Audit results

When the MethodistChildren website was launched it contained an on-line audit form that we encouraged churches to fill in so that we can build a picture of Children's Ministry in the Methodist Church today. The questions ranged from statistics to methods of training and who people work with locally.

The results have now been analysed by Christain Research and we have distilled these down down into some numbers that you may find useful.

The survey results are quite definite, midweek groups are almost 100% bigger that Sunday groups. Many churches are doing great work on Sundays, but it’s clear from our data that far more children want to come to activities during the week. It may be that they are unable or too busy to come on a Sunday.
This strengthens the case for churches to develop work on days other than Sundays and to try one-off events and holiday clubs. It obviously highlights the opportunity churches now have for partnership with schools as they develop their extended services. 
Children’s workers across Britain are adapting to the new situation and according to the survey highlight their most pressing needs as wanting more resources and ideas, more training, a local forum to discuss ideas and encouragement. MethodistChildren has responded with a 20 page development tool, ‘The MethodistChildren Journey’, which is being sent to all churches this week.
One finding is acting as a clarion call to the church - When churches try some new initiative, it is often successful.

The MethodistChildren Audit of Children’s Work

Churches completed the online response form sometime between September 2005 and June 2006. 422 churches gave their details. We estimate that half of all Methodist churches have groups for children so these churches represent one in eight of those churches with groups for children.
Assuming this a representative sample, then we can multiply these figures by eight and have a fair picture of work across the Connexion. (Christian Research analysed these results for us and suggest this is a reasonable assumption.)

Here are a few insights from the results.
Churches with activities for children during Sunday worship 87%.
On average there are 20 under-18s attending.
The age groups are not equally represented, the numbers of churches having children under 5 or over 13 is significantly less that those with 5-13s,

1. 71%
2. 82%
3. 78%
4. 56%

When 0-4s and 14-18s are present, the group sizes are smaller than 5-13s.

43% of.churches have activities for children mid-week  
On average 38 children attend, far more of them aged 9-13 than on Sundays.

1. 13%
2. 27%
3. 30%
4. 22%

Mid-week activities attract greater numbers of children per group than Sunday groups.
Mid-week groups are much more successful at attracting 9-13s than Sunday groups.
Although half as many churches run groups mid-week compared with Sunday, these groups reach almost as many children and young people. (In this one eighth sample, 6,299 mid week, 7,126 on Sunday.) Many churches only cater for particular age groups.

Most churches identify at least one part of their children’s work which is growing and two-fifths of churches are planning new initiatives.

When asked to identify areas of growth in their children’s work, churches’ most common reply was youth groups or Sunday groups.

So what are our priorities?

• New initiatives.  Churches find that when they try something new, it usually works!
• Midweek activities.  These are successful with 9—13 year olds, the age group that is usually thinking about leaving church groups.
• Extend mid-week activities to all age groups. We can see that many churches only offer mid-week activities for certain age groups at the moment, but they attract more children than Sunday groups.
• Under 5s. The Methodist Church works with a surprisingly small number of pre-school children, we wonder why!

Download the full Audit Analysis here(pdf).