Monthly Archives: December 2008

Christmas is now over, what next? — Reflecting on the Twelve Days of Christmas

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Christmas Day is past.  All of my preparations, reflection, travel, hosting, worrying, church-hopping, family time, and a multitude of other things, focused on that one day out of the year, have met their deadline, ready or not.  Now what?

We are now in the “Twelve days of Christmas,”  the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany.  Usual notation seems to have Christmas as the first day, although I have seen cases where Epiphany is the twelfth day.

In the simplest sense, the Twelve Days of Christmas are just a part of the liturgical calendar — The days of Christmastide after Christmas and before we enter the season of Epiphany.

And yes, it has its own song (with a wild rendition on YouTube by the a capella group Straight No Chaser, although in my opinion a now removed version recorded about a decade ago was better done).  And Dave Walker has his vision of it over at CartoonChurch.com. 

I’m not suggesting that the materialistic chaos of the Christmas Day gift-giving and celebration be repeated another eleven days.  (Although there could be some wonderful ways of “sharing the Christmas season” with others that could happen during this time.)

But as a liturgical and devotional vehicle the days of Christmastide provide us a chance “clutch the baby Jesus” a few more days, as the preacher I heard the morning put it, and remind ourselves not to move on too quickly from this miraculous event where we celebrate God incarnate as a human being.  We need time for it to sink in that it is Emmanuel, “God with us.”

But this year the twelve days of Christmas seem more important to me than in the past.  It is probably the way in which the realities of this broken world have really intruded into my holiday season. 

Within my own family my father-in-law was hospitalized with pneumonia the second day after Christmas.  And while he is still in the hospital and making progress against this setback, this is only a piece in a larger set of health challenges that have permanently affected his lifestyle.

But it is also interesting how this year I am more aware of other peoples’ health challenges out there in the “Church Virtual,” the collection of brothers and sisters in Christ that I know mostly, if not entirely, in the on-line community.  I would especially lift up for prayer the Rev. David Wayne, AKA JollyBlogger, who was diagnosed with cancer just before Christmas and spent Christmas Eve day in the OR.  While I only know David as a faithful medium-term reader of his blog, this is the power of the on-line world that we do become Christian Community with each other through this Web 2.0 stuff.  Praying for you David and rejoicing that you came home today.

And speaking of Web 2.0, I am becoming a fan of Facebook status updates as a way of building and maintaining Christian Community.  (Twitter is a similar vehicle.)  Through this conduit I was aware of various challenges and obstacles that my friends encountered through the holiday season, and it quickly filled up my prayer list.  Again, even 134 character updates are a tool in the development and maintenance of covenant community.

So, I pray that you also may not pass over Christmas too quickly but continue to find ways of  “hanging onto” the season in these twelve days.

New Pastoral Terminology – Or – Is That Above His Pay Grade?

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I am trying to figure out if this is now standard terminology, or if the New York Time has invented a new pastoral position description that we need to consider for the Book of Order (tongue firmly in cheek).

This is from the controversy around President-elect Obama’s choice to have Baptist pastor, the Rev. Rick Warren, give the invocation at the presidential inauguration.  The Times article begins with this:

President-elect Barack Obama this morning defended his choice of
evangelical megapastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at next
month’s swearing-in, saying that although he differs with the
conservative pastor on social issues, he wants to have diverse voices
at the ceremony.

So, what we have in Rick Warren is not a pastor of a megachurch, we have a megapastor.  So, if we are going to write this into the constitution, alongside pastor, designated pastor, associate pastor, etc., what are the requirements and qualifications?  Is it the size of the church, or the size of the shadow?  I’ll have to think about this.

Anyway, if you want to look at this controversy a bit more seriously, there is a nice wrap-up of several of the different news reports at GetReligion.

UPDATE 12-29-08:  I should have done my research first.  A quick check on Google reveals that the term “megapastor” has been around for at least a couple of years and while the term seems to get applied to the Rev. Warren the most, a few others (who you could probably guess) get the term applied to them by the mainstream media.  Writing popular books seems to be a common thread as well as having multi-thousands of attendees at your church.

The Twists And Turns Of Pursuing A Pastoral Call

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I am a ruling elder, not a minister of word and sacrament, so I don’t have any of my own stories of pursuing a pastoral call as the candidate.  Having served on my presbytery’s committee on ministry, and been the COM liaison to several pastor nominating committees, I have stories from the other side.  But with the increase in blogging there are numerous first-hand accounts of candidacy and seeking a call.

