How the data gets made
Every number on this site traces back to a documented method — who was asked, how it's scored, and what's still just MSTRD's own data versus checked against outside research.
Four voices, every time
Four voices, not one
Every church metric is built from senior leaders, paid staff, volunteers, and regular attendees — weighted so no single perspective speaks for the whole.
Quarterly pulse
A short recurring poll tracks the same questions over time, so movement is measured, not recalled.
Benchmarked across churches
Scores are anonymized and aggregated, then compared by size, tradition, and region to give each church a peer set.
Open methodology
Question wording, sample composition, and weighting are published with every release. Findings link back to the raw distributions.
Checked against outside research
A standing scan of academic, denominational, and industry research flags relevant external findings for review — context for MSTRD's own numbers, never a substitute for them. See Sources.
Five dimensions, one 0–100 score
Each dimension is scored independently, then weighted into a single composite MSTRD Score. Churches are compared within a peer set of similar size, tradition, and region — never against the full dataset undifferentiated.
Mission
How clearly people understand and can restate the church's mission, at every level from leader to attendee.
Strengths
The resources, gifts, and capacity a church can actually deploy toward its mission.
Team
Health, trust, and alignment across staff and volunteers — including whether communication reaches past the paid-staff layer.
Resilience
How quickly a church returns to baseline after a disruptive event, and how it varies by size.
Direction
Whether the next step is clear, agreed on, and actually ready to execute.
Dimension-level medians and spread will publish with the first study in Q1 2026.
First-party, second-party, third-party — labeled, always
A number on this site is either MSTRD's own data, a direct data-sharing partnership, or an outside publication — and it's always clear which.
First-party
MSTRD's own multi-voice assessments and quarterly pulse polls. The majority of what's on this site.
Second-party
Data shared directly under an agreement with a partner — denominational networks, staffing firms, church networks. Not yet active; this section will grow as those partnerships do.
Third-party
Public or licensable research — Pew, Lifeway, academic surveys, government data. A standing scan flags new items for review; nothing is cited without checking its license first.
Found an error, or have a question about a number?
We publish corrections. Tell us what looks wrong and where.
research@mstrdapp.com