Leadership Network and the Hartford Institute for Religion Research came-out with a study last week on megachurches.
Here's the summary:
"Megachurches - Protestant congregations that draw 2,000 or more adults and children in a typical weekend (attendance not membership) - show considerable consistency over the past eight years.
They continue to:
• Grow in size,
• Lead the way as America's most multi-ethnic class of church,
• Show a strong bias toward contemporary worship, and
• Remain minimally involved in politics.
However, they also are institutions in transition. They are now:
• Offering more worship services and expanding to multiple-locations,
• Shifting to playing a greater role in community service,
• Decreasing their use of radio and television, and
• Putting greater emphasis on the role of small groups.
These are some of the most salient findings of a national study of America's roughly 1,200 megachurches with approximately one third returning a usable response to an eight-page, 150-question survey that was fielded between February and August, 2008, with comparison given to similar (but non-longitudinal) national studies in 2000 and 2005."
You can see the full report with charts and graphs here.
The Christian Post has a summary article here. RedOrbit has another summary article here.
