LONG ago, in 2001, the Church Times ran a four-page survey designed to take heed to its readers on a big selection of topics, from the ordination of ladies to funding church schools.
It was well received: nearly 10,000 people posted of their responses. In 2013, the ran the survey again, this time each in print and online, repeating the identical questions and adding recent ones that picked up some recent issues facing the Church. It was also well received, and there have been enough responses to permit detailed comparisons with the sooner survey.
The results of those surveys have shown how opinions shifted across the Church of England on some issues, but not on others, and in some groups, but not in others. Ten years on, the identical researchers, Professors Leslie Francis and Andrew Village, wish to run the survey again, they usually are asking on your help.
During the Covid pandemic, the Church Times helped them to run two surveys that were entirely online, and which also had 1000’s of responses. They showed how different sections of the Church reacted to the closure of church buildings, the arrival of online worship, and the stress of ministering when all the things had modified instantly.
The results allowed the team to publish quite a few academic articles, which were reported over many months in our Comment section. This seemed a superb way of supporting some rigorous research, and reporting the important thing findings to our readers.
The Church-24 survey has three essential objectives:
- To repeat a few of the questions given in 2001 and 2013, to see where opinions lie now.
- To explore some recent issues that face us now, or soon will, but which weren’t talked about a lot a decade ago: issues akin to climate change, safeguarding procedures, artificial intelligence, or assisted dying. Churches are having to answer these issues; so it might be good to know what people take into consideration these matters.
- The Covid pandemic is over . . . or is it? What’s happened to you and your church since lockdowns ended? Some say we’ve got moved on and it’s throughout, but others should not so sure.
As with the previous surveys, Church-24 is asking some serious questions of great people. The professors don’t do the two-minute “vox pop”-style surveys which can be useful for feedback in your customer support experiences, but that are useless in understanding the complexities of Christian faith and church life today.
They are asking you to provide 15-20 minutes of your time, and a specific amount of thought, to a survey that may explore something about you, what you suspect about some big issues, and your experiences of church life because the pandemic. They will analyse the information, produce academic peer-reviewed articles, and report those findings back to our readers as they did throughout the pandemic, using pithy articles (with those pithy cartoons as well, perhaps).
If you desire to to participate, you possibly can follow the link below. The survey is most easily done on a pc or tablet, but it might probably be accomplished using a smartphone. If you might want to pause halfway through, you possibly can return to the survey using the link on the identical device inside per week, and it should pick up where you left off. You must answer some questions, so that you’re going to get the appropriate set of questions on your particular context.
This is a survey for clergy, lay ministers, and lay people, and also you would not have to be Church of England, or perhaps a churchgoer, to participate. The first page of the survey has more information in regards to the survey and the way the information shall be used. To access the survey, follow the link tinyurl.com/CTSurvey24, or scan the QR code along with your smartphone. Feel free to encourage others in your church and beyond to take the survey by sharing this link.
The survey will run for several months, and we are going to try to give updates on progress occasionally. Your help with this project is greatly appreciated, and can help researchers and church leaders to know higher the grass roots of the Church.
If you need to know more in regards to the previous two Church Times surveys, they’re reported intimately in: Fragmented Faith? Exposing the fault-lines within the Church of England, by Leslie J. Francis, Mandy Robbins, and Jeff Astley, published by Paternoster Press; and The Church of England within the First Decade of the twenty first Century: The Church Times surveys, by Andrew Village, published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Details of the findings of Covid pandemic surveys will be found on the project website, yorksj.ac.uk/coronavirus-church-and-you, which has links to the Church Times articles.
