We just posted the Calvinism research data at LifeWay Research. Click the header above to head over to the LifeWay Research site. Also, you can read some of the presentations and listen to the messages here.

Research FAQs

One of the primary reasons LifeWay Research created this blog was to interact on research.

I was interviewed by Christianity Today yesterday about the research I presented at Ridgcrest. As such, that prompted me to write down a few answers... So, let me share a few FAQs with you.

These issues are also addressed in the presentation (you can listen here).

How did the survey originate?

There were two surveys—one from LifeWay and one that was done at NAMB. The LifeWay survey was of all pastors and the NAMB survey was for recent seminary graduates.

I presented both studies at the Ridgecrest Building Bridges Conference.

For more information about the LifeWay Calvinism research from last year, click here.

We have posted a PowerPoint with the NAMB data here.

The NAMB research was part of a bigger project that included a few Calvinism related questions.

When NAMB began the Nehemiah Project, there was an agreement with the participating schools that there would be an evaluation at a later date. The NAMB leadership decided to do a robust survey on issues that could then be cross-tabbed with NAMB focus areas. Thus, the NAMB survey asked about many different issues, including Calvinism, and then cross-tabbed to see if those issues impacted such things as planting new churches, evangelistic effectiveness, and other factors.

The survey, called “New Millennium Ministers,” was originally developed by the Center for Missional Research team, then modified by the NAMB Executive Leadership team, sent to the Nehemiah Project Professors at the SBC seminaries for feedback, then emailed to the provosts of the seminaries, and finally sent to the recent graduates.

The work was primarily done by Richie Stanley (Director of Research at NAMB) and through a contract with Reggie Ogea (professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary). Dr. Ogea worked with many New Orleans students to make phone calls, analyze data, and do other research. (For example, you may be interested in the recently released research from NAMB on recent graduates and their views of church planting, Evangelism and Recent Seminary Graduates, Denominational Loyalty of Recent Seminary Graduates, Persistence and Loyalty (from a presentation made at the Southern Baptist Research Fellowship in Fort Worth).

The Nehemiah Project professors, who serve in joint appointments with their school and the North American Mission Board, worked with the alumni offices of their schools to obtain mailing lists of recent graduates. (The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary declined to share these names, citing policy reasons.)

A letter was sent out to all graduates inviting them to participate in the on-line survey. Over 2000 did.

Why is LifeWay Releasing NAMB’s Research?

Perhaps because they do not want to write long FAQ files. Grin.

But, more seriously, the new leadership under Geoff Hammond “gave” us data from much of the New Millennium Ministers survey because they are looking to create a laser focus on evangelism, church planting, and sending missionaries. If you have been watching NAMB lately, you will find them to be greatly focused on their core mission.

Releasing studies on Calvinism was better suited at LifeWay Research, particularly since we have now been “assigned” such research by the Southern Baptist Convention. NAMB was able to learn what it needed from the research—how do these things impact evangelism and church planting. Knowing the percentage of Calvinists is less essential to them than knowing Calvinism’s impact on their core mission.

Why did you not release the numbers by school?

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary did not to release the data along with the other schools. So, we had a complete listing of all the Masters level graduates of the SBC seminaries—with the exception of SBTS.

Because we did not want to leave them out completely, we spent many additional dollars and hours to find a sample of recent SBTS graduates. (We did this by searching for graduation announcements in state papers.) That yielded 52 survey responses.

Although those 52 were very similar on most of the issues, there were some where they differed. So, in order to avoid the situation where the sample size was criticized for being too small, we did not release the exact numbers. However, we did rank the Calvinist percentage by school. As I indicated in my presentation, Southern, Midwestern, and Golden Gate had, in that order, more graduates who identified with Calvinism. We released that information at the Ridgecrest conference.

Feel free to interact below.