National Congregations Study

The NSRL is a natural outgrowth of the National Congregations Study (NCS). While the NCS is a survey of a nationally representative sample of congregations, the NSRL is a survey of those congregations’ leaders. The NCS focuses on congregations’ characteristics, programs, demographic compositions, and collective practices, while the NSRL focuses on the perspectives, activities, and beliefs of those congregations’ leaders.

The NCS is based on in-depth interviews with congregational leaders in 1998, 2006-2007, 2012, and 2018-2019. With information from surveys of 4,469 unique congregations conducted over a span of more than 20 years, the NCS helps us better understand many aspects of congregational life in the United States, and how congregations are changing in the 21st century.