A friend recently asked us what TEC’s decline in membership and ASA (average Sunday attendance) in recent years meant on a daily basis. We’ve had a few minutes to crunch some numbers. (The 2006 TEC domestic data is still rough as exact diocese by diocese figures have not yet been released. We’re using 2006 figures for Provinces 1-8 with 2005 figures for Haiti, Dominican Republic, Taiwan, Micronesia and the Churches in Europe subtracted out). For 2000 and 2005 data we’ve used official TEC data found here.
2000 TEC Domestic Membership: 2,329,045
2006 estimated Domestic Membership: 2,156,043
membership loss in 6 years: 173,002 (-7.4%, a loss of 1.2% per year)
This equates to an average loss of 28,834 members per year (or losing a diocese the size of the diocese of Ohio per year)
This also equates to losing an average of 79 members PER DAY.
(The median parish in TEC had 174 members in 2005. So this equates to losing an average parish every two – three days for 6 years.)
2000 TEC Domestic ASA: 856,579
2006 estimated Domestic ASA: 764,660
ASA loss in 6 years: 91,919 (-10.7%, a loss of 1.8% per year)
ASA loss per year: 15,320,
This is 15,000+ attendees lost every year for 6 years, which is equivalent to losing the diocese of Southwest Florida or Central Florida every year. (They ranked 13th and 14th in TEC in 2005)
ASA loss per day: 42 attendees.
The 2005 median ASA is 74 attendees, so this means losing an average congregation of worshippers every 2 days for 6 years.
And the loss rate since 2003 has only accelerated:
2002 domestic membership (using 2002 as it is the year prior to the disaster of GC03): 2,320,221
2006 estimated domestic membership: 2,156,043
2002 – 2006 membership loss: 164,178 in 4 years. (-7.1%, a loss of 1.8% per year)
loss per year: 41,045 (equivalent to losing a diocese the size of Chicago or Washington (in the top 15 among domestic dioceses, every year — less than 15 domestic dioceses had 40,000+ members in 2005)
loss per day: 112 members (losing an entire parish every 1.5 days)
2002 TEC Domestic ASA: 846,640
2006 estimated Domestic ASA: 764,660
Total ASA loss in 4 years: 81,980 (-9.7%, a loss of 2.4% per year)
loss per year: 20,495
This is equivalent to losing a diocese almost the size of Los Angeles or Connecticut every single year. These are the fifth and sixth largest dioceses in terms of ASA. Only 6 ECUSA dioceses out of 100 domestic dioceses have total ASA of 20,000 or more.
ASA loss per day: 56
equals losing an “average” congregation (weekly attendance) every 1.5 days.
Of course we’ll update and verify this analysis when official diocesan data comes out
— elfgirl
Wait until the Diocese of Pittsburgh leaves. That’s the equivalent of losing . . . a diocese the size of Pittsburgh. Ditto for Fort Worth, etc.
Don’t forget that 2005 & 2006 had the “Christmas effect” where Christmas Eve fell on a Saturday evening or a Sunday and those numbers helped ASA. Additionally, there are several parishes that “left” TECUSA towards the end of 2006, so part of their numbers could be in the 2006 numbers this year. I don’t know that to be the case, but I suspect that it is in some diocese. Remember that LA is showing flat lines for ASA and Membership for those parishes that have left.
I believe that 2007 will show a significantly higher decline than 2005.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
What are the stats in relation to other liturgical episcopal (small ‘e’) churches?
Brian,
What is our market? Are you defining us as a liturgical niche church? Then our market is sure to decline. I think one thing that these statistics show us is that the public is not buying what TECUSA is selling. Why – well, that is for researches to find out, but why not try “rebranding” TECUSA from a niche church of liturgical do-gooders to a Church where lives are changed and through those changed lives, the world is changed. What we get now is: “come as you are and stay that way!” This is hardly a message of renewal or that invites people to come in.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Never forget, though, that all is well and the church is healthy and vibrant and growing according to our PB. This is because growth is considered as acceleration and is both negative and positive. The focus on positive growth is merely part of the pluriform field of growth and to be truly inclusive must include the negative growth. It is in this latter that ECUSA/TEC excels and by which the measure “all is well” is made. It’s all very scientific, of course, and that’s why “it is good” that we have a scientist at the helm to navigate these bathetic growth levels.
