Method

This page is published ahead of the profiles, so the method can be judged before anything is described by it.

What this describes

The material organization of Christian bodies in the United States: who owns the building, who credentials and places the pastor, who pays whom, who owns the name, and what happens when a congregation wants to leave. It does not compare beliefs. Doctrine appears only where a doctrine directly produces a structure — congregational ecclesiology issuing in local property ownership, for instance — and then only as far as the structure requires.

The reason for the restriction is practical. There are many good comparisons of what denominations believe, and most were written by someone inside one of them arguing a case. There are very few plain accounts of the arrangements a congregation actually lives inside, which are the arrangements that decide what happens to the building.

What counts as a denomination here

A body qualifies for a profile if it does at least two of the following for its congregations:

• holds or encumbers their property;
• credentials, places, or removes their clergy;
• receives regular money from them under a stated expectation;
• licenses or controls the name they use;
• operates a discipline or dispute process they are expected to submit to.

Under that test Acts 29, Hillsong, ARC, Calvary Chapel and their peers are denominations here, whatever they call themselves. Every profile records both the body's own self-designation and its classification under this test, and the two are allowed to disagree without comment. Filing a network as a denomination is a filing decision, not an accusation: the test describes function, and a network that holds no property and takes no money simply will not meet it.

A standalone independent congregation is profiled too, as the zero point — local ownership, self-called pastor, nothing owed upward, its own name. Every comparison needs a control.

Sourcing

Claims are sourced in this order of preference:

1. Governing documents — books of discipline and order, constitutions, canons, bylaws, membership covenants.
2. Court rulings and legal filings.
3. Financial and tax records — IRS determinations and group rulings, Form 990s, published annual reports.
4. Statistical filings — the body's own reported counts, and the U.S. Religion Census, which counts congregations rather than modelling them.
5. Reputable secondary description, for corroboration only.

Advocacy material and press coverage never carry a factual claim on their own. Where a body's documents are versioned web pages rather than published editions, the access date is recorded.

Gaps are published, not filled

Where a structure is not publicly documented, the profile says so and says why, in place, instead of reaching for a plausible sentence. This is enforced by the software rather than by good intentions: the data schema requires at least one source for every substantive claim, and a field that cannot be sourced must be explicitly marked unverified with a reason. A profile that fails either test does not build, and a page that will not build cannot be published. That a licensing agreement between a church and its campuses is not public is itself a material fact about that body, and it is printed as one.

Each profile also carries its coverage level, so a body described from its own complete governing documents does not look the same as one assembled from partial sources.

Editorial rules

Describe, do not promote — in both directions

No profile recommends a body or warns against one. Where the available literature on a body is one-sided — whether it is the body's own promotional material or the coverage of a scandal — the profile says so on the page, and sources are marked for what they are: neutral, self-description, advocacy, or criticism. Sourcing from advocates produces advocacy by default unless the imbalance is named.

Structures, not scandals

Litigation and controversy appear only where they establish a structural fact — a ruling that settled who keeps the buildings, a governance review that changed a board. The ruling is cited; the story is not retold. Individuals appear as officeholders, not as characters.

Departures are recorded quietly

Splits, disaffiliations, and realignments are structural facts with dates and instruments. They are recorded as such and not headlined. Every large body in this country has lost congregations; the interesting question here is what the governing documents said would happen to the property when it did.

Objections in their own words

Where a structure is genuinely contested — a trust clause, a guaranteed appointment, a brand licence — the strongest form of the objection is stated as an argument that exists, and the structure's own rationale is given the same courtesy. Neither is staged as a hurdle the other clears.

Corrections

A correction that cites a primary document will be made. If a paragraph number is wrong, an edition has superseded the one cited, or a structure has changed, that is worth more than any other feedback this site can receive.