Regression to the Mean

Before my call to ministry of Word and Sacrament, I was a psychologist for many years. As a part of both my clinical and educational work in psychology, I found statistics to be an essential tool. Along with other social sciences, psychology uses statistics to help determine things like the "average" test score (mean, median, mode), as well as the degree of deviation from the average (standard deviation, among other indices).

The reason I'm noting all this, is that modern churches use statistics, too, to help determine all sorts of things, such as the average size congregation, demographic profiles of members, average gain or decline in membership (mostly decline, nowadays), etc. Like other organizations, church bodies rely on statistics to help them make decisions. Statistics are both useful in description and in projecting future outcomes.

The problem comes when statistics are used to determine what is normative for the Church, i.e., when statistics are used to determine what is religiously and spiritually desirable. When statistics are used in this way, then it seems to me that what is statistically average can and has become confused with what is desirable. The more people who are for or against something determines decisions made by the Church and the statistical mean becomes normative in place of scripture and tradition.

The problem with a church body's using statistics in this fashion is that the decisions that are made increasingly reflect the culture in which the church body resides. If the statistical majority rules in the place of scripture and tradition, church bodies can be expected to quickly take on the values and attitudes of the secular culture in which they reside. This is a serious challenge for any American church body, and tendsto promote the theological absurdity that -- as H. Reinhold Niebuhr suggested -- "... a God without wrath brought people without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministry of a Christ without a cross."

The salvation of God which seems so free to us was bought at a terrible price -- the suffering and death of God's son. Statistics somehow don't reflect the grittiness of this very well. Or at all.