Each year, as Convention comes around, I look at the numbers you present in your Parochial reports. The figures I pay attention to are those related to Sunday average attendance, baptisms and confirmations or receptions in a given year, Easter Sunday attendance, which often gives a picture of potential for those numbers, tends to come close to total communicants, and financial health as shown by average pledge per week. The total number of enrolled members has always lagged behind reality depending on the energy of clergy to obtain a membership that represents the recent present. We all know that two in three people on Episcopal rolls never show up at church unless of course you have just happened to have culled the list the year before! The three values of vitality, visibility and viability are not really captured in the Parochial Report. I do know however that God’s impact through any particular group of the baptized in a given place always far exceeds anything we can know or report.
The apparent irrelevance, however, of the totals on baptized persons, or even communicants, for understanding our life as Church points to a huge weakness in our faith system. We are poor at keeping track of one another. This is so at the very place where we might hope greater commitment is being expressed, namely at Confirmation.