Adam Copland is regularly writing about his experience in seminary and his progress towards a call and ordination in the PC(USA).  He has a monthly “Seminary Reflections” piece on Presbyterian Bloggers (Adam’s contributions from October, November, and December).  He usually also posts these on his own blog, A Wee Blether.  Beyond the Seminary Reflections series he has other posts on his blog regarding the process and situation, including a recent post about “The huge problem of the clergy shortage that doesn’t exist.”  In summary the PC(USA) has roughly twice as many clergy as churches and while the number of churches is declining, the number of clergy is stable.  For churches-seeking-clergy and clergy-seeking-churches, it is not really a pure supply/demand problem, but a distribution, affordability, and experience mis-match.  And don’t just read the article, keep reading the comments.

Another blogger who is just finishing seminary and has been keeping us updated on his journey is Benjamin Glaser who writes the blog Backwoods Presbyterian.  While his blog is usually very theologically oriented, there are good insights into his journey as a student at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, also in Pittsburgh.  He is under care of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.

I also enjoyed the account by “Danny” of her time as a probationer in the Church of Scotland and the task of “hunting a charge” in her blog “Rumors of Angels?”  There are more great stories in that blog than for any other candidate/inquirer/probationer I can think of.  One that I have bookmarked, and can totally see happening after my time on COM, is her story about doing a neutral pulpit at a church for one pastor search committee, and being a “small world,” another search committee that was considering her out caught word of it and showed up as well.  I can tell you a bunch of similar stories about confidentiality not being kept and news getting back to home churches and presbyteries before the candidate.  As Danny puts it:

I mentioned the difficulties with confidentiality previously … about
being discussed on the golf course… in shops… and via the ‘old
boy’s’ network. Well add the dentist to that list!

The church
where I was preaching (for reasons of confidentiality) did not know
until this morning that I would be preaching instead of their regular
minister, but one of their members overheard all the details of what
was going down last Tuesday while in the dentist’s waiting room… hey
ho! I felt quite sorry for the interim moderator who was doing it all
‘by the book’ and trying her best to look after the interests of ‘her’
nominating committee… meanwhile this second committee were discussing
me all over town.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well…
if nothing else you have to laugh… and so we did! For some reason the
thought of my being discussed in the dentist seems hilarious… surreal
even… when I go to the dentist I am too worried about potential pain
and discomfort… injections, drills and fillings… to talk to anyone.

While Danny has been successful, there are others who are not, and “Cavman” over at Cavman Considers has been between pastorates for a while and been giving us discrete glimpses of his search.  In a recent post he tabulates the churches that have rejected his application but are still without a pastor.  He concludes:

So, 5 churches think it’s better to not have a pastor than to have me
(and the other 50 applicants) as their pastor.  Interesting.

[With no judgment on Cavman’s situation, let me say that filling a pastoral position is not like filling a corporate position, it is a “God Thing,” a discernment process where both the search committee and the candidates are trying to sense the will of God and who He is calling to that position.  I can’t speak for any of Cavman’s rejections, but I have my own stories (from the other side) that I can and will share another time, about where I am certain God was, and was not, calling individuals to particular positions.]

And finally, if you think your candidates’ committee or denomination has unusual requirements, here is one that would keep a few pastors I know out of the pastorate.  I leave you with this:  A news item about the Mizoram Presbyterian Church‘s highest governing body, the Mizoram Synod.  In the meeting this week they have passed a requirement that:

“From now on someone who is tattooed will not be allowed to be ordained
as Probationary Pastors (of Mizoram Presbyterian Church).”

[For background, the Mizoram Presbyterian Church Synod is a constitutate member of the Presbyterian Church of India General Assembly.  Mizoram State is in the far northeast corner of India and through missionary work in the late 19th Century the population is predominantly Christian and the Presbyterian Church has a major influence.  Please keep praying for the violence in other parts of India where the Christians are a minority.]

Passings — Avery Dulles S.J.

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Yesterday Avery Dulles, Catholic Priest and theologian at Fordham University, passed to his eternal rest at the age of 90.  There have been numerous articles about him, but for a lot of information about his life I recommend the New York Times article.  There is also a press release from Fordham.

