Those in the growing churches are significantly more likely than those at the ones in decline to agree with statements such as \u201cJesus rose from the dead with a real, flesh-and-blood body leaving behind an empty tomb,\u201d and \u201cGod performs miracles in answer to prayer.\u201d They\u2019re also more likely to pray and read the Bible daily, the researchers found.<\/em><\/p>\n The authors surveyed 2255 attendees from 22 churches (13 of which were declining and 9 of which were growing). They also surveyed their church\u2019s clergy (29).<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we found is that the conservative theological positioning of clergy and attendees is a significant predictor of numerical church growth,\u201d Prof. Haskell said.<\/em><\/p>\n On the subject of mission, unsurprisingly, the declining churches were more interested in social justice, and much less interested in evangelism. <\/p>\n Only 50 per cent of pastors in declining parishes agreed that it was very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians, compared with 100 per cent among the growing churches.<\/em><\/p>\n Read more at Globe and Mail<\/a>. An abstract of the study is available here<\/a>.<\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Canadian researchers David Haskell of Wilfrid Laurier University and his colleagues Kevin Flatt and Stephanie Burgoyne have conducted a study of churches that finds a strong correlation between traditional theology and numerical growth. The growing churches tend to be conservative: Those in the growing churches are significantly more likely than those at the ones in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[362,654,658,655,660,662,12,661,656,624,657,659],"class_list":["post-1410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-progressive-christianity","tag-canada","tag-church-growth","tag-david-haskell","tag-evangelism","tag-kevin-flatt","tag-mainline-protestantism","tag-progressive-christianity","tag-stephanie-burgoyne","tag-study","tag-surveys","tag-traditional-theology","tag-wilfrid-laurier-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1419,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions\/1419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}