The 2008 parochial reports show overall church membership at 2,225,682 people, with a total average Sunday attendance (ASA) at 747,376. Those totals compare with 2007 membership of 2,285,143 and total average Sunday attendance 768,476. The dioceses in the United States saw a 2.8 percent drop in membership and a 3.1 percent decrease in ASA. Overall church membership — including 10 non-U.S. dioceses — was down 2.6 percent and attendance dropped 2.7 percent for the entire church.
The median Episcopal Church congregation in 2008 had 164 active members (down four members from 2007) and 69 people in Sunday worship, the same as in the previous year. Membership declines in the Episcopal Church mirror a pattern seen in other Christian denominations. Recent nationwide data shows the median non-Roman Catholic congregation has 75 regular participants at worship on Sundays.
Four domestic Episcopal Church dioceses grew during 2008 in both overall membership and average Sunday attendance: Alabama, Navajoland Area Mission, North Dakota and Wyoming.
In spite of massive data to the contrary, the glass is half full.
I wonder how they do that?
IIRC, last year’s report indicated that South Carolina was one of the diocese that had grown and there was much celebration on here. Interesting that Alabama, North Dakota, Wyoming and Navajoland are the ones with growth this year.
woot! 2/3 of our people on any given Sunday are not coming to church, but we are doing a great job!
Losing members at a rate roughly equivalent to other mainline denominations is good news? Yikes.
ENS reminds me of children declaring it to be opposite day — every day.
This is good news. Fewer people are hearing TEC’s false gospel.
[blockquote] The median Episcopal Church congregation in 2008 had 164 active members (down four members from 2007) and 69 people in Sunday worship, the same as in the previous year. [/blockquote]
Does anyone know what the definition of an “active member” is? Seriously, I’m interested in knowing, because I would think that attending worship services would be a big part of being an active member, but doesn’t appear to be in this definition.
What is an Acitve Member?
My guess is an acitve memeber is one who puts a cheque in the Alms Basin Christmas and Easter
Praise God! The inflated membership continues it long decline and the inflated attendance continues to plummet! Fewer people are giving more, but revenues are down.
All is well.
Meanwhile, International Widget Corporation announces that its customer base continues its decade long decline and fewer of them are buying IWC widgets. They pay more, but revenues are off. The board is delighted and voted themselves a big bonus.
Where is ENS getting its figures? The “Fast Facts” link they include show membership at 2,057,292 and ASA at 705,257 for 2008.
10. Blue Heron wrote:
[blockquote]Where is ENS getting its figures? The “Fast Facts†link they include show membership at 2,057,292 and ASA at 705,257 for 2008.[/blockquote]
I’m too lazy to check it out, but I suspect it has to do with whether one is talking about “domestic membership/ASA” versus a total that includes foreign dioceses of “The International Episcopal Church”. It seems that the latter are growing, but that doesn’t come close to offsetting the loss of membership/ASA in the dioceses actually located in the U.S.
The interesting thing is that the article choses to talk about “mean” parish membership/ASA instead of the usual “median”. The difference is that if you take one parish of 1,000 and nine parishes of 100, the mean is 190, while the median is 100.
The other observation is that if you have a parish with 10 members, and someone joins, you’ve seen a 10% increase in membership. The dioceses which report an increase in membership are pretty small to begin with, so the increase doesn’t mean much for TEC as a whole.
Less is more. The management and stock holders of GM and Chrysler haven’t figured this out yet. Maybe TEC’s leaders can explain this marvel to them.
All is well.
Looks like Navajoland increased by maybe 50 to 75 people?
http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_122200923453PM.pdf
Certainly a bright spot in the statistics.
The powers that be in PECUSA/ECUSA/TEC have twisted, stretched, truncated, and generally morphed the meaning of words for so long they are completely unaware that everybody knows what they’re doing. As for this ‘decline’ stuff, all I can say is that the Mormons would never tolerate it. ENS is fine with it because the only constituencies they actually care about is women of a certain age, LGBT people, and the VERY few people of color who agree with them, punto e basta.
(vi-tal’-i-ty – in an institution, the power to survive or endure)
Doesn’t imply anything about health, size, influence, or viability, all of which are in decline, so I guess the word’s OK.
Also, can we get the global-warming hackers to help us get the “real” attendance data?