About the Lutheran Religious Life Survey
The Lutheran Religious Life Survey is an annual survey exploring the experiences and beliefs of LCMS members. It was designed and fielded by Lyman Stone, an LCMS layperson and professional demographer, from 2021-2023, but from 2024 onwards is being fielded in partnership with Concordia Nebraska. Reports on prior survey waves can be found at the old Lutheran Religious Life Survey homepage.
Past survey waves have also been covered in various LCMS publications and media outlets, for example in interviews with Lyman on Issues, etc covering the 2021 survey results and the 2023 survey results.
Partner With Us!
The 2024 Lutheran Religious Life Survey will be fielded in fall 2024, and run until the late fall. It will contain a unique new feature: LCMS churches, districts, schools, or other bodies can register to receive a unique survey link. This means that when the survey is finished, those bodies can receive reports that tell them what their own members said on the survey. Participating institutions will also get an early look at the 2024 survey questionnaire and have a chance to offer feedback for improvement, although custom institution-specific questionnaires will not be provided in order to ensure that results are comparable.
These institution-specific survey results will give LCMS pastors, church workers, and church officials an invaluable comparative view into their communities. They will be able to identify areas where their communities are very similar to the wider LCMS member base, as well as areas where they may differ in meaningful ways.
Reports provided to institutions will be stripped of all information which could identify individuals. Reports will only be available at all if at least 20 non-church-worker responses are received from at least 10 different IP addresses. Individual-level microdata will not be shared in order to ensure privacy, though participating institutions can request additional analyses if the benchmarks provided in the default report do not meet their needs. In all cases, only pre-defined survey responses will be included: no metadata or written open-responses will be included. And finally, all institutional reports will be infused with a small amount of random noise, so that even respondents giving very rare responses have their privacy protected.