About
Research expertise. Church context.
Church Research Partners brings professional research discipline to consequential questions facing church leaders and communities.
Ben Gavette, Founder & Principal
Ben Gavette is the founder and principal at Church Research Partners. He spent almost a decade at Eli Lilly and Company, including more than three years in professional commercial market research, working on consequential business questions that require careful study design, analysis, and interpretation. He holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
Alongside that professional background, Ben has spent several years in parish governance, serving on parish council in various roles, including both secretary and president. That experience helps him design research that fits the way church leaders actually deliberate and decide.
Why Church Research Partners exists.
Church leaders routinely face consequential organizational questions. Many churches have capable staff, volunteers, and leaders, but limited access to specialized research expertise when an issue warrants something more rigorous than informal feedback or an internally assembled survey.
Internal teams may also be stretched, or simply too close to the issue to create the separation a sensitive study requires. At the other end of the spectrum, research capabilities common in major commercial organizations can be inaccessible or disproportionate for a church.
Church Research Partners was created to make that kind of research capacity available at a scope that fits the decisions churches actually face.
How we approach the work.
Start with the decision
The research question should come from the decision leadership faces, not from a preferred survey, methodology, or prebuilt framework.
Treat uncertainty honestly
A strong study should make clear what the evidence supports, where participation or data are thin, and which conclusions would go beyond what the research can establish.
Research serves leadership discernment
Church context matters, but evidence does not replace pastoral, theological, financial, governance, or prudential judgment. It should clarify the factual picture before those judgments are made.
