Complete available-data results

Week 3 Complete Available-Data Report: Pastoral Authority and Accountability

A privacy-safe complete available-data report for the third revived Christian Thought Survey weekly report, based on all 27 complete participant responses available before the weekly survey project closed.

The 2026 weekly survey project is closing.

We are deeply sorry to announce that the 2026 Christian Thought Survey weekly survey project is closing. The email platform we used experienced a bug that caused some participants to receive multiple emails, effectively spamming them. That was never intended, and we deeply apologize for the inconvenience, frustration, and loss of trust this caused.

The response from participants made clear that continuing would not be responsible. We are disappointed that we cannot carry the weekly survey project forward, and we are grateful to everyone who participated, suggested items, read the reports, or otherwise helped up to this point.

Existing public reports and archives from the weekly survey project will remain available, but no further weekly surveys, invitations, reminders, participant requests, or newsletter requests are planned.

Complete available-data report. These aggregate results use all 27 complete Week 3 participant responses available from the SurveyOL export before the weekly survey project closed.

Survey launched: Tuesday evening, June 23, 2026. The weekly survey project closed before any further weekly-report workflow could continue.

Update note: updated July 3, 2026 with the complete available Week 3 aggregate dataset. No further Tuesday refreshes, reminders, or new survey activity are planned.

Executive Summary

The Week 3 report now uses all 27 complete participant responses available before the weekly survey project closed. The strongest agreement concerns disqualifying persistent manipulative or coercive leadership, requiring meaningful pastoral accountability for finances, staff authority, and confidential information, and distinguishing biblical submission from unquestioning compliance.

Respondents also show substantial support for clear complaint procedures and outside accountability, while the widest spread appears around whether pastors exercise too little legitimate authority, whether spiritual abuse language is sometimes over-applied, and how much moral counsel pastors should give about members' major life decisions.

Because 27 complete responses is below the project's preferred threshold for public item-level summaries, this report should be read as descriptive of participating respondents only. Respondent identities, respondent-level rows, and raw free-text suggestions are not published.

Invitations 377

Production invitation count queued for Week 3.

Complete responses 27

Complete-response count used for this available-data report.

Last updated July 3

Updated after the weekly survey project closed with all available aggregate participant data.

Public scope Aggregate only

Raw response rows, identities, and free-text suggestions remain excluded.

Read This First

This report is based on all 27 available complete responses. It is useful for seeing item-level direction among participants, but it should not be treated as a population estimate or used for subgroup comparisons.

Weekly Survey Project Closure

No additional refreshes, reminders, or new survey activity are planned. This page remains available as a complete aggregate archive of Week 3.

Ballot Results

The ballot table reports participant rankings as an archival aggregate. Because the weekly survey project closed, these rankings will not be used to launch another survey.

Strongest Patterns

Strongest agreement

Coercive leadership is disqualifying.

The manipulative or coercive leadership item has a mean of 95.4, with an interquartile range of 100-100.

Accountability

Finances, staff authority, and confidentiality stand out.

The accountability item for finances, staff authority, and confidential information has a mean of 96.6.

Submission

Respondents separate submission from compliance.

The item on distinguishing biblical submission from unquestioning compliance has a mean of 94.6.

Most divided

Legitimate authority and moral counsel are unsettled.

The broadest spreads concern too little legitimate pastoral authority and pastoral counsel on members' major life decisions.

All 15 Slider Items At A Glance

All 15 live items use the CTS 0-100 credence scale: 0 means strong disagreement, 50 means unsure or mixed, and 100 means strong agreement.

Item Mean IQR Range Doubt/Dogma Distribution
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Item-Level Detail

Each card below uses the same public aggregate summary file as the table. The small bar graph shows the observed 10-bin distribution on the 0-100 scale with light neighbor smoothing.

Participant Ballot Results

Twenty-seven participants ranked the Week 3 ballot. The top raw ballot items were public witness over political power, shared community/service/belonging, and male-only pastoral office. The weekly survey project closed before any additional survey could use those rankings, so this section is preserved only as aggregate participant preference data.

RankBallot itemScore
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Participant-Nominated Draft Items

Two text-box suggestions were reviewed for accidental identifiers. No names, email addresses, or direct contact details were found. One suggestion was polished into a credence-slider-ready end-times item; the other was excluded as not usable as a serious survey item. The aggregate draft table is preserved to document how nominations were processed before closure.

SlotDraft ballot itemSource
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Data note: The complete available public data file contains aggregate item summaries, distribution series, endpoint counts, ballot scores, and polished draft-item text only. It excludes names, email addresses, response identifiers, respondent-level rows, and raw free-text suggestions.