Methodology and Definitions

Summary

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, 663 were suitable for analysis.

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.