OK, I had a long commute home yesterday — an L.A. “get away Friday” and all that.  And as I was thinking about my quest for sources for perspectives on the General Assemblies or Synods of some of the smaller Presbyterian branches I began to wonder how many I should be looking for.  I did a quick back of the envelope calculation and my conclusion is:

Roughly one in every 10,000 Presbyterians blogs on Presbyterian matters.

Beyond this it also appears that there are about the same number of institutional blogs from churches, governing bodies, or affiliated organizations.

Now this is a rough estimate and not very scientific.  If you want evidence of that I rushed to Wikipedia for the membership numbers.

And if you want to do this scientifically you would have to decide matters such as:  Does BRC get counted one, two, or three times?  Does a church or organization blog get counted as institutional if it is predominantly written by one individual?  Does an institutional blog count if it is mostly just news and not reflection?

So here is my initial back-of-the-envelope calculation.  The PC(USA) lists 2.2 million members.  Presbyterian Bloggers lists 144 “Members of our Community.”  Beyond that I have about 42 more blogs on my feed reader not in their list.  That brings the total to 186.  Knowing that there are several more blogs that I don’t follow it strikes me that a number in the 225 to 250 range is probably about right.  Hey, I said this was back of the envelope.  It’s got to be close to an order of magnitude.  So 220 blogs for 2.2 million members is one for every 10,000.

How does this hold up in other branches?  A quick check of the OPC gives a membership of about 29.000 and I can identify three individual and three church blogs.  I’m probably missing a couple individuals so it is a bit better than the 1:10,000, but still order of magnitude close.  How about the PCA?  Membership – 346,000.  I can identify 41 blogs by individuals and I’m probably missing a few, but it still appears closer to 1:10,000 than 2:10,000.  The ARP?  It looks like 30,000 members and three individuals blogging as well as three churches.  For the EPC they are listed as having 85,000 members and I read the blogs of four individuals.  A search only turned up a couple more so this appears to be a case where the estimate is ballpark but over estimates.  Or I need to look harder.

Moving outside the US the numbers, or my ability to find the blogs, drop off.  For instance, for the Presbyterian Church in Canada I can only find a couple of blogs by individuals for a church of 120,000 members.  Again, for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland I can again only find a couple of blogs for a church of 300,000.  I don’t think I am missing the other 28 if the ratio holds.  For the Church of Scotland I follow 18 and there are probably a few more, but still for a church of 500,000 it still seems short of the 50 expected blogs.

So does this serve a purpose?  For me as a researcher it does.  Coming from the field of seismology we have several empirical mathematical relationships that tell us how many earthquakes to expect in particular situations.  We use them for calculating earthquake hazard and seeing if we are “short” of earthquakes and so should expect the earth to catch up.  In this case I now have an empirical relationship that tells me about how many bloggers to expect in a denomination.  If I’m short, as in the EPC, maybe I should be checking around for a few more that I am missing.  If I’m on the number, like the ARP, I’ll keep my eyes open for more, but won’t put excessive effort into “finding the one lost blogger.”  And for social scientists and “new media” people out there maybe this tells you something.  And hey, if I messed something up here I’m sure you’ll let me know.

Thoughts from the mind of a research scientist.  Your mileage may vary.