Father Dulles’ family heritage was in public service and Presbyterianism.  His father was John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State in the Eisenhower administration.  His grandfather was the Rev. Dr. Allen Macy Dulles, a Presbyterian minister and theologian and professor at Auburn Theological Seminary.   (Allen Macy Dulles’ book The True Church — A Study, published in 1907, is still listed by booksellers.  It is interesting that the work by Avery Dulles that is cited as his “best know work” , Models of the Church, seems to have a similar theme.)  But by the time Avery entered college at Harvard he had left organized religion and was agnostic.  In college he rediscovered religion, or God found him, depending on how you look at it.  In his rebirth of spirituality he joined the Roman church, eventually joining the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and being ordained as a priest.  His professional life was dominated by academic work and he became the first American theologian, rather than a bishop or archbishop, to be elevated to the status of cardinal.  (It was late in life in 2001 at the age of 82 that Dulles became a cardinal, a bit of an “honorary status” since the cutoff for participation in the College of Cardinals for pontifical voting is 80.)

I did not know a lot about Fr. Dulles before his death, but in reading through the articles two aspects of his life resonate with me as having a Presbyterian or Reformed nature, even though he left the Presbyterian branch.  The first was his dedication to vocation.  In his life and work he exhibited his dedication to the academic calling and was never elevated above the ordinary priesthood because that was not his calling.  This calling was recognized by Pope Benedict XVI this past spring in his visit to New York when in a special private audience requested by the pope, Benedict addressed Dulles as “Herr Professor” rather than “Your Eminence” (or the Latin equivalence of that).  Fr. Dulles knew his calling and lived into it.

The other part of his life that struck me was his role as an interpreter of tradition in a new age.  The official Vatican News Service article was headlined “Creativity in Fidelity.”  The New York Times article talks about this work:

His task as a theologian, the Cardinal often said, was to honor
diversity and dissent but ultimately to articulate the traditions of
the church and to preserve Catholic unity.

and

His tenure coincided with broad shifts in theological ideas as well
as sweeping changes brought on by the Second Vatican Council in the
1960s. These provided new understandings of how the church, after
centuries of isolation from modern thought and even hostility to it,
should relate to other faiths and to religious liberty in an age when
the church was gaining millions of new followers in diverse cultures.

Cardinal Dulles devoted much of his scholarship to interpretations of
the Vatican Council’s changes, which he said had been mistaken by some
theologians as a license to push in democratic directions. The church,
he counseled, should guard its sacred teachings against secularism and
modernization.

“Christianity,” he said in a 1994 speech, “would
dissolve itself if it allowed its revealed content, handed down in
tradition, to be replaced by contemporary theories.”

It struck me that he exhibited a “freedom of conscience” while promoting the “peace, unity, and purity” of the church.

I leave you with Cardinal Dulles’ closing lines (quoted here) from his Farewell Lecture this past summer, composed by him but read for him:

Suffering and diminishment are not the greatest of evils but are normal
ingredients in life, especially in old age. They are to be accepted as
elements of a full human existence. Well into my ninetieth year I have
been able to work productively. As I become increasingly paralyzed and
unable to speak, I can identify with the many paralytics and mute
persons in the Gospels, grateful for the loving and skillful care I
receive and for the hope of everlasting life in Christ. If the Lord now
calls me to a period of weakness, I know well that his power can be
made perfect in infirmity. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

The 400th Anniversary of the Birth Of John Milton

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Another quick note for today…

I could not let the 400th anniversary of the birth of writer and poet John Milton earlier this week go by unrecognized.  While I have generally had little contact with Milton in the past, it is interesting that over the summer I began reading Paradise Lost, and this fall my son, for a literature class, had to read Paradise Regained.  Paradise Regained is significantly shorter than Paradise Lost. (There is probably a theological commentary in there somewhere about the sovereignty of God and how much the adversary and humans did to try to mess things up but how God, just through Jesus Christ, was able to set things right again.)

Anyway, if you want some interesting reading on John Milton and his impact I can recommend:

An interview about Milton with Milton scholar Leland Ryken from Wheaton.  He points out that Paradise Lost is of such an epic style of epic poetry that scholars have coined the label “the Miltonic style.”

And one other — Ligonier Ministries has a post about the significance of Paradise Lost and their discussing the topic in the December issue of their publication Table Talk.

And I have some motivation to pick up the book and continue reading over the Christmas vacation.