Brian, how about this: What are their stats in comparison to other Anglican provinces, say in Uganda?
Seriously, why do you restrict to liturgical churches? Unfortunately, one cannot look at liturgical churches that are not dabbling with liberalization of policy in regards to homosexuality because they all are it seems. One cannot do a case control study here. One can look at the churches that have led the liberalization front. The United Church of Christ and United Church of Canada are the most liberal and it has been devastating these two churches. Not far behind is the Episcopal church and the Anglican Church of Canada. Statistics not as moribund but still dismal. I think that one could look at church decline versus liberal homosexual policy and quite easily argue that it is suicide to take the path the UCC did and that the TEC is foolishly moving towards.
Which do you consider liturgical churches? Implicit in your question is whether a liturgical church can survive in the day of iPod and DVDs even if they haven’t bowed to worldly ways like the TEC. That is an excellent question.
#2, The Christmas effect in 2005 (affecting ASA, but not membership) is very clearly displayed in the graphs we’ve now posted in the entry above this one. Check it out.
The “Christmas Effect” occurs when Christmas Eve falls on Saturday or Sunday. In either case a parish is allowed to count Christmas Eve attendance in that year’s ASA. In effect giving most parishes a week of double or even triple attendance. Basically an extra week or two of attendance, as if there were 53 or 54 Sundays instead of 52 (but parishes still divide by 52). Kirk Hadaway, the ECUSA director of research has admitted this can have a major influence on the data. This elf can’t for the life of me figure out why TEC can’t find a simple way to avoid this inconsistency. Either you count Christmas Eve services EVERY year or NO year. Simple. The rules should be the same. Every year. No exceptions! Oh well…
These are interesting numbers, and certainly disappointing to learn.
However, I guess I would have to differ with you Kendall on this too. I don’t see numbers as being the ultimate determinate of truth. I’m reminded that by Jesus’ final days he had lost pretty much all of his followers. Similarly, Islam is exploding in numbers — particularly in the United States (and, there’s no need to mention the priest in Seattle in follow-up comments by the way). Does it then hold true that Islam is heir to the truth since their numbers aren’t declining? What about the number of congregants that departed TEC in the 1960s over Civil Rights issues? I’m glad we didn’t let “numbers” dictate right/wrong for us then. Praise God for brave, courageous, inclusive, Christ-centered leaders who aren’t motivated by fear. I do pray that those who have left the Episcopal Church have found a place where their spiritual lives can be enriched.
It is Average Sunday Attendance. We know that many churches have Saturday services which are counted in ASA. So when Christmas Eve falls on a Saturday or Sunday they are counted. As long as we are aware of the “effect” I don’t think it’s a big deal, after all, the attendance is real.
#8, this entry and the graphs above were prepared and posted by me, elfgirl. It’s not Kendall’s entry. And I never said anything about “numbers as being the ultimate determinate of truth.” You are putting words in my mouth. I provided NO spin or interpretation of these numbers. Just the data.
I agree numbers are not the determinate of truth. But it is a disturbing trend for TEC no matter how you interpret it.
Elves,
Speaking about what I know…. it may be disturbing, but not only have we had 6 years of intense conflict but just as many with foriegn juristiction set up shop on our shores. AMIA, CANA, etc, are pulling some members. So the question is are they “lost” or just attending somewhere else?
In the diocese I reside we “lost” our largest congregation to africa. (though strangely thier building and home addresses are in the US. ) It was a big “loss” amounting to 20% of the diocese. But three years later the diocese is growing, mission is increasing, ministry is focused. (btw- we are a windsor diocese by most definiations). Why? We were held hostage for 10 years by the “big” church who didn’t like the way the rest of us played.
