Conducting An Effective Ministerial Search Survey
Prepared for the Unitarian Universalist Association
By Dr. Paul Riedesel
The most tangible result of all your hard work will be a section of your Congregational Packet containing the survey results. Think hard. This will be a large document already. What can you tell a prospective minister about your congregation that she/he will be able to read quickly and that will tell him/her what kind of a congregation you are?
Basic demographics are almost a given:
Involvement in church life could be reflected in such things as attendance statistics, enrollments, or lists of programming, but other questions could be asked directly of members.
Religious/theological orientation is hard to force into a few boxes, but
it is still helpful to a candidate to know the approximate mix in your
congregation.
What To Present
I am talking quite literally about tables of summary statistics--mostly simple
percentages. One decision to be made at some stage is how much detail to
actually present. Which of the following does a better job of summarizing all
you really need to know?
Childhood Religious Background
| Unitarian | 7% |
| Universalist | 2% |
| Unitarian-Universalist | 6% |
| Southern Baptist | 4% |
| American Baptist | 2% |
| No Hell Baptist | <1% |
| Other Baptist | 1% |
| Roman Catholic | 6% |
| Greek Orthodox Catholic | <1% | Russian Orthodox Catholic | <1% | >
| Mo. Synod Lutheran | 2% |
| Wis. Synod Lutheran | 1% |
| Lutheran Church of America | 4% |
| American Lutheran Church | 8% |
| ELCA (post-merger Lutheran) | 2% |
| Episcopalian | 2% |
| Reformed Jewish | 3% |
| Conservative Jewish | 2% |
| Orthodox Jewish | 1% |
| Sunni Muslim | <1% |
| Shiite Muslim | <1% |
| Wahaabi Muslim | <1% |
| Methodist Episcopal (pre-merger) | 1% |
| Evangelical United Brethren (pre-merger) | <1% |
| United Methodist | 2% |
| Congregational (pre-merger) | <1% |
| Congregational (post-merger, did not join UCC) | <1% |
| German Reformed (pre-merger) | <1% |
| United Church of Christ | 2% |
| Society of Friends | 2% |
| Northern Presbyterian | 3% |
| Southern Presbyterian | 2% |
| Mahayana Buddhist | 1% |
| Theravada Buddhist | <1% |
| Druid | 1% |
| Other (see appendix) | 12% |
| None | 17% |
| Unitarian-Universalist | 15% |
| Catholic | 7% |
| Protestant | 47% |
| Other | 14% |
| None | 17% |
Another choice to be made is whether or not to present summary statistics for the congregation as a whole, or to include more-detailed breaks. You should be selective and show only contrasts that are substantively meaningful. The following information could tell a prospective minister a great deal about the situation she/he would be entering.
Theological Orientation
| Total | Member 1-9 Years | Member 10+ Years | |
| Secular Humanist | 25% | 1% | 48% |
| Religious Humanist | 26% | 30% | 22% |
| Earth-Centered Religion | 30% | 55% | 5% |
| Other | 19% | 14% | 25% |
Persons or Households?
It may seem a subtle difference, but accuracy requires you to treat
household-level information separately from member-level information. Imagine a
church with 100 pledging units. 30 of them include children and usually two
adults. The rest are singles. So what is the percent of households with
children? Why 30% of course! But if you asked the the 130 or so members, you
would count 60/130 or 46%.
Comments and Testimony
UUs have opinions and are usually not shy about sharing them. A survey
can be a forum for sharing those opinions, but be very prudent about what
you ask for. It may seem like a great idea to invite people to write comments
about what they want in a minister or their spiritual journeys, etc. If you want
to digest this, fine. But don't expect a prospective minister to wade through
176 essays when your Congregational Packet is already large--and there are seven
more Packets he/she needs to read that evening. Such open-ended comments
could be coded and tabulated, but that requires some professional skill and
experience to do effectively.
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2. What must you do to get the questionnaire into everyone's hands--and get
it back again?
3. What questions are you going to pose to survey participants to arrive at
the tables you want, and how will you pose them?
4. What must you do to tabulate the raw information on scores (or hundreds)
of questionnaires into the tables you want?