
The previous four posts discussed seminary enrollment trends among were Roman Catholic students and students from selected clusters of denominations from Black Protestant, Evangelical Protestant,…
The previous three posts discussed seminary enrollment trends among students belonging to some Black Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, and Mainline Protestant denominations. In this post, we…
The previous two posts discussed seminary enrollment trends among students belonging to some Black Protestant and Evangelical Protestant denominations. In this post, we discuss seminary…
The previous post discussed seminary enrollment trends among students belonging to some Black Protestant denominations. In this post, we discuss seminary enrollment trends among students…
Mark Chaves and researchers from the National Congregations Survey note that “clergy are a highly educated segment of American society,” with a majority of clergy…
By Lovett H. Weems Jr. For seventeen years, the Lewis Center for Church Leadership has issued annual reports on clergy age trends in the United…
By Lovett H. Weems Jr. A significant concern within many faith communities in recent years has been the increasing age of clergy in the United…
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has had goals and policies in its churchwide office and synods since the late 1980s to increase racial and…
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald From the outside, First Parish Church (United Church of Christ) in Newbury, Massachusetts, appeared to be chugging along reasonably well after…
It should come as no surprise that over the past few decades Christian congregations have been shrinking in terms of their average weekly worship attendance.…
How has the pandemic shaped the vitality and resiliency of congregations? Did it really prompt large numbers of pastors to leave ministry? In this episode…
Are you a pastor serving more than one church? Or a leader in a congregation that’s part of a multi-church ministry? In this Leading Ideas…
By Lewis A. Parks It’s important to remember that in some denominations, the normative expectation of a local church to have a resident pastor is relatively…
This article shares highlights from an in-depth interview with Scott Thumma, available in Leading Ideas from the Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary.…
Over the past several decades, the average weekly worship attendance of Christian congregations has been decreasing. In 1998, the median number of regular participants of…
By Steven C. Van Ostran It has been my experience that bivocational ministers see themselves and are looked upon by others as second-class ministers —…
One of the most thoughtful gestures related to my ministry occurred a few months ago. I received an email from a United Methodist district superintendent…
How are congregations faring two years after the outbreak of the COVID pandemic in the United States? Has the number of worshipers who attend services…
Several research projects by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership paved the way for the current Religious Workforce Project. The longest continuous effort by the…
Several research projects by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership paved the way for the current Religious Workforce Project. Most of these involved the United…
Early on the Religious Workforce Project (RWP), like other congregational studies, faced a sampling challenge: what list of congregations would we work from for recruiting churches…
WASHINGTON, DC — The Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary has launched an initiative to study the makeup of the religious workforce…