From a proposed resolution in the Diocese of Bethlehem:
Resolution on Raising Weekly Attendance
Be it Resolved, That weekly attendance and active parishioners in the Diocese of Bethlehem have been
flat for over a decade. This is evident in the pews and in Parish and Diocesan financial health. One needs
to look no further than the Diocesan staff reductions necessary in recent years. At a parish level, giving
has not risen at the same level as expenses resulting in program or staff cutbacks, or greater use of
endowment resources. The financial health of the Diocese is in direct correlation to the financial health of
its parishes. And the financial health of a parish is in direct correlation to the growth or lack thereof in
active membership. At the same time that our income is stagnant, we are faced with necessary significant
expense increases such as health insurance and utilities. And, we have important new expenses that we
wish to fund such as the Presiding Bishop’s call to us to meet the United Nations Millennium
Development Goals and Bishop Paul’s New Hope initiative.
You can read the resolutions here. (pp. 46 – 50)
In another resolution, the diocese brings on board Croneberger, the retired ordinary of their famously dynamic and growing neighbor Newark. Just the ticket.
The denial is stupefying. In a nutshell, +Epting captured the whole problem when he blogged about his recent visit to a small Louisiana parish:
+Epting, good revisionist that he is, fatuously proceeded to explain “modern Biblical scholarship” and so on to these unenlightened locals. But the central issue completely escaped him, as it escapes all of his fellows, as this well-meant but rather forlorn resolution demonstrates: If you are preaching “I’m OK-You’re OK”, Love Is All You Need, and the Millennium Goals, why should I get out of bed on Sunday morning when I can just throw a John Lennon CD on the stereo and open The New York Times?
Well, notwithstanding the cluelessness of this resolution, at least it’s up front about what’s really important: money. Certainly it’s not the Gospel, or winning souls to Christ, or ministering to Christians and their families. No, what matters here is getting people in the pews so they’ll put money in the plates that will begin its journey to diocesan coffers, to support the bureaucracy and their pet social programs. The cluelessness can’t be ignored, of course: they simply don’t understand that the Millenium Development Goals aren’t going to bring people in. And they seem to think that edicts similar to Mugabe’s insistence that collectivist farms produce, or a Soviet five-year plan, will do the trick. But if they are up front about wanting money, they are a bit less forthright about attendance. In fact, it isn’t flat, but has since 2001 been declining so that now the numbers for the diocese’s 60 parishes together don’t exceed 4500–and that’s an average of only 75 per church–which means a great many parishes are drawing far fewer than that. This is not a healthy diocese, by any measure, quantitatively or qualitatively (if this resolution reflects the mindset there).
Attendance isn’t [url=http://12.0.101.88/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_10132007114334AM.pdf]”flat”[/url]. It looks like a 10-15% drop in membership and ASA since 2002.
To be fair, #3, I think they are looking at the ten year trend in the red bar on the chart.
Canon Harmon –
If you look at membership (blue bar), the 10 year loss was about 17,000 to 14,000. I was looking at ASA (the red bar), which I thought looked flat from ’96 to ’02. Actually, ASA seems to have peaked in ’01, at maybe 5,600 (?). In 2006, it looks to be about 4,300. Those were the numbers with which I was working.
I don’t suppose the actual numbers behind those charts are on the net somewhere? That would be really helpful.
Well, I did reference membership in #3, but I was [i]thinking[/i] ASA, which has not been flat these past few years.
I seem to remember Bethlehem trotting out some type of push for major growth a convention or two before. Am I correct in this?
Here’s Bethlehem ASA numbers from 1995-2005,
ASA 1995: 5,410
ASA 2002: 5,162
ASA 2005: 4,532
change: 1995 – 2005 = -16.2%
change: 2002 – 2005 = -12.2%
[url=http://www.episcopalchurch.org/documents/Average_Sunday_Attendance_1995-05_by_Domestic_Diocese.pdf]ASA Data is here[/url]
Active Membership:
1995: 17,603
2002: 15,452
2005: 14,617
change: 1995 – 2005 = – 16.9%
change: 2002 – 2005 = -5.4 %
[url=http://www.episcopalchurch.org/documents/Active_Members_by_Domestic_Province__Diocese_95-05.pdf]Member data is here[/url]
They’re spot-on pointing out the symptoms, but have nary a notion about the disease they have embraced. And the cure sure as heck isn’t embracing the latest UN boondoggle.
Elves, thanks for the charts. It [i]is[/i] helpful.
It is a negative flat line. Diversity requires that equal importance be given to positive and negative flat lines, like growth. This is a healthy and vibrant diocese, just like the ECUSA/TEC, and that must be true because PB Schori said it!
I disagree that the ASA data is [i]flat[/i]. The 1996 ASA is 5,100. The 2006 ASA is seen on the graph to be less than the 2005 which is 4,500. Let’s call it 4,300. Thus the ASA has dropped 15.7% in ten years (which includes some gain and a lot of loss). The reason that the ASA looks relatively flat in comparison to membership is because of the scale, i.e., if one stood very far back both graphs would look flat. On the other hand, if one scaled it up to the membership data (we are calculating percentages, after all), it would show about the same shrinkage.
If one looks at 2001 (the peak) to 2006, it falls by 18%. If your stock broker said investment “growth” like this was [i]flat[/i], you would fire him for lying (as well as bum advice).
I agree with the 40-something big guy in the quoted material of Craig’s post.