Technology has made the last minute even later

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My posts to this blog have been a bit further apart this fall since I have been putting extra time into teaching.  And being a typical college professor, I’m not immune from waiting until the last minute on things.  Yesterday was the final exam for my class.  Exam was at 11:30 a.m.  I did a review of the test when I got into the office, started sending the one color figure to the color printer, and caught up on a bit of reading knowing that I had plenty of time to copy off the bulk of the exam.  What I did not count on was one of the department’s copiers being out of service.  When I started coping and discovered this at least I had just enough time to get it copied, assembled, and over to the exam room.  Barely.  Because of my taking technology for granted I was a bit rushed at the end, to say the least.

The effect of depending on technology and waiting until the last minute was even more pronounced today.  Next week is the biggest professional meeting of the year in my field.  I’m not going but part of my job is to help others get ready by helping them print out their poster presentations on a large format printer.  This used to be done as individual 8 1/2 x 11 pages with your text and figures tacked up on a bulletin board.  Now with large format printers you put it all on one 4′ x 6′  poster.  It makes setup and take down a lot easier at the meeting.

Well, because of the high percentage of the faculty and students in the department that go to the meeting we set up a schedule to use the printer.  When the schedule gets posted the latest times on Friday afternoon are the first ones to get claimed.  But there is now an alternative that allows you to put off the work even longer…  There is now a printing service at the meeting so if you have the cash you can wait even longer and get your poster printed just minutes before your session begins.  Not much more last minute than that.  I have had two other faculty members tell me today that they are not ready yet and someone else can have their printer times because they will print it at the meeting.

Coming in the middle of the Advent season I have thought of at least a dozen ways this could be a parable for our spiritual lives.  I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure some of these out for themselves.

But the other thing that this got me thinking about is technology in the church and how it has contributed to “instantaneous polity.”  For example, creating a Facebook group for your church — do you just do it, or run it by the session first.  Streaming or podcasting sermons — do you just do it, or is there some type of quality or content review to be sure it is appropriate for a world-wide audience.  Those of us that blog GA — I did the live blogging thing but afterwords I was pondering some questions of “what really did happen there?” because at the time my fingers were trying to keep up with the speaker’s comments and I was not always processing and analyzing as I went along.  And what about committee reports — with e-mail and word processors we are frequently putting the reports off to the last minute and reviewing and submitting them right before the meeting, because we can.

I have not been a big one for the “technology sabbath,” if for no other reason than Sunday afternoons are sometimes one of the few “empty” spots in my calendar, so I fill it up.  But my concern was raised recently when a medical study showed that children that grow up playing video games develop different neural pathways in their brains than those of us who did not grow up with video games.  Sorry, I have not found a link to that study yet, but I will point out that this week another study came out showing that video games help seniors keep their minds sharp.  Positives and negatives to any technology.

Anyway, some musings on the current trends in human response to technology.  I have made a commitment to continue the low level of blogging for the rest of December so that I can get some other reading done, spend time with family and not just in the same room as them, and think a bit about things.  See you next time.

Passings — Jane Parker Huber

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It is said “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” but I find that a glance at the indexes of a hymnal give a rapid assessment of the nature and tone of the book.  In particular, I look at the most frequently included authors and translators in the volume.

It should come as no surprise that the longest list of entries in the index of a Methodist hymnal is for the Wesley brothers, up to one-tenth of the hymns even for a current hymnal.  And while a Lutheran hymnal also has a significant contribution from the good Dr. Martin, as well as other German writers, frequently the single greatest source is Catherine Winkworth, a prolific translator of Western European hymns into English.  Likewise, an Anglican hymnal like Hymns Ancient and Modern will often be dominated by translations of classic Greek and Latin hymns by John M. Neale (such as O Come, O Come, Emmanuel).  And if you are looking at an independently published non-denominational hymnal, don’t be surprised if it comes from the revival tradition and has Fanny Crosby as its single largest source.

It is probably no surprise that in the classic 1933 Presbyterian Hymnal the single largest source is Isaac Watts, who alone is responsible for about 4% of the hymns in the book. 

All this introduction to explain why I find it significant that in the current Presbyterian Hymnal Jane Parker Huber is in the top ten individual writers of hymns in the volume with ten, just slightly behind the numbers from Issac Watts and Charles Wesley.  The recognition is mutual — her work helps define the denomination’s worship and the church recognizes her gifts and talents to God’s glory and praise.

Jane went to be with the Lord on November 15, but leaves the church with both an advocacy and literary legacy.

