wfn.org | $635,000 Grant to NCC's Yearbook

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org (CAROL FOUKE)]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2252
Internet: news@ncccusa.org; Web: http://www.ncccusa.org

1NCC1/5/99    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

VALUE OF NCC'S YEARBOOK OF AMERICAN AND CANADIAN CHURCHES TO GROW
WITH THREE-YEAR, $635,000 REDEVELOPMENT GRANT FROM LILLY 
ENDOWMENT

 NEW YORK, Jan. 5, 1999 ---- Already an indispensable 
resource on North American religious life, the National Council 
of Churches' Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches will 
become even more valuable over the next three years thanks to a 
$635,000 redevelopment grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.

 With the grant, the Yearbook will computerize its 67-year 
database on church membership and finances, a rich vein of 
information currently available only to those with access to the 
printed volumes and the time and patience to mine them.  It will 
develop new user-friendly CD-ROM and web-based products to 
supplement its annual print edition, institute electronic data 
gathering and enhance its marketing. 

 The Yearbook, whose 1999 edition is due off press February 
1, is the most up-to-date, comprehensive source of statistics 
from North America's churches.  It offers the most complete 
available summary of denominational membership and finances, 
along with extensive directories of denominational and ecumenical 
bodies and trends essays.  

Church leaders, journalists, seminary and public libraries, 
researchers and scholars use the Yearbook extensively.  The U.S. 
Census Bureau, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Ecumenical Center for 
Stewardship Studies, American Religion Data Archive, World 
Almanac and Book of Facts, The New York Times Almanac and others 
are regular users of the data.

 With the Endowment grant, said the Yearbook's editor, the 
Rev. Dr. Eileen W. Lindner, "we will hitch this venerable wagon 
of church history to the bright star of new technologies.  The 
new CD-ROMs will, for the first time, assemble all of the 67 
years of church membership and finance data in a single place.  
Current and historical Yearbook data will be available in a very 
cost-effective way to any researcher anywhere in the world."

 "The Yearbook was at its inception very forward looking, and 
recognized religion's important part in American cultural 
history," Dr. Lindner said.  "Since its first edition in 1916, 
the Yearbook made use of new sciences of demography, sociology 
and the like that at the time were relatively foreign to 
religion.  The Yearbook redevelopment project makes use of 
today's new electronic sciences, and will help us understand in 
much finer resolution the details of our American family 
portrait."

 Hailing the Endowment grant as "good news," John Dart of 
Northridge, Calif., recently retired from the Los Angeles Times 
after 31 years covering religion news, said, "The Yearbook has 
annually extended its long track record of reliable facts about 
North America's denominations, seminaries, periodicals and 
associations.  

"Journalists and researchers cannot do without it, to put it 
plainly," said Dart, author of Deities and Deadlines, a popular 
guide to religion news coverage.  "If a journalist covering 
religion news were confined to a cubicle away from the newsroom 
by a perverse editor allowing the writer to have only a computer, 
a telephone and one sourcebook, the Yearbook would be the obvious 
choice of that wretched monastic (who would still impress readers 
with his or her breadth of knowledge and contacts)."

Said Greta Lauria of Louisville, Ky., Secretary/Treasurer of 
the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, 
"Over the years the Yearbook has become like a friend you can 
always count on to give you the information you need.  My 
colleagues and I use it regularly.  The Yearbook belongs in the 
library of anyone who has a serious interest in the state of the 
church.  I'm glad to learn that the NCC is being given the grant 
to put the Yearbook into electronic format, which will make it 
accessible to many more users."

 The Yearbook "is a vital tradition and it's wonderful that 
it's going to be strengthened," said Sylvia Ronsvalle, executive 
vice president of the empty tomb, inc., a Christian research and 
service organization based in Champaign, Ill.  "It is a vital 
source for researchers, scholars and any interested church person 
and consolidates information from many denominations into one 
central location.

 "We've found the data incredibly helpful in doing historical 
analysis on church giving and membership patterns," she said.  
"Using these data, which we've not been able to find elsewhere, 
we've been able to take the temperature of church member 
commitment in the United States."

 The 1999 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches features 
more than 1,000 updates on a record 231 churches; a new listing 
of religion research centers; statistical charts and commentaries 
on a century of church growth in the United States and Canada, 
and an "electronic church" chapter with twice as many listings as 
in 1998.

 The New York Times' senior religion correspondent, Gustav 
Niebuhr, has contributed a feature on "American Religion at the 
Millennium's End," and there is a new program index to youth 
programs, homeless/shelter ministries, hunger/food programs, 
interfaith dialogue and faith and order initiatives.

 Prepared by staff of the National Council of Churches, the 
Yearbook is published by Abingdon Press, Nashville, Tenn.  Once 
out, the book retails for $29.95.  Until February 1, it may be 
ordered for $22.45 - a 25 percent pre-production discount - plus 
$3.50 shipping and handling.  Phone 1-800-672-1789.

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