An analysis of selected church health and church context characteristics among growing, plateaued, and declining churches in the Arkansas Baptist State Convention

This study examined the extent to which differences existed between growing, plateaued, and declining churches in the Arkansas Baptist State Convention (ABSC) for measures of selected church health and church context variables. Information from the 2009 through 2013 Annual Church Profile (ACP) was used to classify churches into growth groups according to changes in worship and Sunday School attendance, the percentage of baptisms to total additions, and the ratio of baptisms to worship attenders.;The Transformational Church Assessment Tool (TCAT) was used to supply scores for seven church health variables: worship, community, mission, vibrant leadership, prayerful dependence, relational intentionality, and missionary mentality. The market mapping service SCAN/US provided demographic data on three church context variables: changes in general population, household income, and median age. A fourth context variable, chronological age of the church, was informed from the ACP.;A total of 1,123 adult worship attenders from thirty ABSC churches provided completed surveys for analysis. A sufficient number were received to achieve a 95% confidence level and a +/- 5 confidence interval based upon a population of the combined average worship attendance of all eligible churches. Analysis of variance was used to discover significant difference between growth groups for the mean scores on all seven elements of church health. Further post-hoc tests revealed significant differences for all elements between growing and both plateaued and declining churches. No such difference was found between plateaued and declining churches. Analysis of variance found no significance in any of the church context variables. Multinomial logistic regression analysis on the main effects of each church health variable revealed the worship element as having the strongest predictive effect. Vibrant leadership also contributed a significant positive predictive effect, while missionary mentality demonstrated a negative effect.