“There’s some pretty solid evidence that shows church growth is countercyclical to economic growth, [Ed] Stelzer [President of Lifeway Research in Nashville, Tennessee] told Christianity Today, citing a 2007 study by Texas State University professor David Beckworth.
The “Praying for Recession” study found that the rate of growth in evangelical churches jumped by 50 percent during each recession between 1968 and 2004. By comparison, mainline Protestant churches continued their decline in numbers, though a bit more slowly.
—Christianity Today, March 2009, page 18
Interesting, but it does make one wonder if the church growth is in fact Christ centered, or merely a social phenomenon for comfort and peace in difficult times. God sorts it all out in the end. As a churchman I may be misreading the meaning of data in trying to discern what is going on as regards “growth and decline” numbers….
I guess this begs the questions of how severe an economic depression has to be before TEC actually sees some growth. Let’s hope we never find out.
This from an article today at ENS:
[blockquote]While the median size of Episcopal Church congregations and overall membership has declined in recent years, that pattern matches trends in most mainline Protestant denominations and points to larger patterns in U.S. culture, according to analyses of recent data.[/blockquote]
[url=http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_105950_ENG_HTM.htm]ENS’s line[/url] seems to be “we’re losing membership but so is everybody else.” As usual, we must go to other sources to get the rest of the story