Monthly Archives: October 2013

Church Membership And Affinity In The PC(USA)

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In the spirit of my tag line – “I never met a data set I didn’t like” – I was thinking about how to drill down a bit further into the statistical results related to the size of churches being dismissed from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

In an ideal world there would either be statistical information about the theological leanings of every church in the PC(USA) or I could go to all their web sites and figure that out. Well, I don’t have the time to visit 10,000-plus web sites (and not every church has one) to divine their theological positions and I am not aware of a publicly available statistical study of all the PC(USA) churches. So I had to find something else.

What I will analyze as a related data set is the membership list of the Fellowship of Presbyterians that is posted on their web site. For the record, since this is a bit of a dynamic list, the version I will be using was copied on October 14, 2013.

The list has their member churches in two categories, those that are Fellowship members and those that are members of the related body, ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. It also lists individuals who are members and on this pass that was not used but I will probably come back to that in a later post. For each of the churches in the list I searched a couple of sources for their 2012 membership. The primary source was the church directory for the PC(USA). For churches dismissed to ECO this source usually did not have the membership numbers so I turned instead to the presbytery statistics.

Problems arose for those dismissed before the 2012 numbers were recorded. In some cases I had their 2011 membership numbers. In other cases I had to use the 2007 number listed in the presbytery statistics. Out of 72 ECO congregations that are counted there were 16 that I used the 2007 number and 7 that I had the 2011 membership number. In addition, three congregations are fellowships with no data, one had no reported data and two are churches that divided with one group going to ECO and a continuing congregation in the PC(USA). None of these were counted. All of this and notes about naming differences are documented with the summary statistics in the comments on the spreadsheet.

So what are the summary statistics? Well, for all 256 churches counted the mean membership is 568.0 and the median is 301.5. For the subset of churches in ECO it is a mean of 417.9 members and a median of 170 for those 72 churches. For the 184 churches in the Fellowship only, the mean is 626.7 and the median is 343 members. We should consider the ECO numbers qualitative, or at best an upper limit, because of the heterogeneous nature of the data set, but even considering that the numbers are high.

For comparison, the numbers for all of the PC(USA) are a mean of 180 and a median of 89 members for 10,262 congregations. If you want to roll the statistics back, in 2007 the mean was 204 and the median was 103, still well below the statistics for the mixed data set.

Now, it would be nice to extrapolate these numbers to all of the churches that might be considered theologically conservative since, for example, the three churches in my presbytery that have requested dismissal to ECO, while statistically larger than the average PC(USA) congregation, are not now members of the Fellowship. While tempting, that does have its statistical pitfalls. What we can say is that these sub-groups which have self-identified together around particular tenets of conservative theology are statically larger, and apparently significantly larger, than average PC(USA) congregations and so there is at least the suggestion that this could hold true for conservative churches in the denomination as a whole.  We will come back to this after a bit more explanation.

I wanted to drill down into this idea a bit more so I found a couple of other data sets to test this against. The first is the membership of the More Light Presbyterians and the second is the membership of the Covenant Network. Here More Light chapters were removed from the data set as were fellowships and NCD’s. For a church that appears on both lists and was recently dismissed from the PC(USA) the 2007 membership numbers were used and the same for a church which did not report a number in 2012. There were seven churches who reported no data at all, one more I could not find but found what appears to be the continuing congregation in the same town, and one church that I could find no trace of it having existed outside this list. The two organizations are separate entities so in addition to their individual statistics I calculated the stats for the intersection of the data sets (i.e. those that are in both) as well as the union of the sets (i.e. for every church on both lists I had numbers for). The lists were copied from the internet on October 16, 2013. As with the other data set the numbers, comments and summary statistics are available on my spreadsheet. 

So, the 179 More Light churches have a mean membership of 213.7 and a median of 116. Close to, but still above the stats for the denomination as a whole. The Covenant Network churches have significantly higher numbers for their 359 churches – a mean of 322.6 and a median membership of 190. The group of 102 churches that are in both organizations has a mean membership of 217.1 and a median of 138. For all 436 churches the mean is 302.6 and the median is 172 members.

So it appears that having a leaning towards liberal theology is also good for membership. In fact the ECO data set and the MLP/Covenant combined data sets have similar numbers with ECO having a median of 170 and the MLP+Covenant having a median of 172.

