Theological Survey Results

Historically, Advent Christians have displayed significant diversity of belief on theological issues. It’s been more than a decade since we did a survey to gain an understanding of our pastors’ theological convictions. So, during the month of April we conducted an online survey and asked our pastors to answer a series of questions about their theology.

The anonymous survey was open to anyone currently pastoring an Advent Christian church, any credentialed Advent Christian minister (commissioned, licensed or ordained) who is not currently pastoring and retired Advent Christian ministers.

The survey asked questions in 11 broad categories:

1. God and the Trinity
2. Scripture and Revelation
3. Views on Salvation
4. Views on the Church
5. Evangelism and Cultural Engagement
6. Eschatology (End Times)
7. Complementarianism and Egalitarianism
8. Cessationism & Charismatic Beliefs
9. Advent Christian Doctrine
10. Arminianism and Calvinism
11. Creation and Human Sexuality

We acknowledge that the questions may not have been as precise or nuanced as some would prefer. We also recognize that we could have improved both the questions and the response options. Thank you to everyone who provided feedback — we will apply it to future surveys.

We also thank the 107 pastors who took the time to complete the survey. Your input is invaluable in helping us understand the broader theological perspectives within our community. Over the next several weeks, we will release the survey results. In this post, we share the demographic information of those who participated.

Region

All five region were represented with 37 responses coming for the Eastern Region, 28 from the Southern Region, 25 from the Appalachian Region, 14 from the Central Region and three from the Western Region.

Status

Seventy-three respondents are currently pastoring Advent Christian churches. This represents approximately 32% of all our active pastors. The 20 retired pastors who participated represented the second largest group of respondents. The 14 in the third group represented those who hold Advent Christian credentials, are not retired and are not currently pastoring an Advent Christian church.

Age

One hundred of the respondents were male and seven were female. The largest age cohort was 65+ with 53 participants. The second largest age cohort was those 51-65. This means that approximately 76% of respondents are more than 50 years old. Only five responses (4.7%) were under 36 years old.

Education

The final demographic category was education. Results show that 38 (35.5%) of our pastors have a bachelor’s degree and 38 (35.5%) have a master’s degree. Fourteen (13.1%) respondents have a doctorate. This is likely a question that could have been asked in a more helpful way. It would be clarifying to know how many undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees held by our pastors are theological degrees. What we do know is that approximately 83% of our pastors have at least a bachelor’s degree.

Next week, we’ll review the results from the section on God and the Trinity.