According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s figures, New Jersey has grown in population from 8,414,350 in 2000 to 8,707,739 in 2009. This represents a population growth of approximately 3.48%.
According to Episcopal Church statistics, the Diocese of New Jersey went from Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 19,221 in 1998 to 15,412 in 2008. This represents an ASA decline of about 20% over this ten year period.
In order to generate a pictorial chart of some New Jersey diocesan statistics, please go [url=http://www.episcopalchurch.org/growth_60791_ENG_HTM.htm?menupage=50929]here[/url] and enter “New Jersey” in the second line down under “Diocese” and then click on “View Diocese Chart” under the third line to the left.
This brings a whole new meaning to 20/20!
Kendall continues to do harm to our Lenten duties by engaging in inflammatory, divisive rhetoric.
I suppose now we are all used to it and resigned to it, but one wonders when he will repent.
There would be no risen body of Christ if we were all a hand or a foot. Anxiety, confusion, fear and anger abound. This is both healthy and problematic. I may wonder at your otherness and strangeness and you may wonder at mine, and yet, we are both part of the same body–knit together in love and without which the body is incomplete.
Let us end the quoting of meaningless diocesan statistics that yield merely confusion and fear and division. Let us not focus on decline — for to focus on something means that we will imitate it. Let us cast our eyes upward to a holier, more heavenly vision. Let us embrace the otherness and strangeness of the people whom we actually *do* have in our pews.
Everyone knows that a barge will ride higher with a lighter load. TEC is happy to be rid of any ballast that might split her bottom on those shoals of division.
Kendall must have missed the new PC rule that noticing officially published unpleasant facts proves guilt of the heinous crime of inflammatory divisiveness. And as we all now know divisiveness is just the worst thing anyone could allow to stand. Oh, the shame!
facts is facts.
3. if you wish to imply that the church is better off without its members then good luck with that, you truly represent the spirit and attitude that is the episcopal church of the united states.
[b][1] Chris Taylor[/b],
Having read your comment I am supposing that you are open to the suggestion that the original initiative was misnamed. I think the drafters should have been more honest and named it [b][i]-20/10[/i][/b]!
Pax et bonum,
Keith Töpfer
#5, Sorry if my dark sense of humor missed the mark.
#2- LOL!!!LOL!!!! Oh, you forgot to mention that Kendall didn’t get this peer reviewed with 815 before publishing!!! Does he know no shame???
Still waiting for Statmann to show up with more data on NJ. In the meantime, let me act as the counterpoint to Sarah’s delightful spoof above (#2).
I for one hope that Kendall will continue to post these telling diocesan stats that document the inexorable, fateful decline of TEC. As far as I’m concerned, the more divisive and inflammatory the better!
David Handy+
New Reformations are inherently divisive, and unashamedly so.
Oh for crying out loud. Inclusivity is a state of mind, a deeper consciousness, if you will. In the Noble Eightfold Path of the baptismal covenant, inclusivity is an aspect of sophia, or prajñÄ, which means including the right thoughts of the enlighted.
Inclusivity doesn’t mean that more people [i]actually[/i] feel welcome and, you know, [i]included[/i]. And it certainly doesn’t mean including those who, in their lower state of consciousness, choose to have thoughts other than the right thoughts. This just shows that New Jersey is an enlightened diocese.
😉
(Now if we could just convince those defendants that civil lawsuits [i]are[/i], in fact, reconciliation, when seen through the polity glasses of TEC… and, you know, legal fees [i]are[/i], like, mission and stuff.)
Shining examples like New Jersey are just misunderstood. We should all go and imitate everything that they have done to…er ..with themselves for 20 years and just sit back and bask like they have been doing; all in the rainbow afterglow.
[i] Comments have become so sarcastic that we have closed comments. [/i]
-Elf