Dear Survey Coordinator,

Thank you VERY much for helping us connect your congregation to the 150th Anniversary Survey. This page covers the following areas:

1. Tasks for Coordinators
2. Resources for Coordinators
3. Common Questions and Concerns

Tasks for Coordinators

We want this to be as easy as possible for you. All you need to do are the following:

1. Do the best you can to invite every member and frequent attender of your congregation to participate online during three weeks in Spring 2008 (at your convenience, beginning as early as Sunday, February 10 ). You might do some or all of the following:
    
   
• distribute flyers on Sunday mornings, in mailboxes, bulletins or otherwise as best suits your congregation;
• make a verbal announcement on three successive Sunday mornings, calling attention to the flyers (we will update you weekly by email on your responses received to date);
• send email to any list of members and attenders you can reach that way;
• post handouts on walls and bulletin boards and/or place stacks for pickup;
• place an announcement in your newsletter;
• personally encourage individuals to participate, especially those who may need an “Internet guide” to help them complete the survey.
   
  
2. Complete a simple “demographic count” by the end of March 2008 that counts members and frequent attenders by age category and by household type. Informed estimates are fine; perfect accuracy is commendable but not necessary. You can download a printable PDF form now; we'll also send you an electronic form to enter the data online

Here are some resources to help you accomplish this aim. As always, feel free to contact us at csr@calvin.edu or 616 526-6420 if you have any questions or trouble.

1. The survey can be viewed at any time at this web address:
   
   http://www.calvin.edu/go/crcsurvey
   
   Completed surveys will be included in the results, so please don't click "FINISH" unless you are submitting a genuine response. Your comments are very welcome.
   
   
2. Please distribute these flyers weekly; each flyer is full-sheet (8.5x11 inch) in PDF format, with 2 copies per page (print and cut in half)
   
   FIRST WEEK FLYER
   SECOND WEEK FLYER
   THIRD WEEK FLYER
   
   PDF printing tips: on the main Adobe Reader Print dialog box:
   - set "Page Scaling" to "None"
   - check the "Auto Rotate and Center" box
   - look at the preview image at center right and make sure it looks like the image below:
   
   
    
3. Here is some suggested text for an email message or other announcement; feel free to edit to suit your preferences.
   
   (sample message:)
   
   Please take a minute this week to complete the Christian Reformed Church 150th Anniversary Survey. Everyone is invited! We are one of fewer than 100 congregations selected to participate. Just visit the web address http://www.calvin.edu/go/crcsurvey. If the Internet is a challenge for you, find a guide to help or contact [fill in contact information for the survey coordinator, the church office, etc.]. Your response will help document the health of our congregation and the Christian Reformed denomination as a whole.

1. Q: What is the survey about? Why "150th Anniversary"?
   A: The survey is a general-purpose survey that happens to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the denomination. It is not a survey about the anniversary celebrations. The survey repeats much material from surveys conducted every five years since 1987, and introduces some material intended to facilitate the denomination-wide commitment to fostering healthy congregations.
    
   
2. Q: Do we have to get everyone to respond?
   A: In short, no; recruitment efforts are at your discretion. The more responses you can generate, the better, and total participation is ideal. But no one is going to insist that you improve your response rate.
    
3. Q: Why the Internet-only method? Won't that exclude a lot of people?
   A: In short: it's inexpensive, and yes, some. Results so far include roughly appropriate proportions of low-income and older people. The survey planning committee concluded that the potential benefits of all-electronic data collection and the growing proportion of the population with Internet experience made it worth beginning to set the precedent. We'd like to encourage those with no Internet experience to find someone who has experience to help them get started responding (while respecting the privacy of the responding person, of course!).
    
   
4. Q: What about rural or poor congregations and non-English-speaking congregations?
   A: Please be assured that we are all keenly interested in ensuring everyone is fully represented; documenting the diversity of the CRC is an important function of the survey. We are starting now by doing our best to ensure Canadian English is correctly presented as an option in the initial survey. However, to be as economical as possible, we need to gauge the extent to which print surveys and/or language translations are required. If your congregation has significant numbers of persons you are sure will not be able to respond in English online (and you haven't already informed us!), please contact us and tell us the specifics. Meanwhile, please do invite anyone who may be able to respond in English online now.
   
