By Aleksandra Sandstrom and Becka A. Alper, Pew Research Center.
While most Americans still identify as Christian, there are big differences when it comes to how involved they are with a congregation – or whether they’re involved at all. Indeed, some of the largest Christian denominations in the U.S. have relatively low levels of involvement among their members.
Among all Christian religious traditions in the U.S., Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses have the largest shares of members who are highly involved in their congregations, according to a new analysis of data from Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study.
Our analysis uses a scale we created drawing on the survey’s three measures of congregational involvement: membership in a congregation, frequency of attendance at worship services and frequency of attendance at small group religious activities. While these three measures don’t encompass all the potential ways people might be involved in their congregations, they represent common and broad categories of congregational engagement.
Those who are members of a congregation, attend religious services at least weekly and attend a prayer or scripture group weekly or monthly are categorized as having a “high” level of congregational involvement, while those who are not members of a congregation and who seldom or never attend religious services and small group prayer or scripture-reading groups are in the “low” category. All other respondents are categorized as having a “medium” level of congregational involvement.
Related article: U.S. public becoming less religious
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Remember that all have been called and gifted by God.. Called in the sense that God has given everyone a task to do in His Kingdom. Gifted in the sense that God has given them the gift or gifts to do the assigned task. It does not matter what your economic or social status is. All have been called and gifted.
I was surprised the numbers were that high!! It would be interesting to see some statistics, broken down by the size of the congregations within each denomination. It would seem logical that medium sized congregations like mine tend to have higher percentages of participation than the largest Congregations. Of the 300 or so individuals that attend on a given Sunday, about 100 of them serve on committees. We have approximately 500 members.