Different Under God: A Survey of Church-going Protestants in Singapore

Methodology and Definitions

mEtHodology and dEFInItIonS 32 Different Under God 61. The survey was administered to members of mainline denominations — namely the Anglican, Methodist and Bible-Presbyterian churches, as well as independent churches and megachurches. 62. Independent churches are defined here as churches that are not embedded within the organizational structure of any established denomination. The size of independent churches in this survey ranged from 120 to 800 sized congregations. 63. The literature defines a conventional “megachurch” as a Protestant church that draws weekly attendances of at least 2,000 or more (Thumma and Bird 2008). However, size alone does not define a megachurch. They are usually loosely tied to a mainline denomination or are non-denominational, and identify themselves as Pentecostal, evangelical or charismatic (Ellingson 2007). Typical megachurches in America witness weekly attendances of 20,000 or more. Meanwhile, in Singapore, the commonly understood notion of megachurch is that of non-mainline churches like New Creation, City Harvest, Faith Community Baptist Church, or The Lighthouse (see Ong 21 July 2002; Lee and Long 17 July 2010). 64. This survey — in the form of a questionnaire — was conducted with 24 churches from December 2009 to January 2011. A total of 2,860 questionnaires were returned, of which 2,663 were suitable for analysis. Methodology and Definitions 33 65. Of the survey respondents, 579 (21.7 per cent) were from the Methodist church; 609 (22.9 per cent) were from the Anglican church; 66 (2.5 per cent) were from the Bible-Presbyterian church; 439 (16.5 per cent) were from independent churches; and 970 (36.4 per cent) were from the megachurches. While the sample from the Bible-Presbyterian church is included in the statistical analysis, their number is too small to be statistically significant and therefore they are not reflected in the charts. At the same time mainline churches, for analytical purposes in this study, will refer only to the Methodist and Anglican churches. 66. The questionnaire was subjected to two focus group discussions in order to ascertain the relevance of the questions. It was then referred to selected church leaders as well as the National Council of Churches of Singapore (NCCS) to ensure it did not offend sensitivities. 67. Two teams of Field Assistants were trained to administer the questionnaire as well as to answer any questions that respondents might have. 68. The preferred method of sampling — random sampling — was not an option for several reasons. Firstly, on a national level, there was no comprehensive list of Protestants in Singapore from which a random sample could be generated. Secondly, at the church level, many churches were understandably reluctant 34 Different Under God to randomly select and instruct their congregation members to partake in a survey while privacy considerations meant that we, as outsiders, could not undertake this task. Thirdly, the church member lists in some churches were not updated, resulting in discrepancies between the size of formal membership and weekly attendances. 69. Taking into consideration such limitations, we decided to employ multi-stage cluster sampling, whereby certain denominations and certain churches within denominations were invited to participate in this survey. 70. Great care was taken to ensure that the sampling was as representative as possible. For example, in the case of mainline denominations, church leaders were consulted over the selection of churches to ensure a broad socio-economic spectrum was achieved. To ensure linguistic and ethnic representation, English-, Mandarin- and Tamil-speaking congregations were also selected. 71. Upon the completion of the survey, two preliminary presentations of the general findings were made. The first was to the Executive Committee of NCCS. The purpose of this was to solicit feedback from the Executive Committee, which helped frame and refine research questions that were taken up at the post-survey focus group interviews. The second was to the church leaders of the participating churches. Methodology and Definitions 35 The purpose was two-fold: to present to them a breakdown of the findings according to their own congregation, and to solicit feedback, which was considered in the post-survey focus group interviews. 72. In view of the feedback and certain trends regarding specific questions that differentiated the mainline from megachurch respondents that were discerned during the data analysing phase, we conducted two post-survey focus group interviews with megachurch respondents. ...