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St. Mark’s 2004 Parish Survey

Preliminary Results and Conclusions
Discussion Draft

September 12, 2004

Dear Parish Family,

Earlier this year, a Parish-Wide Survey effort was initiated to give us a more accurate picture of who we are today and quantify, if only to a limited degree, the evolution of our church community since we published the last survey in 1997. In the spring of 2004, 163 of our members (31% of St. Mark's adult membership) responded to the survey, filing their choices electronically through the survey website, or by a paper version.

This effort is a part of the Strategic Thinking and Planning project that we started last year. The data from this survey will help inform that process, giving the Clergy, Vestry, Pillars and other church leaders greater insight into where the church is headed and what they need to do to help it get there. We expect this information to be used for many years, as the last survey was.

In the survey, we sought to answer a variety of questions. Some examples are:

  • What is the demographic makeup of our community?

  • What is the range of belief and non-belief on a broad spectrum of spiritual issues among our membership? Are we really polarized between skeptics and believers or are most of us somewhere in the middle? Does our diversity of spiritual viewpoints enrich our life together? Can we beneficially share our various views?

  • And finally, how do people feel about the direction of the church? What do we value about St. Mark's? Where do we want to see it go in the next few years?

The results and analysis document that follows is a condensed and summarized package of a larger set of data that we will continue to examine. In particular, it does not include information collected about St. Mark’s program participation because of the volume of this material. It will be published separately. This report is a first cut at the analysis and conclusions that will eventually emerge and we seek your input and insights on the information presented here. We hope it will help to stimulate discussion about who we are and who we hope to become.

The Survey Team

Pete Carlson, David Dill, Linda Ewald, Penny Hansen, Bill Jordan, and Burton Reist

Read the entire survey now (PDF)

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