Barna study says "unchurched" more complicated to define

Survey suggests definition of church changing

VENTURA, Calif. (W.) March 3, 2008 -- A new Barna Group study says the definition of church is changing in America.

Barna says with Americans pursuing a growing number of "church" options, some of the traditional measures of church health also are being redefined. Barna says popular measures such as the percentage of people who are "unchurched" - based on attendance at a conventional church service - are now out of date.

Why? Because there's an emergency of new forms of faith communities, such as house churches, marketplace ministries and cyberchurches, which Barna says must be figured into the mix. The study says as a result of these new forms of church, calculating the percentage of Americans who can be counted as "unchurched" is more complicated.

The fact that millions of people are now involved in multiple faith communities - for instance, attending a conventional church one week, a house church the next, and interacting with an online faith community in-between - has rendered the standard measures of "churched" and "unchurched" much less precise, Barna says.

According to Barna, one way of examining people's participation in faith communities is by exploring how they practice their corporate faith engagement. Unveiling a new measurement model, Barna identified the following five segments: Unattached, who don't attend a conventional church, which represents 23 percent of adult Americans; Intermittents, who are "under-churched," meaning they they've gone to church periodically in the past year but not necessarily during the past month. They represent about15 percent of adult Americans; Homebodies, those people who don't go to a conventional church but attend house church. They represent about 3 percent of adult Americans; Blenders, those who experiment between traditional churches and other forms of faith communities. They also represent about 3 percent of adult Americans; and Conventionals are those who go to traditional, congregational-style local church. They represent 56 percent of American adults.

The Barna study found an increase in ministry crossover in the U.S. According to the study, one out of five adults had been involved in two or more types of churches: a conventional church, a house church, a real-time ministry event online, etc.

Here's a glimpse at what Barna found:

Among adults who were churched (either conventionally or alternatively) 15 percent had experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through a faith-oriented website within the past month. Half as many (7 percent) said they had such an experience through a real-time event on the Internet;

One out of every eight churched adults (13 percent) said they had experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through a ministry that met in the marketplace during the past month;

Twice as many churched people (28 percent) said they had experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through their involvement with a special ministry event (such as a worship concert or community service activity).

A majority of the public claimed to have experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through some form of interaction with religious television or radio programs.

The study also found, that compared to regular churchgoers, the Unattached are:

more likely to feel stressed out

less likely to be concerned about the moral condition of the nation

much less likely to believe that they are making a positive difference in the world

less optimistic about the future

far less likely to believe that the Bible is totally accurate in its principles

substantially more likely to believe that Satan and the Holy Spirit are symbolic figures, but are not real

more likely to believe that Jesus Christ sinned while He was on earth

much more likely to believe that the holy literature of the major faiths all teach the same principles even though they use different stories

less likely to believe that a person can be under demonic influence

more likely to describe their sociopolitical views as "mostly liberal" than "mostly conservative."

However, six out of 10 adults in the Unattached category (59 percent) consider themselves to be Christian. Barna said even more surprising was the revelation that 17 percent of the Unattached label themselves born again Christians - defined as people who have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that they consider to be very important in their life, and who believe that they will experience Heaven after they die because they have confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their savior.

"The numbers consistently point out that those who live without a regular face-to-face faith connection tend to be relatively isolated from the mainstream of society, tend to be non-committal in institutional and personal relationships, and typically revel in their independence," said George Barna, who runs the Barna Group. "Attempting to get them involved in the life of a church is a real challenge. The best chance of getting them to a church is when someone they know and trust invites them, offers to accompany them, and there is reason to believe that the church event will address one of the issues or needs they are struggling with at that moment."