Diversity & churches: Progress being made, study says

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“Eighty-one percent of Protestant pastors say their congregation is predominantly made up of one racial or ethnic group. That’s down from 86 percent four years ago, according to the study conducted this past Aug. 30-Sept. 18 by LifeWay Research.” BPNews

Discussion

Profile picture for user Bert Perry
Bert Perry
Wed, 03/21/18 9:08 am

With some leeway for the definition of “predominantly” (is it a simple majority, supermajority, etc..?), I think we’ve got to make some allowances for demographics. For example, Minnesota is about 92% white. If your definition of “diverse” is “majority-minority”, you’re going to have trouble achieving “diversity” in this state outside the Twin Cities. Unless we want to beat ourselves over the head, we might do well to consider a “sliding scale” based on the demographics of our cities. If our city is, say, 18% minorities (say Rochester MN), then a church with average attendance of 300 (say my church) , a target range (1 proportion p test) ought to be from 14 to 23% (42 to 70, approximately) non-caucasian attendees.

We’re close at AWANA due to the bus ministry, quite a bit short of that on Sunday morning. Then it’s a question of “are these people being reached well for Christ by someone else?”, “are we doing something that selects for white middle class people”, and the like. But it’s a more reasonable gut check, IMO.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.