Now, how well is the PC(USA) represented? These are groups that we have been and are hearing about all the time in the PC(USA). However, there are 256 congregations on the Fellowship list representing about 2.5% of the total congregations in the PC(USA). (Counting only the Fellowship exclusive congregations it is 184 or 1.8% of the congregations.) Similarly, on the combined MLP and Covenant Network list it is 436 congregations or 4.2%. As for membership the Fellowship list would represent 7.9% of the PC(USA) membership and the MLP+Covenant list is 7.1% of the total PC(USA) membership. In other words, this analysis covers 15% of the membership of the PC(USA) leaving 85% not represented. And if the congregations in these data sets are statistically larger it means the the remainder are on average smaller.

So far I have only discussed the summary statistics. To take this one step further let’s look at the distribution of congregation sizes using the binning that Research Services uses in its annual report.

PC(USA) ECO Fellowship MLP  Covenant
Number of
Members		 Number % Number % Number % Number % Number %
1-50 3112 30.4 7 9.7 3 1.6 31 17.3 38 10.6
51-100 2394 23.4 15 20.8 17 9.2 50 27.9 68 18.9
101-150 1384 13.5 11 15.3 22 12.0 21 11.7 42 11.7
151-200 876 8.6 6 8.3 16 8.7 18 10.1 35 9.8
201-300 922 9.0 6 8.3 25 13.6 24 13.4 54 15.0
301-500 811 7.9 9 12.5 40 21.7 19 10.6 65 18.1
501-800 400 3.9 11 15.3 21 11.4 10 5.6 33 9.2
801-1200 186 1.8 4 5.6 20 10.9 4 2.2 12 3.3
1201-1600 71 0.7 0 0.0 7 3.8 1 0.6 5 1.4
>1600 78 0.8 3 4.2 13 7.1 1 0.6 7 2.0

And in graphical form (you can right click and view image for a better view).

It can be seen that for the PC(USA) as a whole the peak of the distribution is in the range for the smallest congregations. Interestingly, the four data sets considered here have, to varying degrees, a double peaked distribution. The most even of these peaks can be seen in the Covenant Network distribution with one peak in the 51-100 range and the second in the 301-500 range. For the More Light Presbyterians and ECO the lower peak in the 51-100 range is higher while for the Fellowship of Presbyterians the peak in the 301-500 range is higher. (I would note that I suspect that the double peak effect is artificially enhanced by the choice of ranges for the bins and that is something I might investigate more in the future.)

Remembering that correlation does not imply causation, there are three approaches to interpreting these results that shows there is something about having an association with  these affinity groups with theological leanings that is
good for church membership.

The first possibility is that churches with these declared affinity associations and therefore explicit theological leanings tend to attract people and so have larger memberships.

The second possibility is that when churches have larger memberships it provides something – possibility the resources of members’ time, talents, gifts and service – to be able to expand their ministry beyond just Word and Sacrament in that location so as to join and participate with various affinity groups.

The third possibility is to consider neither of these factors as the specific cause but to think of both of these as components of a larger picture. What I personally suspect is going on is that each of
these is simply one facet of a dynamic and defined church ministry with many different aspects that also probably includes living into a
mission statement (explicit or implicit), outreach and some form of
activism reflecting the church’s theological leaning and chosen affinity with a group.

In other words, these churches have higher membership because they are visible and
active and the affinity group membership is just one part of that
activity. So it is the sum total of this activity would tend to attract members to that church.

Based on my experience and observations I personally think the best interpretation is the third one, but there is nothing I see in the data itself to distinguish here. And yes, I am looking at a general trend in all of these churches and circumstances and therefore explanation will vary from one specific church to the next.

One tie-in here is the study from two years ago done by the PC(USA) Research Services called Fastest Growing Presbyterian Churches. My data above does not come anywhere close to testing all of the components listed in that report, but there are a couple of interesting points of correspondence. The first is with size and the report found, based on worship attendance not membership, that the median size of fast-growing congregations is 150 as opposed to a median worship size of 78 for the PC(USA) as a whole. The study also found that theologically liberal churches have a slight tendency to be faster-growing churches but the largest difference between the fast-growing churches and the rest of the PC(USA) was in the theologically moderate range. On the theologically conservative end the fastest-growing churches were not as well represented. While not specific to my data, the study does support the third interpretation above showing that the fastest-growing churches have more programs both within the church and for the community. (And yes, in this discussion there is an implicit association of “fastest-growing” with church size.)

One thing that should be noted, and may be reflected in the study of fastest-growing churches, is another study that showed that churches dismissed to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church actually had steeper membership declines than the average for the PC(USA). This study is by the Rev. Mike Cole titled “The Statistical Grass Is Not Greener on the Other Side“. In my own data gathering for this piece in looking at the presbytery reports I qualitatively noticed that before dismissal many of the churches that went to ECO had above average membership declines. It will be interesting to see longer-term if dismissal is better or worse for membership numbers.