But #9, it is a big deal when the numbers jump around from year to year (e.g. a BIG jump in attendance in 2000 and a sharp decrease in loss rate in 2005), and no one in TEC bothers to publicly explain that the data is inconsistent. It took several bloggers and blog commenters quite awhile of studying the data to figure out why there were such swings in the ASA. TEC had never mentioned anything in any publication (that we saw, at least) about the “Christmas effect.” However, when I contacted Kirk Hadaway (who has been very helpful and honest) about this possible discrepancy, he admitted it readily and acknowledged that it skewed the data.
To be meaningful, data collection must be the same year by year, or if not, there needs to be an adjustment calculated to show what the data might have been without the Christmas effect in those years.
Just imagine a similar scenario from the secular business world and perhaps you’ll see the real oddity of allowing such a discrepancy.
Imagine that Company ABC reports its sales data as follows. In 2001 – 2004 only US sales of its widgets are reported. In 2005 someone gets the bright idea to also include UK sales as well as US sales in reporting total widget sales. The stock price rises wildly. Company ABC has shown an 18% increase in year-to-year sales! But then investors hopes are dashed as they learn of the discrepancy. Imagine year-to-year sales in the US actually declined by 2%. The stock falls sharply. Poor duped investors.
Yes, the 2005 sales figures are real. But, they are not the same. One set of numbers is domestic only. The second set is domestic + international. Does not Company ABC have an obligation to make sure reporting is consistent? At the VERY least there MUST be a footnote to explain the jump.
Does that help?
I’ll grant that Rome has seen some unfortunate liberalization of practice. But policy? I don’t think so.
Also, the dabbling is never encouraged from the Vatican.
Ed, what are you talking about in #13 & #14? We think you’re commenting on the wrong thread perhaps??
Ed was referring to my comment #6, and he is absolutely correct that the Roman Catholic Church (as well as the Eastern Orthodox Churches) has not done any dabbling!
I am not sure that Brian wanted to compare the TEC’s performance to the RC Church. What I believe he wanted to point out is that protestant liturgical churches like the Lutherans, Methodists, UCC, have been hit. My point is that there is a direct correspondence between liberalization and worsening church decline, but there is no mainline protestant liturgical church that has stood firm. Thus, we cannot say that an orthodox mainline protestant liturgical church’s rosters would not have declined somewhat as well.
There is, however, one liturgical church that has stood firm, the Missouri synod Lutheran church, and their membership has declined. I do not understand the complicated politics of the various synods. Maybe Maryland Brian could help us out to explain why the LCMS ranks have been depleted.
Why – well, that is for researches to find out, but why not try “rebranding†TECUSA from a niche church of liturgical do-gooders to a Church where lives are changed and through those changed lives, the world is changed.
Because then we would be Evangelicals and a bunch of fundamentalist mega-churches.
I am not sure that Brian wanted to compare the TEC’s performance to the RC Church. What I believe he wanted to point out is that protestant liturgical churches like the Lutherans, Methodists, UCC, have been hit.
No, actually, I wanted to compare to the RC and Orthodox in the United States
robroy
You say and others agree or at least imply that
My point is that there is a direct correspondence between liberalization and worsening church decline
but then admit that no correlation exists
there is no mainline protestant liturgical church that has stood firm. Thus, we cannot say that an orthodox mainline protestant liturgical church’s rosters would not have declined somewhat as well.
and
There is, however, one liturgical church that has stood firm, the Missouri synod Lutheran church, and their membership has declined.
I think the headline is a bit misleading. You offer info without interpretation (and rightly so), but then that doesn’t do anything to “put things in perspective.” It just allows all kinds of wild speculation, which does anything *but* put things in perspective.
Funny, this past Sunday I just had the largest congregation in attendance since I’ve been here (less than a year), meeting our ASA in one service rather than two in a diocese most would consider rather “liberal” (Indianapolis), even with our snow birds gone. Having a background in psychometrics, I would caution folks not to attribute the decline simply to “liberalization.” That’s clearly too simple (and inaccurate) a reason. You might also consider the fact that people are leaving the Episcopal Church because of the militancy they see from the more “conservative” quarters. Our society is complex and there are multiple factors that play into decline that is affecting everyone (e.g. growing multiethnic/multireligious population.)
This graph will show you the trends in the various denominations:
http://www.demographia.com/db-religlarge.htm
The Baptist church and the Mormon church are two organized denominations that have grown by leaps and bounds in the last 40 years. The Mormon church is now a mainline denomination. Note also that the Orthodox Church has grown, even though it is not an evangelical denomination with a highly traditional liturgy!
See a trend here? Churches that preach the Gospel including all of God’s call to difficult sacrifices and restraint in our lives are full of vitality. Why? Because God’s message as given to us in the Bible works and is the Good News.
Re the last post–I was referring to the Baptists and Mormons as protestant denominations. Obviously the Catholic Church continues to grow, as well.
1 Corinthians 14:8 “For if the trumpet makes and unclear sound who will prepare for battle?” With an our Spiritual Leader saying Jesus is A WAY, our direction and focus set by the UN, our unofficial motto “no answers just come and wonder with us” is it any wonder we are in decline? Where is the clear call to “battle”? The Muslim religion is growing because they speak a focused message to people TEC does not quite want to handle, the poor who want clear answers. The TEC doesn’t want clarity of scripture because then you are a “fundamentalist”. The idea that Jesus may have really ment what he said bothers some people.
#19, the perspective I was wanting to provide wasn’t in terms of interpretation or analysis as to causes of decline or even who is growing vs. who is declining. We’ve done some of that before, we’ll do more in the future, especially once the 2006 Redbook data is out giving us the diocese by diocese figures.
But for many people, they read a number like (nearly) 82,000 decline in ASA 2002-2006 and it is meaningless. They don’t have any context for it. Is that high or low? Putting it into daily terms (1 average parish equivalent departing every 1.5 days), a diocese the size of Chicago lost every year makes it easier to visualize and comprehend. That’s all the perspective we were wanting to offer. It was written in response to a specific request for information from a friend.
While we’re on the subject of trends, it is interesting to note that the Mormon church has been growing at the same astonishing rate for the past 150 years (whatever that is, maybe 5-10% per decade) that Christianity grew at in its first 200-300 years, from the death of Christ up until it became the official Roman religion.
We think of Mormonism as still kind of new-fangled, but at this point, it’s not all that much younger than Christianity was before Constantine’s conversion–and much better organized.
For those who are wanting to see TEC’s decline in the context of the other mainline denoms, etc. There is a helpful graph and summary report from IRD (using data from independent sources), which Kendall posted on the old blog 2 years ago
[url=http://www.ird-renew.org/atf/cf/{8548C466-7ECE-4AF1-B844-49C289CE5165}/CHURCH%20MEMBERSHIP_R2.PDF]Here’s the link[/url]
The old T19 entry with 90 comments is here:
http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?p=10092
Peeps+ has made the point I was going to make, not counting Christmas Eve services on Saturdays and Sundays would also skew the data. I’m not sure there is a solution.
#27, I guess what I propose is that TEC make a separate box in its parochial report for Christmas Eve data as they already do for Easter. Which of course is always a Sunday, thus there is never an Easter effect. That way, in years where Christmas falls on Sunday or Monday, the data can be analyzed with/without Christmas eve data, and compared. The problem is that right now noone reports Christmas Eve data. It just gets aggregated in. Adding one box to the parochial report form should be easy. As I say, it’s already there for Easter. Why not Christmas??
For the curious: You can view the parochial report form and instructions here:
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/research_62344_ENG_HTM.htm?menupage=62342
Actually, Brian my point of mentioning the LCMS was to point out an [i]exception[/i] to the trend of: more liberal, more decline. I thought you would have appreciated the intellectual integrity. Oh, well.
Peeps+, thanks for chiming in as a pastor who knows the mechanics of parochial reports. I always find that helpful. As you’ll see in my #28, I don’t propose just leaving out Christmas Eve data, but instead just making sure the number gets reported as a separate figure so it can be figured into the analysis to help interpret trends over time.
Before I first wrote to Dr. Hadaway, I actually did this very exercise using a diocesan convention journal which had DETAILED parochial report data for every parish in the diocese as an appendice. I forget what diocese. I THINK it was Pittsburgh. Perhaps someone can check? I used the reported Easter attendance (reported as a separate line item, although also aggregated into ASA) as a proxy for Christmas Eve data. And tried to calculate the Christmas Eve effect. It was pretty high.
I’ll try to find my correspondence with Dr. Hadaway which gives the figures. It was at least a year ago, maybe longer, and it’s on a different computer from that which I’m working at the moment.
In the meantime, can you see any way in which ALWAYS including Christmas eve in the ASA data (e.g. ASA + all Christmas services) calculated every year would skew the data? Of course there would be some “low” Sundays such as when Christmas Day is on a Sunday and very few come to Christmas Day mass. But still, I imagine those discrepancies even out with other seasonal and local variations (weather causing cancelled or almost empty services, big sports events….)
I’m not trying to beat a dead horse here. But as someone who works with statistics and data daily, trying to find a flaw in what seems to be a pretty easy solution. I would love to see Dr. Hadaway or others with more info chime in. It seems to me we could solve this issue.
I think #31 has good statistical approaches to eliminate the Christmas Effect. I like the idea of not counting that Sunday at all (Christmas Day is usually a light service) and dividing by 51 — outliers should also do away with Easter and divide by 50 for a more true representation of who in worship on the average Sunday.
However, it really does not matters, for long term graphs show the truth. There may only been a 1.2% decline in 2005 but then a 2.8% the next year which is more in line with 2003 & 2004 — sure maybe 2006 was not as sharp of a decline but it compensates for the 2005 inflation.
As a follw-up to my earlier comment #30
I had a chance to find one of my old backup CDs during a break between meetings and pull up my hypothetical data analysis on the Christmas effect and my correspondence with Dr. Hadaway. It was just slightly over a year ago.
=======
Here was my analysis as a background file for Dr. Hadaway:
[blockquote]Pittsburgh has extremely detailed Parochial report info available in its pre-convention journal (see pp. 107-108)
http://www.pgh.anglican.org/Conventions/forms/prejournal2006.pdf
This interested me because of online discussions a few weeks ago regarding the reliability of ASA data. There were two issues we were wondering about:
1. The Christmas effect:
How much does the inclusion of Christmas Eve service data affect ASA numbers? In years when Christmas falls on Sunday, Christmas Eve attendance is explicitly included. (We also wondered if Christmas on Monday meant that some parishes would still include their Christmas eve service numbers even though such would be counter-indicated by the ASA instructions.)
2. The 53 Sunday effect. To what extent might parishes not realize there are 53 Sundays in a given year and thus divide their ASA total by 52, thus inflating the average?
Based on the Pittsburgh data, Easter attendance is 1.8 times that of a normal Sunday. If one assumes that Christmas Eve ASA might be similar to Easter Sunday, that means that when Christmas Eve services are counted in ASA, it is probable to conclude that most parishes would in fact be getting nearly a “twofer” — i.e. basically a free Sunday.
As far as the 52 versus 53 weeks issue, it looks like about 11% of Pittsburgh parishes reported only 52 Eucharists instead of 53 Eucharists in 2005, a year with 53 Sundays. Perhaps some of those parishes cancelled a Sunday for some reason or another. But I don’t think it’s an unreasonable assumption to think that AT LEAST 10% of parishes would make the 52 versus 53 week error.
Using Pittsburgh’s data as a rough guide, I created an example of a 66 parish diocese, with each parish having a weekly ASA of 120, for a total diocesan ASA per week of 7920.
If Christmas data is included, basically doubling one Sunday, the effect is to raise the total average weekly diocesan ASA by 152 (an increase of almost 2%)
If one assumes that 7 parishes (11% as in Pittsburgh’s case) miscalculated in a 53 week year and divided by 52 instead of 53, it increases the diocesan average weekly ASA by 16 (0.2%).[though the true effect could be larger or smaller, it would depend on whether the congregation making the error had a large or small ASA. A parish with an ASA of 50 making the error will affect the diocesan data much less than a parish of 500. In my example, I’m assuming every parish had uniform ASA of 120.]
Anyway, it’s interesting to use the data from Pittsburgh to help estimate the magnitude of error that might be introduced by either effect.[/blockquote]
And here is the most relevant part of Dr. Hadaway’s reply on these questions:
[blockquote]You are correct that unusually high attendance on a Christmas Sunday or Christmas Eve Saturday services could greatly affect the overall ASA. If attendance for these services were equal that of Easter, for example, it could add around 18,000 to the ASA. [for 2005]
Given that we don’t have any data on Christmas services, there is no way to adjust for this factor. But if the effect is that great, the decline in ASA for 2005 would be similar to that for 2003 and 2004—and more in line with the drop in active membership.
As to counting Christmas Eve services when Christmas falls on Monday, it is quite possible that some congregations may count it. The Parochial Report form doesn’t specify Sunday morning, nor does the workbook except in the question and answer part. And it is unclear how many people actually read the workbook.
We have no way to check the possible 53 week effect, of course. We hope that congregations compute a correct average, but math seems to be iffy in many congregations. [/blockquote]
If we were to subtract 18,000 from the ASA for 2005 as Dr. Hadaway suggests might be reasonable, that would bring the ASA loss in 2004-2005 to over 27,400, a decline of 3.4%, instead of the current figure of -1.2%. This matches that hypothetical scenario I created from the Pittsburgh data, which produced a “Christmas effect” of around 2%
Anyway, that gives folks more data to play with if they’re so inclined.
For what it is worth, the two churches I’ve been to whose ASA are small enough that I can look around and count have wayyyy fewer in the pews than their 2006 ASA numbers (one of whom does not have any other service and the other only has a very small 8:00 service, which certainly does not make up for it). For ex., the one church I’m thinking of reports an ASA of 40, but it’s not uncommon for a Sunday service to have 6-8 people total. The other has a reported ASA of 140 but the 11:00 service has maybe 60-70 including choir and acolytes. Another reports 2006 ASA of 45, but my guess is it’s more like 20-25 max, certainly no more than 30.
Somehow, someway, ASA even gets inflated by fuzzy math in a lot of places. One suspects that some churches guesstimate up a little. Who knows how it happens, but it does.
They do not take your name off the books at the diosecean level when you request them to do so. These numbers are not accurate.
We had 500 people leave a TEC church. They kept our names on the roster and said they would stay there unless we “transferred” to another TEC church.
It’s called lying. Lying is one of those “Commandments” God gave us, through Moses. TEC is exempt from those because they get an hourly discernment from somebody to tell them what new thing is going on today.
bl
robroy
I always appreciate intellectual honesty.
Reason and Revelation
The Mormons can in no stretch of the imagination be considered a Christian denomination.
Bob, Lee, elfgirl, Reason and Revelation, etc.,
The numbers you are pointing to are regarding membership and not ASA. There is no doubt that many people are ‘born RC,’ but how many attend Church is the question.
Brian,
The RCC has been growing in this country over the last 17 years despite a near flat population growth rate. The figures for the Orthodox are somewhat harder to get a handle on since we have so many jurisdictions and some are not good at regular reporting of their numbers. In a few cases their numbers may not be accurate. The OCA only in the last couple of years seems to have come to grips with the fact their real weekly membership is probably half the figure they had been claiming as church members for years. (About 500k as opposed to 1M). Some jurisdictions however are clearly growing. The Antiochians are growing dramatically and the GOA is doing well. And despite the sudden reality check in the OCA, it too has seen modest growth. The numbers they used before were simply wrong, and thus do not constitute a real loss in membership. Some of the smaller more ethnic jurisdictions have been having a hard time though. While the picture is mixed when comparing jurisdictions the “Big Three” (GOA, OCA, ANT) have been showing modest to significant increases which seems to be the overall trend.
For the record, it suddenly occurs to me that in something of a rush to get this data compiled and sent to my friend, I fell into a common trap which I should have well known to avoid — the difference between mean (average) vs. median (midpoint).
I believe that in all my discussions of parish membership or ASA above, I discussed “average parish membership” or “average parish ASA”. I wrote:
“The average parish in TEC had 174 members in 2005,” and gave the link to the Fast Facts 2005 publication.
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/documents/Domestic_FAST_FACTS_2005(1).pdf
And I wrote:
The 2005 average ASA is 74 attendees (source is the same as above).
But in both cases I should have written “median” instead of “average”
Median Active Baptized Members: 174
Median Average Sunday Worship Attendance: 74
The average figures for membership and ASA are higher, as the few mega parishes skew things upwards. (Though quite a few of the largest parishes have now left.)
The true [b]”average”[/b] for membership (total membership divided by 7155 total domestic parishes) was 308 members in 2005. The average for ASA in 2005 was 110.
DUH. Very sorry for the error in what I wrote. I know better and was careless. Aaarrrggghhh. I’m correcting the text above.
Since this is a stat geek thread anyway, maybe it would be of interest to note an analysis of distribution by parish size done in 2001 by Dr. Hadaway and posted on Louie Crew’s blog:
[blockquote]In an article by ECUSA statistician Kirk Hadaway, posted on Louie Crew’s blog, we find this:
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/ecusasize.html
The average or mean size of Episcopal churches in terms of average Sunday attendance is 118 persons. Because this number is skewed upward by very large churches, a more useful indicator of the “typical†Episcopal congregation is the median (the middle value in which 50% of churches are larger and 50% are smaller). The median Episcopal congregation has 80 persons in worship.
The following percentages show the distribution of Episcopal churches across size categories in 2001: (ASA)
1-50 = 33.4%
51-100 = 25.5%
101-150 = 16.1%
151-225 = 12.9%
226-325 = 6.6%
326-450 = 3.0%
451-800 = 2.1%
801+ = 0.5%
[/blockquote]
Only 12% of TEC congregations had an ASA above 225. (per 2001 data)
Rereading this analysis by Dr. Hadaway today suggests something to me. +KJS et al have repeated the refrain that “it’s only a small number of parishes leaving.” Up until now they’ve actually been right in a sense. Obviously we don’t have a good count of parishes that have left (as has been discussed many times). But if we use a figure of 200 for the sake of argument, that would only represent something like 2.7% of TEC’s parishes that have gone (200/7355).
By contrast, we’ve seen a 7.5% drop in members, and an 11% drop in ASA.
These figures back up something we’ve previously discussed. A disproportionate percentage of departures have been big, vital parishes which have a relatively high percentage of ASA to membership (i.e. they get a higher percentage of their members showing up in the pews each week, higher than the TEC average ASA/membership ratio as a whole.) That is one factor probably playing into the greater decline in ASA relative to membership.
Also, as others have noted, it takes time to get people off the membership rolls. Sometimes a VERY long time. So a lag between membership and ASA is to be expected.
Discounting for the moment the possible departure of majorities of several dioceses such as Pittsburgh, Fort Worth or San Joaquin, I would predict that we may begin to see the percentage of parishes which have left rise slowly as more smaller parishes leave, since many of the big ones that are leaving have already left. The rate of decline in ASA may slow and the rate of membership decline increase somewhat. That’s my guess anyway. (But departures of big chunks of dioceses would change everything!)
Anyway, it’s all interesting food for thought for this data geek, brought on by my stupid error in “average” vs. “median.” And it to some extent explains why there is a shred of truth in +KJS et al’s statements “it’s only a tiny fraction of parishes leaving.” The problem is that the number of parishes leaving doesn’t tell the whole story. You also have to look at membership and ASA. Case in point. A parish like Falls Church with maybe 1400 ASA is worth about 90 “typical” (median) parishes in terms of ASA. WOW!
But I’ll stop boring you all to death now! And get back to my real job 😉
Brian from T19: I didn’t say that Mormonism is Christian (hard question), but it is at the very least Christian-like and has many affinities and is plainly derived from Christianity. It is appropriate to include Mormonism when evaluating mainstream religious trends in the US of the evangelical variety.
The RCC certainly has strong ASA. Every RCC I have ever been to has been stuffed to the gills on Sunday for multiple services, often including packed Saturday services. I have no idea what the numbers are but see no reason why they wouldn’t be up substantially. The RCC has grown by over 50% in the last 40 years.