What's New

June 2010

Added "An introduction to model building in System Dynamics". Notes in the form of: powerpoint presentation, or as PDF.

May 2010

Added Wesley's Law of the Decay of Pure Religion.

Added Laws of Church Growth.

March 2010

Added a Blog post, "Church Planting "

Added a Blog post, "Mexican Wave"

Started an ongoing programme of updating references in order to provide support for church growth models. Short summaries are given on papers to indicate the nature of that support. Started with sociology of religion references.

January 2010

Added a Blog post, "Revival with a Smile", on the New Mystics, a charismatic group that appear to be in the early stages of rapid growth.

August 2009

Added a Blog post on Mathematics and History, and its connection with church growth.

June 2009

Added a link to Effective Evangelisation, slides from a talk given at "Challenge to Change: exploring strategies for an effective Church in a post-Christian landscape", June 2009.

May 2009

Added a link to the new blog for church growth modelling churchgrowthmodelling.blogspot.com

April 2009

Home page updated to give brief details of all models currently being developed.

March 2009

An article on Flagship Churches and their role in generating enthusiasts.

Feb 2009

Conference presentations updated with Modelling Church Growth - Micro and Macro Models , presented at various meetings 2007-2009.

June 2008

Article on the Alpha Course updated to include recent figures and an apologetic on comments made about the connection between Large Group Awareness Training and Church Growth Modelling.

May 2008

References updated.

May 2006

Articles updated with "Can the Church be Tipped into Growth?"

Sept 2005

Pages added for the renewal model and its results.

April 2005

Added references of other work using mathematics in church growth and social diffusion.

December 2004

Tipping the Church into Growth. Article explaining the principles and results of the church growth models using the concept of tipping points. Aimed at pastors and other Christians with an interest in church growth but little knowledge of mathematics.

September 2004

Overhead slides with notes for talk: Church Growth via Enthusiasts, presented at OR46 "The Annual Conference of the Operational Research Society", York, 7-9 Sept 2004.

August 2004

To show that Church growth modelling is not just an academic work but is set in the context of the need for revival two web pages of resources used for those who wish to pray for revival: The Revival We Need, Reasons to Pray for Revival.

July 2004

Timeline of the first two weeks of the 1904-5 Welsh Revival. The period covered by Evan Robert's first mission to Loughor.

Web page on the Renewal Model, an extension of the general limited enthusiasm model, together with some preliminary results.

Update on Timeline of the background to the 1904-5 Welsh Revival, version 2.3.

June 2004

A paper "General model of Church Growth" accepted for publication in the Journal of Mathematical Sociology

November 2003

Article by J Edwin Orr: The Outpouring of the Spirit in Revival and Awakening and its Issue in Church Growth. Republished by British Church Growth Association. Available here for download in A4 format. By kind permission of BCGA.

Article on the Background to the 1904-5 Welsh revival, examined in the light of the church growth models.
Timeline of the background to the 1904-5 Welsh revival.

October 2003

Two articles extracted from some of the publications:

Enthusiasts in the Church Growth Models.

The Alpha Course - An Example of Church Growth Through Enthusiasts.

May 2003

A new page giving a summary of results. The most important results of the other web pages and papers in a form that can be read ( and hopefully understood!) in ten minutes.

March 2003

Page on long term decline. Example of Church of England.

January 2003

Page on long term growth (under Details of results). Explains equilibrium, revival-growth threshold, recurring growth and some application to churches in the the UK.

October 2002

The first draft of the two talks given at the Annual Meeting of the Research Association/Society for the Scientific Study of Religion are now online in PDF form. They are converted from the Power Point masters with added notes.

A Dynamical Model of Strictness and its Effect on Church Growth

Revival or Extinction - An Application of Systems Dynamics to Church Attendance and Membership Data

July 2002

This new site is an extended version of the original Church Growth Modelling site which is part of the research web pages of the Division of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Glamorgan. The original site will continue to be maintained but it will only concern the academic issues of the research. This new site will be more extensive than the academic one and provide information to help churches and Christians apply the results and to view the work in a spiritual and theological context.