The Canadian Congregations Survey

Overview

The Canadian Congregations Study (CCS) is designed to become the first representative national study of congregations in Canada. Developed through a partnership between Sam Reimer of Crandall University and Stephen Hewko at the Canadian Institute for Empirical Church Research (CIECR), the project seeks to understand the current state, health, diversity, and vitality of Canadian congregations in a period shaped by secularization, immigration, and changing patterns of religious participation.

The project builds on a major new research infrastructure created by CIECR. Using publicly available Canada Revenue Agency T3010 data, CIECR has developed and cleaned a national database capable of distinguishing congregations from other charities and linking them to demographic and census information. This makes it possible, for the first time, to draw a representative national sample of Canadian congregations and study them systematically.

The CCS will examine how congregations are responding to major social and religious changes, with particular attention to congregational growth and decline, immigration and ethnic diversity, participation, leadership, community engagement, and measures of congregational health or flourishing. The survey will also include questions that align with major congregational studies in the United States, Australia, Switzerland, and other countries, allowing Canadian congregations to be situated within a broader international research context.

A defining feature of the project is its commitment to serving both academic research and religious practice. The survey will be developed in consultation with scholars, denominational leaders, and religious organizations, with a shared core of questions that can support national analysis while also allowing participating denominations and faith communities to compare their own congregations with broader Canadian patterns.

The study will use a representative sample drawn from CIECR's national congregational database, supported by partnerships with denominations and religious networks to encourage participation. Following data collection, the research team will clean and analyze the survey data and integrate it, where appropriate, with existing administrative and demographic information. Findings will be communicated through national and denominational reports, academic research, presentations, practical resources, and a book intended for both scholarly and ministry audiences.

More broadly, the CCS is intended to establish an ongoing national research infrastructure for understanding congregational life in Canada. Rather than providing only a one-time snapshot, it creates the foundation for tracking how Canadian congregations change over time and for giving researchers, denominational leaders, and local congregations a common empirical framework for understanding the changing religious landscape.

Funded by a Louisville 2026 Grant for Researchers, the Canadian Congregations Survey (CCS) led by Dr. Sam Reimer (Crandall University) and Dr. Stephen Hewko (CIECR) will be launched in early 2027.