During his statistic-laden hour-long report, Kirk Hadaway, the church’s program officer for congregational research, told the council that congregations grow when they are in growing communities; have a clear mission and purpose; follow up with visitors; have strong leadership; and are involved in outreach and evangelism.
Congregations decline, he said, when their membership is older and predominantly female; are in conflict, particularly over leadership and where worship is “rote, predictable and uninspiring.”
The primary source of the statistics for Hadaway’s report is the canonically required (Canon 1.6.1) information filed annually with diocesan bishops by each congregation. The so-called parochial reports are due by March 1 of the following year. An example of the sort of information gathered is available here. Hadaway analyzed the data received to compile a variety of statistical reports and also cited a variety of surveys of church members that he and others have conducted.
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 ASA at 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.
KJS indicated took some comfort the the trend began before 2003, as if VGR’s ordination was/is a non-factor. It is legitimate to ask if VGR’s ordination did anything to advance or retard the trend. Certainly there will come a time when most of those marginalized will have left, dampening the descent. From the point forward, mortality will attend to those who remain.
The money quote for me was [i] Hadaway suggested that “if we’re going to turn this around — or at least turn around the decline — more attention needs to be paid to the things that result in growth, rather than to the broader cultural factors that are affecting our current patterns.[/i] which the leadership in the church has interpreted to mean — “Let’s sue one of those dioceses which has figured out to result in growth because they don’t accurately represent us.”
Frank Lockwood at Bible Belt Blogger did the math. Let’s just say that it’s hard to substantiate KJS’ claim that VGR’s consecration was not a turning point.
RE: “Hadaway agreed with council member Brian Cole who suggested that “this is still ultimately a hopeful time for this way of being Christian” and said that the Episcopal Church ethos would seem to be appealing to those people who are wary of joining churches.”
Completely Clueless Denial.
It’s pathological.
Majorinsight, here are the numbers for membership (year, membership, yearly per cent decline with the first negative value being an increase). What one clearly sees is that we have a four year history of basically no changes. We then see earnest decline in 2003:
1998 2,328,081
1999 2,330,193 -0.090718493
2000 2,329,045 0.049266305
2001 2,328,235 0.034778203
2002 2,320,221 0.34420924
2003 2,284,233 1.551059145
2004 2,247,819 1.594145606
2005 2,205,376 1.888185837
2006 2,154,572 2.30364346
2007 2,116,749 1.755476262
2008 2,057,292 2.808882867
…and fatal too God willing.
Intercessor
Domestically, we lost over 22,000 people in the pews in one year. That is larger than any diocese except Virginia and Texas. Since 2003, we have lost 117,000 ASA. That’s a 14% drop in 5 years. That is the combined ASA (roughly) of the five largest Dioceses in TEC! That’s a large diocese each year! We have lost the equivalent of the 41 smallest domestice dioceses since 2003!
When will TEC leadership wake up and realize that lawsuits and interfering with growing dioceses are not what it takes to grow the Church? When will they realize that you grow a Church by BEING the Church – by being obedient to Jesus Christ. This psycho-social activism parading around in vestments is nothing but the death of the Church and her mission.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Thanks for the stats Robroy.
The report mentioned evangelism as being important for growth. I just don’t think these folks have a clue as to what that really means. In order to to do this they need evangelists. Here is how it would fail under the current TEC system: The evangelist goes out and sells the Gospel. General Convention then does something counter to the Gospel ( a cycle that repeats every three years). It is like having your name brand car recalled. You can no longer trust the salesman.
Thanks #8….and one needs to ask that much larger question: What does the modern day Episcopal Church evangelize for, when salvation is no longer exclusive to Christ? Because excluding that, it’s no longer evangelizing, it’s marketing.
For MBIC, Phil: If you want to look at the Average Sunday attedance, we have the following:
Year, ASA (domestic dioceses only), Per cent drop (negative means increase)
1998 842408
1999 841454 0.11
2000 856579 -1.8 *
2001 858566 -0.23
2002 846640 1.39
2003 823017 2.79
2004 795765 3.31
2005 787271 1.07 *
2006 765326 2.79 *
2007 727822 4.9
2008 705257 3.1
The asterisk refers to Christimas Effect (CE) years where the ASA number is slightly elevated. Thus, going from a non-CE year to a CE year would blunt the decline (e.g., 2004 to 2005 were the per cent drop is only 1.07%) and going from a CE year to a non-CE year makes the drop appear worse (e.g., from 2006 to 2007 where the per cent drop was 4.9%).
Note that in 2003 the membership drop was 5 x the previous year’s negligible drop and the ASA drop was twice the previous year’s. Anyone looking at the numbers would say something bad happened in 2003.
“David Booth Beers, chancellor to the presiding bishop, preached at the cathedral, but did not have a text.”
Nope, no comment, I just wanted to reproduce that line for consideration.
I note that in the diocese by diocese listings, San Joaquin is included, showing 2,246 baptized members. Didn’t San Joaquin withdraw and join the Southern Cone in 2007? I think these numbers may be suspect.
#12-Connie …as you know here at the Dio Hotel California you can check out but as per Kate Schori you can never leave.
Intercessor
No. 12. Isn’t it likely that they are counting people in the Diocese who did not leave? What was the count before the departures in 2007?
NoVA, depends on who’s doing the counting and how honest the secretary is. Locally when some members left to form a congregation under a Kenyan bishop, the TEC secretary left them on the rolls, since you only have to attend 2 or 3 times a year to be a member and it can take years to remove someone who never shows up. I wonder if a wedding, funeral, etc. count. I also saw a comment on Thinking Anglicans (I think) that that priest didn’t take members who asked to transfer membership from his church to the ACNA church off the roles because ACNA wasn’t a real part of Anglican Communion so he couldn’t transfer their membership anywhere, so he left ’em as inactive members. The question then becomes whether the church secretary counts inactive members in the numbers they send to the diocese, etc.
One thing you ought to really keep in mind is that the #’s used by Dr. Hardaway are “self reporting”; i.e., they are not verified but are reported by individual priests to dioceses and then on to 815. To assume these #’s are accurate is, at a bare minimum, ridiculous. Having served on SCDME when we first reported the beginnings of irreversable systemic decline of TEC to EC, in 2004, I am certain the real #’s are much worse.
I was reacting to the question posed in comment No. 12. 2,246 seems like a low number for a Diocese, but, then again, my Diocese is the largest in the country, I think. My question was whether 2,246 was the count before or after the departure of large numbers of parishioners from the Diocese of San Joaquin. Commenter No. 12 suggests that it may have been the pre-departure count. The number strikes me as modest enough to perhaps reflect the post-departure count. Anyone have a handle on that?