Significant Deterioration In The Episcopal Church

Kendall Harmon had an insightful article over on his blog, TitusOneNine.  He wrote:

One of the many contentions of this blog over the years is that The Episcopal Church is in significant trouble as an institution. While I believe this is primarily because of theological factors, no monocausal explanation is sufficient to describe what is occurring. What remains disturbing, however, is the degree of denial by the National Episcopal leadership about the scale of this problem.

I think a lot of TEC statistics overstate the strength of TEC on the ground. For example, people in parish ministry know well that the real membership of a parish is roughly twice the Average Sunday Attendance.

So you know something is fishy when TEC claims some 2.2 million members, and average Sunday attendance is now under 800,000 (768,476 according to the national church office).

One goldmine for this data is the research and statistics page kept by Kirk Hadaway’s office at the national church.

As an example of the scale of the problem this morning, consider one diocese, Lexington. If you look at baptized membership, Lexington shrank from 8949 in 1997 to 8002 in 2007. That is a decline of 10.6%. Now, however, consider the more meaningful number, Average Sunday Attendance. In this category, Lexington fell from 3905 to 2973 in the period from 1997-2007. That is a decline of 24%.

It is part of a significant national trend, and it is a major issue.