Methodology

I. What this directory is

A doctrinally-vetted, US-wide registry of 13,895 churches, hosted as a structured-data corner of usmcmin.org. It started around 7,400 records in early 2026 and has roughly doubled across six enrichment phases plus an ongoing dupe-cleanup pass.

The data lives in one canonical file — docs/data/churches.json, ~43.6 MB — and every record fans out into a per-church HTML page at usmcmin.org/churches/<slug>.html, plus a row in the sitemap, plus (when applicable) tags on cross-listed network pages.

II. The signal layer

For each record, the schema attempts to populate these distinguishing fields. Some are fully covered; others are partial:

• Pastor name — real, non-placeholder pastor on 8,647 of 13,895 records (62%). The remaining records are mostly JavaScript-rendered Squarespace / Wix / Webflow staff pages that resist plain HTTP fetching; cracking those is queued behind a headless-browser extraction pass.
• Social presence — 5,723 Facebook URLs, 1,326 YouTube channels, 1,257 Instagram accounts, plus scattered Twitter. A 2026-Q2 Facebook recovery campaign turned roughly 830 dead-website records into active social-channel records.
• MOOP rubric rating — categorical (green / yellow / red / black / dead). Current distribution: 4,301 green · 8,376 yellow · 565 red · 273 black · 7 dead.
• Cross-listed networks — registrations in seven Reformed-evangelical networks: Founders (365), 9Marks (6,184), TGC (1,198), Acts 29 (498), Sovereign Grace Churches (109), Pillar Network (513), Trinity Foundation Registry (39). 7,474 churches are cross-listed in at least one network; 1,262 in multiple. Surfaced on directory-networks.html.
• Pastor-signature cross-references — pastors are matched against 7 canonical statement-signer ledgers (Nashville Statement 2017, Dallas Statement 2018, Warhurst Protest 2020, AMR Leadership 2026, PCA Letter of Lament 2025, Revoice speakers / endorsers, CBE Egalitarian Network). 36,529 signer entries indexed. Strict first+last name match, state corroboration on the two large lists, and denominational scope filtering on the small ones keep the false-positive rate low. Currently 377 churches green-aggregate, 72 red, 13 mixed — that's where the rare-but-decisive "this pastor signed Nashville" or "this pastor signed Revoice" call-outs come from.
• Notable attendees — politicians, justices, and religious figures cross-referenced to their home churches. 208 distinct individuals across 164 churches. Powers the "where they worship" cross-reference on the RESOLUTE Citizen blog post and the Politicians cross-reference page.
• Enrichment notes + sources — every editorial decision (rubric flag, denomination correction, dupe merge, signature match) appends a dated note and cites the source URL. The audit trail is the unique editorial defense — every claim is traceable.

III. The MOOP rubric

MOOP is a doctrinal lens, not a neutral one. Records receive a categorical rating — green (recommended), yellow (caution / verify), red (significant concerns), or black (avoid — significant cultural or doctrinal drift). Automatic flags get applied by pattern detection wherever the underlying signal is unambiguous:

• Female senior pastor → RED minimum. The directory holds a complementarian position on the church office of elder / pastor.
• LGBTQ-affirming denomination → RED minimum. Applies to PCUSA, ELCA, the United Methodist Church (post-Charlotte 2024), The Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the mainline Reformed Church in America, and Mennonite Church USA. Conservative cousin denominations (PCA, OPC, ARP, EPC, LCMS, WELS, ACNA, Reformed Episcopal, URCNA, PRCA, etc.) are explicitly excluded by the auto-flagger.
• Prosperity gospel → BLACK. Includes campuses of Elevation, the Potter's House (T. D. Jakes), Lakewood (Joel Osteen), Joyce Meyer, and their affiliates.
• Broken website alone is NOT a doctrinal flag. Many small churches operate primarily through Facebook; a dead website is a data-quality issue (note + needs_review), not a doctrinal red. We will not penalize a faithful small congregation for not having a tech volunteer.

Manual review handles edge cases the rubric can't auto-decide.

IV. What's still incomplete

An honest accounting of the known gaps:

• 4,288 records flagged for follow-up review. The hardest pool is roughly 3,200 JavaScript-rendered SPA sites where pastor extraction needs a headless browser (Playwright pass pending). The next-hardest is around 700 churches with no website AND no Facebook — researchable only by phone or address.
• Some legacy numeric ratings haven't been normalized. A small subset of pre-2026 records carry rating values on a 0–10 scale that pre-date the current categorical (green / yellow / red / black) system. Cosmetic but irritating on the per-church pages.
• Some misleading slugs. A handful of record IDs carry stale tradition tags from earlier classification — the underlying denomination data is correct; only the URL slug hasn't been re-aligned.
• Conservative-network bias — by design. The directory's editorial center is Reformed-evangelical and orthodox-Protestant. Affirming-denomination records exist but are sparse. We are not a neutral catalog; we name our compass so readers can calibrate.
• No portfolio yet for the small-church website-build ministry offer. The data identifies hundreds of small churches without working web presence — the next step is sample-site demos and an intake-form / build pipeline before any outreach goes wide.

V. What this is positioned for

In one sentence: it's a directory other directories can't compete with, because every record carries a defendable editorial verdict with citations. Three downstream uses:

• Editorial pieces — the RESOLUTE Citizen post cross-references 83 federal officials to their churches. More posts of that shape are possible: Where the Nashville Statement Signers Lead Today, The Geographic Distribution of Egalitarian Theology in American Evangelicalism, and similar.
• Ministry outreach — small-church support work uses the editorial layer as a relationship-opener. The signature cross-reference, in particular, makes "we noticed your pastor signed [statement]" a natural lead-in. The website-build ministry to under-resourced churches is one concrete example in development.
• Search engine presence — 13,895 pages at usmcmin.org/churches/<slug> are registered in the sitemap, each a substantive evaluation of a specific congregation. When a searcher Googles "Grace Baptist Cape Coral pastor," the MOOP page is built to rank — and to be the most informative result.