Congregational & nonprofit research
Research for churches, campus ministries and faith-based nonprofits: who your people are, who lives around you, and what to do next.
Good research is not a luxury for a church. It is stewardship.
Sourced data and interpretation are always labeled separately.
Sources and survey years listed; ranges replace false precision.
The threshold for real movement is stated; noise is not change.
Self-report is called perception, not proof. Hard findings included.
“As a local church pastor, I have benefited so much from Dr. Ryan Kozey. To be effective in pastoral ministry, it requires detailed knowledge of people and place. Ryan leverages every available piece of data to inform a contextualized ministry committed to Gospel saturation. But Ryan is not a detached statistician; he is a mission-minded practitioner who wants to see every man, woman, and child have repeated opportunities to hear and see the Gospel. He sits at the intersection of sound theology and demographic insight, which is part of what makes his contribution so valuable. Seminary taught me how to exegete a text of Scripture. Ryan taught me how to exegete a city.”
“Ryan Kozey brings a rare combination of expertise in data analytics, credible measurement tools, and research methodology, along with an exceptional ability to translate complex data into meaningful, actionable insights. What makes Ryan especially valuable is that he's skilled, thoughtful, collaborative, and genuinely a pleasure to work with. I highly recommend him.”
Every engagement starts with a question your leadership is already asking, and ends with findings you can act on.
One standardized survey of your congregation, read at the individual level, with a written assessment of who your church actually is.
Public demographic and religious data for your ministry area or campus, with findings and interpretation labeled separately.
Matching individuals to real, vetted projects across a region, so the ask becomes specific enough to say yes to.
Ask about scope →Instruments built to make priorities compete rather than flatter, from staff retention studies to network-wide diagnostics.
Ask about scope →“Christ Together's mission is to unite the church of North America on mission to reach every man, woman, and child in their cities with the gospel of Jesus Christ. To do this, each church needs to understand their city and to mobilize their people into the city. Dr. Ryan Kozey has helped us to understand our cities through comprehensive demographic reports and to know the spiritual health and engagement of the people in our churches in order to equip and send them on mission where they live, learn, work, and play. We are thankful for Ryan's heart for mission and for providing resources to better equip the church.”
“Dr. Kozey has been a great blessing to the body of Christ through his work. His ability to help church leaders think critically about the health of the congregations they lead beyond anecdotes or sentiments, but with objective biblical measurements. Through his coaching, spiritual formation survey, and ability to help leaders process the results, he has helped scores of churches grow beyond just trying to gather in being a healthy congregation on mission for the glory of their geography.”
No new staff, no program to launch, no committee to seat.
Recent engagements, described without naming clients.
A 26-page demographic, cultural and spiritual survey of a two-county Southeastern metro of about 745,000 people, built to be handed to a room of pastors.
It reframed the network's question from "do we need more churches?" to "who are our churches structurally failing to reach?", and showed the two counties run on different clocks: 17.7% of residents moved in a year on one side of the river, 9.0% on the other.
Sources: U.S. Census and ACS, 2020 U.S. Religion Census, Pew Research Center.
Churches say their goal is every man, woman and child, then manage by attendance, giving, membership and volunteers. This roughly 20-item instrument measures importance twice: what leaders say, through a forced 100-point allocation, and what their meeting time, budget, accountability and celebration reveal.
The distance between the two is the finding, benchmarked against a national baseline.
How far measured priorities sit from stated ones.
Whether the scorecard leans toward gathering or sending.
Constant-sum items defeat the bias that makes every priority score high. A metric with no consequences is theater, and the survey is built to catch that.
Real pages from recent work, white-labeled. Client names, logos and identifying details have been removed; demographic figures come from public sources.
Eight pages from a 28-page profile of a two-county metro: the cover, the opening finding, how the place is shaped, and who is already gathered, with full sources and caveats.
A collective of four congregations asked how healthy its disciples really are. A 22-item survey across five domains (gospel affections, gospel fluency, relational health, discipling capacity and missional engagement) gave a clear shape. Convictions and affections ran high, but confidence, language and practice fell away beneath them. The report named the belief-to-behavior gap, traced where the missional funnel leaks, and set baselines for a follow-up survey.
Scores shown are illustrative of the report format.
Slides from a survey of church leaders: the headline gap, the Collecting–Mobilizing Index, and six practical moves for redesigning a church scorecard.
What you give me, what comes back, and how churches use it. One page.
Download sample (PDF)What the assessment measures and what your leadership team receives. One page.
Download sample (PDF)He knows what these numbers cost to gather, and what it feels like to be the leader who has to act on them.
Ryan Kozey studies how organizations actually behave: how the people inside them commit, disengage, stay and leave. He has spent more than two decades applying that work to churches and faith-based nonprofits.
For ten years he served on the senior leadership team of The Chapel at Crosspoint in Western New York as Director of Strategic Initiatives and Pastor of Missional Behavior, leading demographic assessment for church planting and partnership across a region of 1.2 million people.
Since 2010 he has designed, fielded and analyzed a national survey on spiritual growth and deeds of action among evangelicals, now spanning hundreds of churches and benchmarked so any one congregation can see where it stands. Deeper-level city assessments include:
I have sat in the seat where these decisions get made. Good research is not a luxury for a church or a nonprofit. It is stewardship, and love for the people you are trying to serve.Ryan S. Kozey, PhD
A demographic and religious profile of the area you serve: $125 per report (includes payment processing fees), delivered as a PDF the same day for orders placed by 2 PM ET (next morning otherwise).
I've received your area and details. Payment instructions will follow by email, and your report will arrive the same day for orders placed by 2 PM ET, or the next morning.
Tell me about your congregation, campus or network and the decision in front of you. The first conversation is a chance to see whether research would actually help.
© 2026 Ryan S. Kozey, PhDBowling Green, Ohio
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