I will not repeat the various tributes to her — for those check out articles from the Presbyterian News Service and the Witherspoon Society.  There is also an earlier article when she was honored in 2002 for her work in the Women’s Ministries program.  She would fit the description of being a “Presbyterian of Presbyterians,” having been born to missionary parents, served the church for many years along side her husband Bill, and in her own work with Women’s Ministries, Presbyterian Women and her hymn writing.  And it is significant that her work was with the Women’s Ministries and the song writing was something that flowed out of that, originally writing many of the songs for Presbyterian Women events.

While time will be the judge of which of her hymns is the most enduring, my choice is “Called as Partners in Christ’s Service.”  This is a hymn frequently used across denominational lines that has had its first line used as the title of a book on PC(USA) missions.  I last used it as the concluding hymn of the closing worship service for our Synod Assembly meeting just over a month ago.  It is a great “sending” hymn.  But however her musical work is remembered we can give thanks for a life lived in service to God through service to the church.

[Postscript:  Various sources, including the Witherspoon article above, cite Jane with eleven hymns in the Presbyterian Hymnal.  In the index of my copy I count ten so I can’t account for the discrepancy.  In the end it really does not matter because the beauty and solid writing of her hymns make her works significant whatever the final count.]

A Different Sort Of Lord’s Day In Ghana

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This coming Sunday, December 7, has presented a bit of a challenge for churches in Ghana, including the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana.  This Sunday Ghana will hold national elections and the churches are encouraging their members to be responsible Christians in both the spiritual and the civil spheres.  In addition to being sure that members can participate in both worship and voting, the situation is complicated in many communities because the churches are used as polling places.  The circumstances have led the denominations to consider the alternatives of moving worship to Saturday, or doing it earlier or later on Sunday.

It appears that PCG is discouraging the Saturday alternative, as an article from the Accra Daily Mail suggests.  In this case, the early alternative is encouraged, and by early they mean at least an hour before the 7:00 a.m. opening of the polls.  This information is echoed in an article on GhanaDot.com.

On the other hand, based on the Ghana Elections 2008 blog, the national recommendation for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana, is to hold worship on Saturday evening before the elections.

Which ever alternative churches take, it is clear that they are also encouraging their members to vote responsibly and to pray for the elections.  The GhanaDot.com closes with the sentiment from the Moderator of the PCG General Assembly:

Rt. Rev.
Dr.
Frimpong-Manso
urged
Christians
to
continue
to pray
for
peaceful,
fair and
transparent
election.

A Look At Some Details In the PC(USA) Membership Changes

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I have long had a curiosity about some of the nuances of the changes in the membership of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  I mentioned this in my analysis last June when the 2007 statistics were released and again in a discussion I had in the comments section of a recent post.

The questions is:  How much of the PC(USA) membership decline can be attributed to churches departing to other denominations versus how much is individual departures?

To attack this question I used as my basis for churches departing two complimentary lists.  The first is the one published by the Layman Online.  The second comes from the PresbyLaw site.  The Layman List is a bit more up-to-date than the PresbyLaw list.  The PresbyLaw list goes back much further, further than I wanted to check, and has the events broken out and linked in a more detailed fashion.  But in major details there are no significant details that differ between the two lists.  The information on these lists was checked against the PC(USA) Congregational Directory.  I checked a few other web sites and articles to try to refine some of the information.  And in my working with the numbers below I did not include membership changes due to deaths —  membership transfers to the Church Triumphant are an acceptable loss.  However, the “net” membership changes do have the deaths included.

First, the results for 2006 and 2007 as best as I could piece them together.  While it is tempting to reproduce my research into another table in this blog I’m not sure my time or your patience justifies it.  So what is listed are summary statistics.

2006
According to the official statistics, from 2005 to 2006 there was a net loss of 56 churches.  Within the loss in churches there were 56 dissolved and 6 dismissed.

From the Layman and PresbyLaw lists there were 7 churches that left the denomination.  While these were usually marked as “dismissed,” from looking at the individual statistics it is often not clear or consistent how the members were lost so I lump the two together throughout.

So, with 62 churches gone, of those 7 “departing” for other denominations, 11% of the church loss can be accounted for in departures of this nature.  That means that 89% are churches dissolved for other reasons.  Around my area it is declining membership.

Between 2005 and 2006 the net loss in membership was 46,542.  In the losses column there were 27,900 certificate losses, that is transfer requests to other denominations, and 102,125 “other” losses.  The total of these two is 130,025.

