Research

Growing Faith research projects further our understanding of growing faith in the intersections between household, schools and churches. More details will be shared here as each project concludes. For more information, please contact the Head of Growing Faith.

While we would certainly encourage you to explore each of the projects below in detail, to make the wealth of findings from our research projects easier to explore and understand, we have produced a helpful 'Digest', distilling the key take-away points and recommendations into one document. We hope this proves to be a powerful tool for informing and supporting work in your context.

You can read the 2024 Research Digest here.

We have also created an Executive Summary document, covering the most essential findings from each project.

You can read the Executive Summary here.

Finally, you can access each chapter as an individual PDF file, to help you get straight to the content that will be most impactful in your work.

Research into Educational Chaplaincy

We are also really pleased to share a significant piece of research into Educational Chaplaincy. This work was conducted by Claire Dalpra, from Brendan Research, with support from the Church of England's Vision and Strategy department and the Growing Faith Foundation. It outlines the current chaplaincy landscape, with key examples drawn from across the country across the country, and offer recommendations for dioceses and the national church.

You can read Claire's report in full here.

Claire has also produced a version of her findings for pupils, designed to help children and young people think about the role of the chaplain in their school.

The children's report can be accessed here.

The 2023-2024 Growing Faith research projects.
Growing Faith in Minster Communities
Happiness Clubs
Children and holiness
Exploring how to grow intergenerational worship at all-age services at St Mary in Charnwood
The change agents: listening to children's stories of spiritual leadership in their school
A shared community: using theological reflection between priests and headteachers
Empowering parents
Faith and Belonging among Children in Hybrid Intergenerational Church in Haslingfield
Let us pray...anywhere?
Are we listening?
Church/school partnership and the spiritual development of children
Faith in Transition
School Chaplaincy
Growing Faith: Connections
Listening to LGBTQ+ young Christians
Six new projects for 2024-2025

For our new research projects, running 2024-2025, we have created a ‘learning community’ of four projects all looking at the faith development of children and young people through music, and are also supporting two stand-alone projects. You can learn more about these below.

How can Liverpool Cathedral enhance the Cathedral choristers and the Junior Choir’s encounters with faith? – Diocese of Liverpool
Give me joy in my heart: developing children’s discipleship and spirituality through singing – Diocese of Lichfield
Chorister Voices at Hull Minster – Diocese of York
The rise of online sexism on social media and in modern music: how does this inhibit young men from worshipping wholly? – Diocese of London
How can local churches partner with schools to support disadvantaged families? – Diocese of Leeds
Joined-up Thinking: How can the local church encourage, empower and resource parents to nurture faith at home with greater confidence? – Diocese of Oxford
Our recent research conference, in partnership with Ripon College, Cuddesdon, took place from 29th-30th May 2024. 

We heard more about the current Growing Faith research projects, as well as other cutting-edge work currently taking place in the field of children and youth mission and ministry. With input from the Revd. Dr. Sarah Brush (Cuddesdon), Dr. Victoria Turner (Cuddesdon), Claire Dalpra (Brendan Research), and Dr. Matthew Kirkpatrick (Wycliffe Hall), it really was a great event!

At the conference, we hoped to make field-leading research relevant and accessible to as many people as possible. To allow delegates to engage with research in a more relaxed way, we invited researchers to present their work in poster format. Some of these presentations were by our very own Growing Faith researchers, and others were shared by like-minded friends and colleagues, whose work we were fascinated to learn more about. You can view the posters below.