Sustainability of religious communities

Area of Science:

• Sociology of Religion
• Computational Social Science
• Sustainability Science

Background:

• Church populations face challenges in maintaining growth and long-term viability.
• Sustainability is increasingly recognized as a critical factor for organizational success, including religious institutions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between church population dynamics and sustainability.
• To model and optimize church population growth using computational methods.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) epidemic model for dynamic optimization.
• Employed System Dynamics (SD) and Agent-Based Model (ABM) simulations.
• Applied text mining to news articles to identify and quantify sustainability indicators.

Main Results:

• Identified key parameters that significantly influence church population growth.
• Demonstrated that sustainability factors can drive dramatic increases in church populations.
• Developed a model that reproduces specific church population features based on time-dependent sustainability values.

Conclusions:

• Sustainability dimensions and indicators are crucial for understanding and promoting sustainable church growth.
• The study provides insights into optimizing church population dynamics for long-term viability.
• Highlights the potential contributions of churches to broader sustainability efforts.