“Shaw, MA: Our diocese has had significant growth recently, in thanks to including all people. ”ª#gc77”¬” I was listening and it is certainly an accurate paraphrase, though not an exact quote.
Here are the figures–Massachusetts’ 2007 to 2010 ASA [average Sunday attendance]
20,121
19,351
18,130
17,903
Perhaps there are 2011 figures that show a [small?] increase, but still, there is a large disconnection here–KSH.
Update: You can find some of these statistics here and you can find a great deal more over there.
Clueless, they live in their own world. It will be an increasingly poor world as there is no one sitting in the pews. Dio of Western Mass was a conservative Dio, now run by the revisionists. Pews are emptying. Open table, open everything, environmentalism, women’s rights, gay rights, no gospel, no women’s responsibilities, no gay responsibilities, nothing to live up to, no grace, just get me mine. Really sad for a once holy place. Like watching someone die from a long slow form of heart disease or cancer, actually, worse than that, because the disease from which TEC is now suffering can be cured, unlike some forms of HD and cancer. Goodbye.
Yep, I remember him saying it, too. Takes some pretty advanced statistical legerdemain to make a 10%+ decline over 3 years into “growth.” Perhaps he is looking at it this way:
Loss 2007-8 770
Loss 2008-9 1221
Loss 2009-10 227
See, after the loss of ’08-09 the loss shown for ’09-10 is a remarkably better performance. That must be the “growth” he is talking about. Probably explained by that huge rush of people flooding into the church after he made “tangerine” a liturgical color.
I am inclined to think that some event within TEC this year is likely to be reflected in 2012 and 2013 attendance numbers (and probably negatively). I wonder what that might be…..
So, significant negative growth then.
DIVISIVE HOMOPHOBIC POST!!!!!
Once you are freed from the cultural misconception that increase or decrease exist, you are free to call any change in the slope of the line whatever you like simply because it is change. This proves the point. And this GC is all about change, therefore, IT MUST BE GROWTH!
Kendlall and all, I expect that we will hear many say the decline is over and 2011 shows a return to growth.
Big problem with that… You stats geeks like me can guess what I’m about to say…
[b] 2011 is a CHRISTMAS EFFECT year!!![/b] (Christmas fell on a Sunday, meaning Christmas Eve services are explicitly included in ASA for 2011.)
Sigh… Somehow TEC has got to figure out a way to deal with this in their stats. At least Dr. Kurt Hadaway in a recent presentation discussed the issue of Christmas effect at some length. It is a very real issue that must be factored in before one tries to compare stats year to year.
I’ve noticed that in some statistical reports, folks are comparing Easter Sunday attendance from year to year. Barring some unforeseen event (like a major weather disturbance…) comparing yearly Easter attendance seems like a very good idea as a quick proxy on attendance trends….
How about not include December in the figures? That gives you a much wider pool of Sundays to track than just the one (Easter) Sunday, but keeps out the distortion of Christmas in/Christmas out December. If you want to keep the numbers up you can divide by eleven, multiply by twelve or such like and call it “adjusted yearly” or the like.
What the Rt. Rev. really meant was that the decline would have been far worse except for their extraordinary inclusivity which saved the day and bolstered the numbers into a more moderate decline. That is the growth he is referring to. As a former cradle-Episcopalian, I too had mastered Episco-babble before departing.
Maybe the good Bishop is looking at a stall in the huge percentage decreases and seeing growth. I mean, when you’ve been running percentage decreases in the double digits, a single digit decrease suddenly seems like progress!
Tom Shaw’s “fuzzy math” doesn’t surprise me in the least. When I was serving in the Diocese of PA back when the whole Gene Robinson thing went down in 2003, I remember vividly during one of out monthly Deanery clergy meeting that almost every priest present (except me and one other), obviously all Reappaisers, were saying how his confirmation and consecration would open the flood gates for church growth. I just shook my head back and forth and said that the opposite would occur. It did.
I just checked the Los Angeles Diocese and they are still reporting attendance (as of 2010) for All Staints, LB, St. James, NPB, and St. David’s, NH who all departed in 2004.
Here’s are two links to recent articles / blog posts that discuss the problem of the “Christmas Eve Effect” and ASA comparisons year to year:
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/print/43582/
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/fr/node/13041
[blockquote]Average Sunday attendance (ASA) will show an actual increase in 2011 of less than 1,000 persons. However, since Christmas Eve fell on a Saturday in 2011, this essentially adds an extra Sunday to the count. The same thing happened in 2005, when the decline abated, but did not result in an increase. Adjusting for the “Christmas Eve Effect†results in an adjusted loss of slightly less than 12,000 persons or -1.8%. This is less than half the net and percentage loss experienced in 2010 and the smallest percentage loss in average Sunday attendance since 2002 (adjusting for the Christmas Eve effect in 2005).
In terms of active baptized members, the results are similar to ASA, but there is no Christmas Eve Effect to worry about. In 2011 we expect membership to decline by around 27,000 members, or -1.4%. Again, this decline is the lowest in percentage terms since 2002 and about half the loss the Episcopal Church experienced in 2010 when domestic dioceses declined by 54,436 members (-2.7%).[/blockquote]
“Divisive Homophobic Post” according to Sarah.
Yet it is Homophiles who are doing a masterful job of dividing, splitting, and tearing apart churches in order to engineer approval of a sinful activity that should be repented of instead of embraced and blessed.
[[i]elves comment: Regular readers here will know that Sarah’s comment above fit her well-known penchant for sarcasm. But we of course have many new readers this week who won’t have read her many similar comments over the years.[/i]]
Don’t ask that bishop for directions.
My apologies to Sarah.
This is the same bishop who described himself as a conservative in a Lambeth Conference video for foreign bishops.
[Comment deleted by Elf – please be careful how people are referred to at this time when emotions are running high – thanks]
14 and 16- I think the problem starts when you stop letting your yes mean yes, and your no mean no. Shortly after that, you start confusing up and down, growth and decline, orthodoxy from revisionism.
There will be no confusing the stats this year. There seems to be a confluence of changes coming – and they will be a tsunami. What was, will be no more, and what was not, will blossom. The demise of the country brought me out of TEC and in to the Bible. ‘You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.’
So, there we have it. All of this chaos will mean harm to many but will also provide a new birth of Christianity. Without the losses I have suffered, I might still be without Jesus Christ, and that has changed everything for me and my family. ‘To live is Christ, to die is gain.’ The scriptures have it right, please help me to be obedient to God’s word, in Jesus name we pray, and all God’s children said ‘Praise the Lord.’
[b]Ian+[/b] (@ comment 3),
[blockquote]So, significant negative growth then.[/blockquote]
Well, speaking from a purely mathematical perspective, growth can be thought of as a signed number, at least in contexts where that makes sense, which I would contend this does.
And I would humbly suggest that in questions of the growth of a quantitative attribute such as membership, if one is going to speak of “growth” one needs to do so either in mathematical terms or in (perceptibly more judgmental) terms of [b][i]growth vs. shrinkage[/i][/b], or [b][i]gains vs. losses[/i][/b].
[i]Pax et bonum[/i],
Keith Töpfer
[b]Capt. Father Warren[/b] (@ comment 8),
If the “Right Reverend” got the answer wrong, wouldn’t that tend to call into question the accuracy of calling him the [b]Right[/b] Reverend, as opposed to the more apropos [b]Wrong[/b] Reverend?
[i]Pax et bonum[/i],
Keith Töpfer