[Bumped from Saturday]
Read it all and read it carefully. You may also find still more material there.
[Bumped from Saturday]
Read it all and read it carefully. You may also find still more material there.
Since the per parish statistics have not changed much, if at all, in the past several years- that is, average members per parish, etc- while the church membership has declined by several percentage points, parishes must be closing at approximately the same rate as membership decline- which would be 1.5-3% per year, depending on the year. At that rate, in 20-30 years, it will be very difficult to find a TEC parish in many places.
The big number for me is -2.7% in ASA from last year.
It just doesn’t stop does it.
I’m curious as to when panic will set in amongst the leadership.
I’d guess “never” for those at the highest levels — 815 — since they won’t be affected by loss of jobs or money until the very last throes. But I’m guessing that plenty of parish clergy and *some* bishops — the bishops of dioceses without endowments — are already waking up suddenly at 2 a.m. wondering what’s to be done, since the losses now represent lost jobs and lost money. And it only gets worse — parish after parish closing, fewer openings for clergy, and the maintenance of buildings being thrown onto the dioceses.
The result will be bankruptcy on a massive scale. Ideor/eligious bankruptcy is already apparent, and financial bankruptcy is hard on its heels.
Sarah wrote:
“and the maintenance of buildings being thrown onto the dioceses. ”
Amazing, isn’t it? If you want to associate with an ACNA bishop, the diocese claims to own everything down to the paperclips, maniples, and the 1928 BCP’s they ordered you to get rid of 20 years ago. But if the roof needs repair or someone slips on the sidewalk in front of the church, the diocese has no idea the parish even exists.
Cennydd,
With the real estate and investment portfolio of Trinity Wall Street standing at approximately $2 billion, TEC will never go bankrupt unless the island of Manhattan is inundated when the seas rise due to global warming
tj-Come on. Sarah is talking about place where TEC has already gotten/stolen (depends on your point of view) the buildings, so all Sarah is saying is “be careful what you ask for.” And if you think the money changers at Trinity Wall Street will help out TEC, you’d be crazy. That will never happen. Why do you think KJS is trying to steal the UTO money? Its not becuse TWS is giving her big bucks. And don’t tell me she isn’t going to use the UTO money for litigation. What she will do is give “grants” to agencies TEC has supported on the budget and then take the old budget line items, zero them out and move those $ over to litigation. My former liberal TEC bishop did the exact same thing to people whom he had promised he wouldn’t sen their money to TEC. He sequestered money from objectors, gave their money to a diocesan conference center; and then he zeroed out the institution’s budget and sent the exact same amount to 815. As an aside I was at a TEC church yesterday for a baptism and started to put $5 in the UTO envelope, when my wife reminded me of the KJS coup. I did give the $5 to the local congregation.
In many diocese, the properties with the fewest parishioners and that are the least historic will first be turned into missions and then later sold, though not to the ACNA. Funds from such real estate sales will be used to support the diocese. There has also been quite a bit of dipping into endowments at the parish and diocesan level, much of it legal if not originally intended, for some time. This can go on for quite a while until it hits a wall, but the leadership which is doing that will be gone and retired by then (and the CPF is financially quite solid, thank you). Given the demographics of TEC membership, and knowing how voluntary organizations with shrinking memberships work, TEC should not take much solace from any view that the drop is “only” 2.7% or that in a number of parishes total giving has held up notwithstanding a smaller membership. Without much prospect that TEC will do the only thing that would turn it around, it looks more like it is on the cusp of a worse time in the coming years.
By the way, Trinity Wall Street can probably be expected to fight quite hard to keep its money out of the hands of 815 and has the resources to do so. It has done so successfully for centuries. But I wonder how long it can continue to hold out.