   
5. Q: The survey seems awfully subjective, or disagreeable, or offensive, or theologically deficient, or poorly designed, or irrelevant to our congregation, and so forth. Why should we participate?
   A: You're not alone. As survey designers, we are rarely satisfied with our own work. Please be gracious, and keep the following in mind:
   • The survey is just one of many, many means through which we all can be better informed ourselves as a part of Christ's body. The survey team does not expect it to capture everything that matters, and neither should you.
   • Please remember that the survey is NOT principally a judgmental document with "right answers". Some answers may seem preferable to others, but that does not mean that we will simply assume that churches with low "scores" have something wrong with them. On the contrary, we are just beginning to experiment with using surveys to understand what "congregational health" means.
   • If you are concerned about the theological implications of the survey, please let us know. Keep in mind that the survey is NOT a doctrinal statement of any kind. It is an inquiry, and as such must leave room for diversity of opinion, whether or not we believe it is a good kind of diversity.
   • Your feedback matters--tell us what you think in your survey comments or directly by email, and it will help us recognize where the survey is weak and should be taken lightly.
      
     
6. Q: What will our congregation get out of the survey?
   A: First, you will receive the overall report documenting the entire survey's results. Second, it is our intention to offer each participating congregation that requests it and obtains at least 30 responses a summary of your responses, along with some comparison to all the participating congregations on important measures. This may take some time to compile, so you will have to be patient! Finally, Rodger Rice will try to be available for telephone and personal consultations about congregational survey results for congregations willing to cover his travel expenses.
   
   
7. Q: Who is doing all of this survey work?
   A: The survey team includes the following people:
   
   Rodger Rice, Principal Investigator; professor emeritus from Calvin College and Barnabas Foundation consultant.
   
   Neil Carlson, Project Manager; assistant director of the Calvin College Center for Social Research
   
   Nate Medeiros-Ward, Project Assistant; research associate at the Calvin CSR
   
   The survey team is advised by a committee including:
   
   Bruce Adema, Director of Canadian Ministries
   Gary Bekker, Director, Christian Reformed World Missions
   John Bolt, Director, Finance and Administration
   Norma Coleman-James, Director, Human Resources
   Bob Heerspink, Director, The Back to God Hour
   John Rozeboom, Director, Christian Reformed Home Missions
    
8. Q: A lot of people are unable to access the survey. Why?
   A: Apologies for the problems, and thank you for your patience. Most problems are just temporary network problems or user error (mistyping the survey address, for example). The leading reasons that we are aware of are the following:
    
   • Search engines don't find the survey:
     The survey address should be typed into a browser's Address or Location bar; this is the field that displays the current site's URL. It's usually near the top left of the web browser window, with some kind of "Go" button to the right of it. Many people we have spoken with are typing the survey address (http://www.calvin.edu/go/survey) into the "Search" field of a browser or search engine page such as Google or Yahoo. This approach will not direct respondents to the survey, but rather to the web pages of a few churches that have posted the survey address on their church web pages.
     
     We were a bit surprised by this problem and are working to get our site visible to the search engines; in the meantime, the best strategy is just to tell people to type over their home page's address with the survey address. For example, if their home page is Google, they should just replace "http://www.google.com" with "http://www.calvin.edu/go/crcsurvey" and hit Enter.
      
   • AOL is too careful
     Some versions of America Online's software appear to block our URL. Our survey site is not a security risk; AOL is just too paranoid about automatic redirection. To get around this, AOL users can launch Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox outside the AOL window (from the Start button in Windows or the Dock on a Macintosh) and type the address into that browser's address or location bar. Or just email them the direct URL (uglier, but no redirection):
     
     http://survey.calvin.edu/cgi-bin/qwebcorporate.cgi?idx=Q55BXP
      
   • Second responses, such as a spouse's, from the same computer may be blocked with an "already completed" error message
     This problem is a fairly rare symptom of an unusual combination of users' security settings, we think, and should usually be solved by closing the browser window and reopening it. It certainly is not an intentional security setting on our server. If anyone with this problem is willing to help us troubleshoot it, we'd be grateful. Call 616 526-6420 or email Neil at csr@calvin.edu. Thanks!