Australian National Church Life Surveys (NCLS) have been performed every 5 years from 1991 to 2001, to study Church Life in Australia

Christianity in Australia

Christianity is the largest religion listed by Australians in the national census. In the 2006 Census, 63.9% of Australians were listed as Christian. Australia has no official state religion and the Australian Constitution protects freedom of religion. The presence of Christianity in Australia...

. The NCLS Research partnership administers these surveys. NCLS Research has also conducted surveys on community values, well-being, and security.

Supporters

Key supporters of the National Church Life Survey are:

• Uniting Church NSW Board of Mission
• ANGLICARE Diocese of Sydney
• the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference

Participating Denominations also support the NCLS, some by providing a regional survey coordinator.

Other Research & Mission Organisations also partner with the NCLS:

• Openbook
• Christian Blind Mission International (CBMI)

The 2001 NCLS was conducted in international partnership with organisations from the following countries:

• Australia
• England
• New Zealand
• USA

Aim

According to the National Church Life Survey's website:

NCLS Research represents an immense cooperative research venture designed to resource congregations for mission. Involving millions of participants over a number of years in different countries, surveys have explored aspects of both church and community life.

The purpose of the National Church Life Survey project is to:

• Analyse trends into church life comparing with previous surveys
• Carry out more detailed analysis of the relationships between factors that are apparent in healthy churches
• Provide resources to Churches to assist ministry relevance
• Carry out more detailed analysis on effective and sustainable leadership

Recent activities

In January 2008, the Sydney Morning Herald reported research by the Christian Research Association

Christian Research Association

The Christian Research Association was founded in 1985 to study the Christian faith in Australia. Its work consists of major research projects, overviews of research on religion in Australia, and contract research for Christian organisations, including local reports based on Australian Census...

 and the National Church Life Survey into religious affiliation in rural areas. The article states that

(w)heat and sheep farming areas tend to have higher levels of Christian identification than mining boom towns.

The Wellbeing and Security Survey 2003 was conducted in co-operation with Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia and ANGLICARE (Sydney).
The National Church Life Survey 2001 was conducted in May 2001. The survey was completed by 435,000 church attenders from 7000+ Australian churches, across 19 denominations, representing 80%+ of Australian regular church attenders. NCLS Research claims that NCLS 2001 is one of the largest surveys of its kind in the world.
The NCLS First Look Report 2001 states:

Most attenders are at ease with sharing their faith or even look for opportunities to do so (66%). Some 37% have invited someone to church in the past year, even though many churches don’t seem to have a culture of inviting people to church. It is encouraging that 6% of attenders are newcomers who have joined church in the last five years without a previous church background.

In contrast, the AD2000 Journal article National Church Life Survey: church-going declines further summarises the research as follows:

Statistics from the latest National Church Life Survey (NCLS) indicate that attendances at church services in the large Christian denominations, including the Catholic Church, are continuing to decline.