NEWS and NOTES
Vol. I No. 2

Welcome to the 2nd edition of News and Notes from Hartford Institute for Religion Research, Hartford Seminary! This has been an exciting summer with lots of new information and research to share with you.  

RESEARCH REMARKS:
Megachurches are congregations with 2000 or more attenders each week in their worship services. A searchable online database at the Hartford Institute identifies over 600 of these very large churches in the United States. Scott 
Thumma of the Institute recently released a study of over 150 of these churches. This study of megachurches was part of the Faith Communities Today Project. Among the interesting findings from this study include: 

• the average yearly income for these churches is 4.8 million,
• total expenditures is 4.4 million, 
• the average weekly attenders is 3857 persons, 
• there is roughly one minister for every 266 attenders; one minister or staff person for every 83 attenders, 
• on average there are 297 volunteers who give over 5 hours a week to the church 

See the online report to learn more about this study of megachurches.

SUGGESTED SITES:
This issue’s helpful web links focus on a few of the best denominational research office sites. We visit these sites often both for facts about faith groups and also to find in-depth details about individual congregations. 

Presbyterian Church, USA Research Office – This is a superb site with many fine resources. You can view information about the denomination as a whole, explore data from the Presbyterian Panel – an on-going focused 
polling of denominational clergy and laity, find statistics about individual churches and read excellent summary articles about the implications and usage of these research findings. 

Evangelical Lutheran Church of America Research Office - The ELCA research office site provides detailed information about the Church as a whole and local Presbyterian congregations. Some of the material available on this site requires a password but overall there is an extensive amount of data to be found here.

Church of the Nazarene Research Office – A fine site for information about the Nazarene Church. Here you can find information about the denomination and churches but also a very nice interactive census demographic mapping 
system.

The Anglican Pages of Louie Crew – Although not an official site of the Episcopal Church, this site by Louie Crew, an associate professor at Rutgers University, is a treasure trove of Anglican data. 


Also, visit our site for additional religious data sources.

WHAT'S NEW ON OUR SITE: