If you go to the front of the webpage for the Episcopal Diocese of Montana, you will find this:
We are a member of the Episcopal Church in the USA, an Anglican Communion member province of 2.5 million members in 118 dioceses in the Americas and elsewhere.
Now perhaps this is because the webpage is outdated, but this needs work.
According to the most recent figures available, the 2005 parochial reports which provide the data for the 2007 Church annual, show a membership of 2,369,477 “in the Americas and elsehwere.” (For the record, the 2006 Episcopal Church annual lists membership at 2,405, 165). But keep in mind that the figure for membership for the domestic dioceses in TEC (The Episcopal Church) itself is now 2,205,376, and the average Sunday attendance is less than 800,000.
Blog readers are encouraged to send in examples of these or other kinds of inaccuracies, if there are such, in your own dioceses–KSH.
Let’s keep it simple — Something like: “Welcome! We’re the TEC, which stands for ‘The Empty Church.’ Like other ‘mainline’ Protestant denominations, our numbers are falling through the floor. That’s because we’ve trading in the 2,000 year old message of the Christian gospel for some ‘new thing’ the Spirit is doing. If you’re into self-validation and lots of whinning, look no further — you’re home! If you’re into redemption and hearing things that might make you profoundly uncomfortable, you may want to keep looking.” should suffice.
Sunlight is certainly the best disinfectant, but remember Kendall, glass houses and all that ….
And Haiti counts for 60,000 of us TECusa’ers.
RGEaton
A misrepresentation of 0.06%? This is heinous! Is there anyone who lives in Montana who can inform the Montana Attorney General that TEC’s Diocese is engaged in deliberate fraud? In fact, since it is on the web page, can we go after them for wire fraud? I mean almost 1/18 of 1% is so grossly misleading that it will dramatically increase donations to and membership in TEC. If all of the liberal Dioceses are doing this, we could rapidly see as much as 2/3 of 1% misrepresentation and think of the dramatic and irreversible damage this would do to the soul!
Rob+
That is what the and elsewhere is for.
My, Brian, aren’t we being feisty today.
(I confess: the “we” is used here in a facetious manner, and does not refer to me – only to you.)
What’s your point? I am well aware of the “and elsewhere” designation. I said “us TECusa’ers.”
🙄
I sort of have to agree with Brian on this one Kendall…not sure what the purpose of this issue is…even if deliberate.
I thought maybe the misstatement was being an “Anglican Communion member province.” But then again, with all the missiles that have been fired back and forth, how do you know if you are an Anglican Communion member any more if the majority of the Communion won’t acknowledge your existence? Or for that matter, whether the Anglican Communion exists any longer?
2.5 mil., 2.3 mil., what’s a couple hundred thousand members to pecusa? Remember, it’s only a tiny vocal minority that is causing all the trouble for pecusa. Otherwise, everything’s just fine.
Craig, truth in advertising as with truth in general, pecusa seems to come up short in a lot of places on the truth front.
I keep an eye on this website – and they just started a campaign of ‘We are Anglican’. Until last year, when two parishes broke away from them, there was not one word on the site about it. However, one of the new churches started a montana anglican site: link and I think it must of annoyed the diocese.
What I personally love is the snazzy color motif… and the complete consistent non-information on the site. Very telling is the fact that they would not even publish their annual report for last year.
However, I think the best of the current information on the site is the ‘e-vangel’ – B. Brookhart’s enlightening message:
Vision is what you see when you look out there, beyond yourself.
Of course, what you see depends, to some degree, on who you are. For example, take a stand of trees. A hunter would see a place to exercise his or her hobby. A timber company person might see the possibility of profit. A biologist would see the trees as a setting for a research project.
Our diocese has a vision. Here it is: a transformational community powered by the Risen Lord. Can we see our diocese as a community deeply united in Christ, always being converted and transformed, always reaching out to convert and transform our state, and always energized by the One who is the power of life and love?
The members of the Diocesan Council and the Standing Committee recently gave a day to work on this vision statement. They toiled long and with great energy to state the values that lie underneath the vision. These values will guide and measure the life of our diocese in the future. The work is not yet done, but you will soon be seeing the fruit of their labors.
Working on vision and core values is not an exercise in trendy development techniques. Rather, this vision is an invitation for you to see our common life in a new way. It is an invitation to look at the future through the eyes of the Risen Lord. It is an invitation to allow the energy of the Risen One to work in our churches.
The Diocese of Montana is a transformational community powered by the Risen Lord!
If someone can explain what in the world that is saying, let me know.
#4, Check your decimal points. The mis-statement is between 4% and 8% depending on which figure you use. Try understating your income by that percentage to the IRS and see whether they think it is significant.
Check out the figures from Honduras, which can be found in various places on the website ranging up to 80,000. The average Sunday attendance is 91 in their congregations; I must have missed some mega-churches somewhere during my ten years of visits. I’ve rarely seen that many in one place ever, and dozens of the congregations in that diocese have membership that is tiny.
Inflation may be under control in many economies, but not here.
Sorry, I didn’t mean website (implying Montana or the statistics page); I should have said “web”.
For the semi-official line on Honduras membership numbers, check this link: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_71509_ENG_HTM.htm
Thanks Skeptical for pointing out that Brian can’t do math 🙄
RE: “Thanks Skeptical for pointing out that Brian can’t do math . . . ”
Hey, no fair! Brian is a revisionist!!
He can’t help it . . .
Let’s not get off thread, folks. 🙂
To #11: The very idea that a diocese requires a unique vision statement is puzzling. All of the best parish or diocesan vision statements I’ve encountered seem to just confuse or water down the calling to be the Body of Christ in a specific geographical area. I can’t begin to interpret this one, but I think it too confuses the matter. Why use a “vision statement” that makes one’s vision less coherant? I don’t wear glasses that degrade my vision. Why should my church have a statement that distorts its vision?
You know, the other day I thought that New England consisted olf only 5 States instead of 6. When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. Thanks skeptical for catching my error-and Sarah for pointing out the cause;-)
The Diocese of South Dakota boasts “92 churches” here: http://www.diocesesd.org/WHO_WE_ARE/WHO_WE_ARE.HTM
But their 2005 ASA was 2,238…
That’s a Sunday attendance average of 24 per church!
Check it out at…
In #4, Brian writes, this is a “misrepresentation of 0.06%?” Perhaps I did the math wrong, but I show it as a discrepancy of 11.78% (calculations below). Am I wrong? There is a huge difference between .0006 and .1178.
2,500,000
2,205,376 –
————————–
294,624 =
2,500,000 ÷
————————–
0.1178496 =
Interesting – Interesting….
I have watched this site for about a year now. Suddenly, after your article appeared they FINALLY published their annual report for 2006 – this is 8 months after it happened.
Here is what they say about Montana’s statistics on the webpage:
The Province VI Diocese of Montana has about 6,000 active, baptized members in 42 congregations in 26 counties. The congregations are led by 23 priests and nine Deacons.
Camp Marshall is the Diocese camp and conference center located at the southwest corner of Flathead Lake just outside Polson. The Diocese was established in 1904.
Here’s the real statistics:
Members they list: 5617
Members who actually attend: 497
The difference in Montana would comprise the population of an entire town.
Eclipse,
From whence do your numbers come from? They don’t match this report. Do you have another source?
http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_67200723523PM.pdf
Good question – sorry – like I said this information ‘miraculously’ came available today:
link
Just spotted it on the links page. As far as I know, those numbers are correct for last year – at least my former parish.
Just a little disparity between those two!
Man alive – however, there has been a year difference between the two – and I know that made a large difference in membership.
Eclipse,
Don’t know who put that excel spreadsheet online, but there is a problem in the formulas. If you look at the “Sunday Average attendane” matrix the total is incorrect and it looks like it only includes the yellow highlighted entries (the highlights are on the far left. If you take time to actual add up all the numbers in that category you come up with a total of 1944 not 497.
Please let someone know, so that people like yourself aren’t mistakenly misrepresenting the truth.
plainsparson:
You are absolutely right. What is up with that? There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the highlighted parishes either – just odd. You also need to remember those ‘church attendance’ totals are the highest numbers for the year as well… but that’s not atypical for reporting.
I know the Diocese is struggling financially – perhaps this might give one insight why.
Eclipse,
“Those ‘church attendance” totals are the highest number for the year as well”
I’m not sure what you mean by that statement. The totals are for “Average Sunday Attendance” and I assume are taken from the parochial reports. That would include all Sundays through the year, high and low, and is an average of 52 Sundays. That would make it a true gage of attendance.
I’ve heard it argued that Easter often “throws” the average off. It really doesn’t. If you do the stats in a correct maner and throw off the 2 highest sundays and 2 lowest sunday it does not make a statistically significant diffrence from when you include them.
I think you can be assured that Average Sunday Attendance is just that.
Let’s just be careful not to let our own bias skew the intrepretation of stats. Stats are Stats.
It is FACT that when 300 of us left out local EC, they kept all of us “on the roll”. Multiply that on out and you see the real truth and a disaster in The Great Commission.
bl
Bob Lee,
Not sure if where you are. Are you in Montana? When did you leave and what proof of that do you have?
I’ll take a situation I know better. It is in Kansas. When Christ Church negotiated their departure their rolls were removed from the books. However, since Christ CHurch Episcopal was no longer, the parish register stayed with the diocese for those who wanted to transfer out. However the parochial reports stopped being reported. Here are the numbers:
Year Baptized members ASA
2003 14,610 5807
2004 14,386 5699 ** Christ Church leaves
2005 12,137 4918 ** FIrst report after loss of CC
The Diffrence/ Loss in Members was 2249 in ASA 781
When the numbers come out this year for the diocese there will be an increase in both Members and ASA over 2005. The impact of losing the largest congregation in the diocese was significant, but the diocese is growing from the point of losing those members.
A side note- we fit the bill for being a windsor complaint diocese.
Bob Lee, are you part of Christ Church’s plant in Montana? I’d be curious to know.
plainsparson:
Re: Attendance –
Let’s just say for my former parish, I find the number a little high for 2006 – it would be a number more appropriate (that year) for Easter than for average attendance – average would have been about a two/thirds that level. However, that may not be the diocese’s fault – or perhaps it is my own perception – or perhaps the clerk at the church didn’t add it up correctly – if they show the same expertise with the excel program that the diocese did, that may be the case.
I know Bob probably isn’t from Montana because a ‘large’ parish of any sort for us is around 100 – 150 and we certainly didn’t have 300 of any sort leave from any church in the state. However, he is right about the rolls – once again not an uncommon thing for a church – the only I attended certainly hasn’t got as many members as it reported last year – quite the contrary – but this isn’t unusual. The church I grew up in (Baptist) took about 10 years to finally eliminate 100 members from its rolls that had been on there twenty years or so. So, it’s not a conspiracy as much of a lack of being current.
However, you do wonder why the diocese would report they had 6,000 members when they only have 5,600 (at least according to that program – I should probably hand add them up).
Plains:
I did hand do the math – that one is right. By the by, just so you know – that comes from the diocese ‘links’ section 2006 Parish Reports.
However you add, or subtract or divide the numbers, or tweak the excel, etc., the sad, unmistaken fact is that DioMontana is shrinking.
You can argue the why of it, or parse the statements from their web site, but at the end of the day, the *why* doesn’t matter. The fact of decline is all that matters.