
BLOG: APPLIED RESEARCH OF EMMANUEL GOSPEL CENTER
Church Landscape Review: Pastoring Under Pressure
In the last 10 years, pastors have faced unprecedented challenges in shepherding their congregations. How did pastors in Boston hold up under the pressure?
Church Landscape Review: Pastoring Under Pressure
In the last 10 years, pastors have faced unprecedented challenges in shepherding their congregations. Even veteran pastors admitted they had never seen anything like this during their ministerial careers.
During the pandemic, almost half of pastors nationwide considered leaving full-time ministry.
What about pastors in Boston? How many hours a week do they work? What kind of support do they prefer? What type of training do they use to develop other church leaders? What questions would they like to ask other pastors?
The Emmanuel Gospel Center’s Applied Research team explored difficult questions like these in a study of pastors of new churches in the Boston area from 2014 to 2024. In “Pastoring Under Pressure,” the team analyzed key trends and critical challenges facing these leaders. The report also includes recommendations as well as reflection questions for pastors and church leaders.
This report is part of the larger 2024 Church Landscape Review, a study of newer church communities in the Boston area over 10 years. We will publish the Applied Research team’s findings in a series of reports to be released periodically throughout 2025:
Evolving Vision*
Open Doors in Boston*
Church Sustainability*
*Titles are subject to change.
Church Landscape Review: Changing Faces of Faith
Churches have experienced plenty of change and faced much upheaval over the last 10 years. If you could take a snapshot of your church before and after that period, what would it look like? Would you see any big structural changes? How would the leadership of your church have changed? What about the congregation?
Churches have experienced plenty of change and faced much upheaval over the last 10 years. If you could take a snapshot of your church before and after that period, what would it look like? Would you see any big structural changes? How would the leadership of your church have changed? What about the congregation?
That’s just what the Applied Research team at the Emmanuel Gospel Center did with a diverse group of newer churches in Boston between 2014 and 2024.
They looked at things like attendance, leadership, and demographics. Their findings in the “Changing Faces of Faith” report show time left little untouched. The churches in the study had to be creative when it came to finding meeting space, facing a pandemic, and navigating leadership changes.
This report is part of the larger 2024 Church Landscape Review, a study of newer church communities in the Boston area over 10 years. We will publish the Applied Research team’s findings in a series of reports we will release periodically throughout 2025:
Evolving Vision*
Open Doors in Boston*
*Titles are subject to change.
Church Landscape Review: Executive Summary Report
How has the church landscape in Boston changed over the last ten years? EGC’s Applied Research team analyzes the data from before-and-after snapshots of a group of newer churches between 2014 and 2024.
In 2014, the Emmanuel Gospel Center (EGC) conducted a research study of over 40 church plants in the Boston area. It involved in-depth interviews with a diverse group of new churches from different denominations, ethnic groups, and networks. While the study focused on women in church leadership, it yielded a treasure trove of information on the church planters and their congregations.
Ten years later, EGC’s Applied Research team revisited the snapshot the 2014 data had produced and re-interviewed almost two dozen of the original churches. The team wanted to examine any shifts in the church landscape over a challenging and tumultuous period.
The research team gathered their findings in a series of reports we will release periodically throughout 2025. The Executive Summary Report provides a broad introduction to the study along with major data trends. The other reports revolve around four different themes:
Evolving Vision*
Open Doors in Boston*
*Titles are subject to change.
Keywords
- #ChurchToo
- 365 Campaign
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- AbNet
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- Action Guides
- Administration
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- Aggressive Procedures
- Andrew Tsou
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- Applied Research
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- Ayn DuVoisin
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- Bias
- Biblical Leadership
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- Black Church
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Our research on new church development in Greater Boston yielded general information with a special focus on women in leadership. The hope is that this study can become a source of “mainstreaming” gender parity discourse within the church, as part of an overall discussion of the practical needs of church planters in the areas of leadership and ministry development.