Based upon the seven churches listed as departing their total membership was 901, or 0.7% of the total and 1.9% of the net.

To this we can add the churches on the list which I will call “distressed.”  I did not research the circumstances of each one, but some of these show a year-after-year decline and some have a one-time decline when the church was declared in schism, a group left the church and the PC(USA) could identify a “continuing” church.  There appear to be two of these on the list for a total loss of 261 members.

So, the total loss in 2006, as best as I can reconstruct, from “denominational concern,” is 1126 members.

2007
From 2006 to 2007 the net loss of churches was 83 on the official rolls.  In the loss column there were 71 dissolved and 12 dismissed for the total of 83.

From the lists there were 16 fewer churches so in 2007 19% appear to be denominationally related.

Total denominational membership dropped by 57,572.  In the loss column 30,329 were certificate losses and 102,714 were “other” losses for a total of 133,034, or 3018 higher than in 2006.

From the 16 departing churches there are some significantly higher memberships than in 2006 with the total being 6832 or an average of 427 per church.  The average church size, according to the PC(USA) statistics, is 205 members, so these include larger than average churches, the largest being 1900.

There are also nine “split” churches in the list that have listed a loss of 965 members between transfers and other.  That brings the total losses on these lists to 7797 or 5.9% of the PC(USA) total for transfers and losses and 13.5% of the denominational net.

Discussion and Conclusions
Well, the first conclusion seems to be that the vast majority of people who leave the PC(USA) are not leaving with a particular church or splinter group but are just leaving as individual families.  Based on these lists, even a major flaw in my methodology would not increase the numbers dramatically relative to the totals.

So this seems to bring good news and bad news.  The good news is that the defections to other denominations are not a major outflow.  The bad news is that there are much larger issues to consider in the loss of membership.

One interesting finding is the relatively close correlation between the
official number of churches dismissed and the number on the lists. 
While some of the departing congregations were dissolved it is good to
know that a majority were dismissed.

Two interesting items about the PC(USA) methodology did jump out at me.  The first is that as far as the membership numbers are concerned a church and its members have not left until the PC(USA) says that it has left.  While a church may vote to leave the presbytery or civil legal process may hold up their “recognized” departure for months to years.  This means that churches appear in both the PC(USA) membership directory and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church directory simultaneously.  For example: First Presbyterian Church, Thibodaux, LA — PC(USA) and EPC.

The second is that reporting of membership statistics for churches in schism is sometimes, shall we say, questionable.  While some churches were clearly showing the sudden drop in membership from those that moved on with the departing group, in other cases the membership is being kept level, sometimes just filling in the static number with no gains or losses.  Examples:  Londonderry, NH and First PC Torrance, CA.

It would be expected that in both of these cases the statistics would get caught up at some time in the future.

One area these do not address, and I do not presently have the time to pursue, is the concentration in specific presbyteries.  There are some concentrations, such as Pittsburgh, Heartland, and Sacramento Presbyteries, so departures will have more impact on a local level.

A final observation:  In several communities where churches departed and the vote was not overwhelming I looked at the membership statistics for near-by PC(USA) churches.  In no case could I find any membership increase in a local church corresponding to the departure of the other church.  If not all the members went with the departing group they did not transfer to local PC(USA) churches.

This is not a problem with record keeping at Louisville, but a problem at the local level where the membership reports come from.  On the one hand it makes me wonder how far off some of the other numbers are.  But I am also thankful for numbers at all since the PC(USA) is one of the few Presbyterian branches there has generally reliable reporting that they make available to the general public.

Commentary
Why do we care about this?  Personally it has been a curiosity to me and I did this to see how large of an affect this is on the PC(USA) membership statistics.  While it is noticeable it is not significant.

In a larger sense we care because the loss of members is not a good thing.  If this tide can be stemmed it will not in itself stop the denominations slide, but it will be a step in that direction.

But maybe the thing I personally find troubling is how small a contributing factor this really is.  How much time, money, energy, polity, and concern has been poured into 6% of the lost membership.  In so many conversations this has been the focus.  What if we took the same energy for the other 94% who just leave the church?  Could we get a better return on our efforts there?

I’ll keep playing with these numbers and it will be interesting to see if the trend continues to accelerate.  It probably will because I stopped my 2008 list after the first six months and I already had 12 churches on the list.  And if you see a flaw in my methodology please let me know where I slipped up.