Why we need your parish’s voice—yes, yours

For the last few months, Forward Movement has been supporting the TEC Trajectory Study, a denomination-wide research project on Episcopal congregations led by the Rev. Dr. Christopher Corbin (Rector, Trinity Episcopal Oshkosh; Evangelism MAT Coordinator, Diocese of Wisconsin). It’s the full expansion of the narrower Bright Spots Study Forward Movement published last fall, and it’s now nearing the close of its main data-collection window.

Wave 2 closes May 27. If your parish was invited and hasn’t participated yet, this is the last meaningful window. If you weren’t invited and you think you should have been, we’d like to fix that—keep reading.

What the study is

Most prior studies of Episcopal congregations either look at one slice in time, or focus on a single kind of church (typically the growing or the dying). This one is structured differently. It groups roughly 5,600 Episcopal congregations into four trajectories, based on 14 years of attendance data (2011–2024):

Growth—sustained attendance growth across the period (about 150 parishes)
Bounce-Back—meaningful recovery after COVID, from a pre-COVID flat-or-declining baseline (about 310)
Decline—the steepest population-adjusted losses (about 1,290)
Representative—the full denominational baseline that all of the above sit inside (about 5,680)

Each parish in the frame is invited to complete the same three-part survey instrument—worship, evangelism, welcome, fellowship, belief, ministry, leadership, finance, demographics. About 15 to 25 minutes per survey, three surveys total. The full question text is available here if you’d like to read ahead before you start.

The payoff: instead of saying “growing churches tend to do X,” the study can say “Growth churches do X significantly more than Decline churches, with Representative churches falling between.” That’s the comparative leverage the Episcopal Church hasn’t had before.

“Our parish isn’t doing anything special—why would our data matter?”

This is the single most common reaction we hear, and it’s worth answering plainly: your data is what makes the rest of the study possible.

The Representative group is the denominational baseline—the picture of what’s typical. Without it, the findings about growth and decline have nothing to compare against. “Growth churches pray X way” is meaningless without knowing how the average parish prays. The headline insights of the study—what actually distinguishes a Growth trajectory, what actually characterizes the steepest decline—depend on having a clear picture of the middle. That middle is built from the parishes that don’t think their story is exceptional.

Parishes that have been struggling are if anything more important to the dataset, not less. The Decline group is where the trajectory trends are sharpest and where the denomination most needs honest data. The study is built to honor that complexity, not flatten it—there are no “wrong” answers, and there’s no comparative scoring of parishes against each other published from the data.

Who’s in the frame

The study covers Episcopal congregations with an Average Sunday Attendance of 15 or more in either 2011 or the most recent reporting year. The cutoff isn’t a judgment about whether smaller parishes matter (they do); it’s a technical floor below which year-to-year attendance noise gets so large that trajectory analysis becomes unreliable. Below ASA 15, year-over-year changes routinely swing 30% or more from sampling alone, which masks any real pattern.

Smaller parishes are still counted at the diocesan level (so the diocesan picture is whole), but the survey itself isn’t sent to them.

How to participate

If you’ve received an invitation—from survey@forwardmovement.org or frchris@trinityosh.org—please complete the three short surveys before May 27. The first question of each survey asks for your church code; that’s how responses match across the three pieces. Clergy can complete them, or a senior warden or experienced lay leader can complete them in lieu of clergy, or the three can be split across people in the parish. We just need one completed set per parish—not multiple copies from the same congregation.

Congregations that complete all three earn a 25% discount on a Forward Movement title.

If you should have received an invitation but didn’t—our contact data has gaps, and that’s part of what this final stretch is meant to fix. Please email survey@forwardmovement.org from a parish address and we’ll get you set up with your church code and the survey links. Check your Promotions tab, spam folder, and parish-office account first; the message may have been routed somewhere you don’t usually look.

If you’re not sure whether your parish is in the frame (or whether your trajectory or filing-status places you in one of the four groups)—email survey@forwardmovement.org and we’ll check.

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Thank you for your time and for considering this. The strength of what we learn about the Episcopal Church depends entirely on how broadly parishes participate. The headline findings won’t be the same dataset without your parish in it.

Faithfully,
The TEC Trajectory Study, in partnership with Forward Movement

Forward Movement

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