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TechnoratiLutherans were found to be the most loyal group with 52 percent of them saying they would only consider attending a church within their current denomination. Among Methodists, 16 percent say they would only attend their current denomination but 59 percent of them would strongly prefer to remain in their denomination. Baptists are about average in their denominational loyalty, the study found.
On the opposite end, Pentecostals are almost twice as likely as average to say the same denomination of the church does not matter to them. And only one out of 10 people from non-denominational churches would only consider another non-denominational church. That also applied to Presbyterians.
"In the typical Protestant church, about one out of every eight people in the congregation has been attending that church for less than a year,” said Ron Sellers, president of Ellison Research, which conducted the study, in the report. “What should this mean for the typical church? Does the church have a strategic plan for involving newcomers in the life of the congregation? Does the church leadership make the assumption that everyone in the church knows how the church works and what it believes? These things are very important when so many relatively new people are in the typical congregation.”
At the same time, Sellers warned that churches should not assume a level of loyalty among churchgoers.
"In the typical Protestant congregation, one-third of the people in the pews are not definite in their plans to continue attending that church. If they were to leave, three out of ten would not consider it a big deal to switch denominations,” he said. “It’s important that pastors or denominational leaders don’t automatically assume the people in the pews are ‘our people,’ because the data suggests a significant minority don’t hold a level of loyalty that would make that an accurate assumption.”
The study was conducted by Ellison Research on a representative sample of 1,184 adults who attend a Protestant church in the U.S. at least once in a typical month.