Well that is enough geekiness for right now – I’ve got a bunch of other writing to get finished in the next couple of days. But there is plenty here to think about and plenty of jumping off points for future investigations as well as revisiting this list as the situation evolves. Stay tuned.

Presbyterian News Headlines For The Week Ending October 20, 2013

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Another week on the quiet side in my news stream, and the couple of active items that were there are “works in progress” that I will defer to the next round when there should be something more to report than “the committee is thinking about it.”

So to begin with, a few items from churches in Africa:

Malawi: Domasi CCAP Advises Faithful to Vote – from allAfrica.com; “Domasi Presbytery of CCAP Blantyre Synod has called on all its faithful
that registered for the 2014 Tripartite Elections to exercise their
rights and responsibilities by voting for leaders of their choice.”

M’mbelwa roasts Livingstonia Synod over Kanyika mine – from Nyasa Times; “M’mbelwa district council on Monday took a swipe at  CCAP Livingstonia
Church and Society for frustrating the mining of niobium at Kanyika mine
in Mzimba.”

Presbyterian University College Council inaugurated – from Ghana News Agency; “The
Right-Reverend Professor Emmanuel Martey, Moderator of the General Assembly of
the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, has inaugurated the 5th Presbyterian
University College Council at Akropong.”

A couple of notes from the Church of Scotland:

Have your say on Scotland’s future – from Carrick Gazette; The Church of Scotland is ramping up the discussion sessions ahead of the independence vote.

Church of Scotland proposes changing religious observance in schools to ‘time for reflection’ – from Christian Today; “The Church of Scotland has proposed changing religious observance to a ‘time for reflection’. The Kirk said a time for reflection in schools would help shift the
debate about religious observance in schools from an argument between
opposing views to learning together.”

And finally from the PC(USA) and the Presbytery of Chicago:

Wild patience: Years of discussion lead to signing of covenant between presbytery and Islamic communities in Chicago – from The Presbyterian Outlook

So there is what caught my eye for last week.

A First-Order Quantitative Analysis Of Two New Hymnals: Glory To God and Lift Up Your Hearts

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This year has seen the release of two new hymnals for mainstream Presbyterian and Reformed churches.

Last week my copy of the new hymnal Glory To God arrived in the mail. Now having a copy in my hands I did what I always do when I acquire a new hymnal, new or old… I analyze it. I will get to the numerical analysis in a moment but let me make a couple of prefatory comments.

First, I purchased the red pew PC(USA) edition published by Westminster John Knox Press, one imprint of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation of the PC(USA). I don’t think that having the purple edition or the ecumenical edition will make a difference for this analysis because, as I understand it, the PC(USA) versus the ecumenical only makes a difference in the liturgical bits, not the musical. (But that is not to imply that the musical stuff is mutually exclusive from the liturgical.) In the narrative discussion below I will refer to this as the “New Hymnal.”

It is of standard hymnal dimensions and I found it to be only 34 mm thick. Since it is a full 7 mm thinner than the current The Presbyterian Hymnal (which I will refer to at the “Old Hymnal”) it is replacing you can be assured that it will fit nicely into your pew racks. But don’t worry, this is not at the loss of material as the New Hymnal has 1018 pages, a 42% increase over the Old Hymnal. The difference is of course in the weight of the paper it is published on so if your congregation makes heavy use of the hymnal, as opposed to using them as a decorative feature of the pew racks as you sing off the projection screen, you might want to think about a shorter replacement cycle.

The other thing I had to laugh at is that the New Hymnal has the subtitle “The Presbyterian Hymnal,” as it seems a bit presumptuous that there is one Presbyterian hymnal. But this is nothing new. That was the title of the Old Hymnal and the Presbyterian Church in Ireland names theirs The Irish Presbyterian Hymnbook. But if both the Old Hymnal and the New Hymnal are both “The” Presbyterian hymnal, is that a contradiction or does the new automatically supersede the old?

The second new hymnal of the year is Lift Up Your Hearts: Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs published by Faith Alive Christian Resources, the publishing ministry of the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America. If you ignore the subtitle this is a popular title for worship books and should not be confused with another collection of music issued a few years ago.

This edition is about 3 mm thicker than Glory to God but published on what feels like only slightly heavier weight of paper. It also comes in a nice red binding but with silver lettering, no denominational seal or logo and lightly printed gray wheat pattern on the front. That same wheat pattern is used inside the hymnal on title pages before each section. It has no complete liturgy printed in it but numerous prayers, responses and other liturgical pieces scattered throughout it.

OK, if you are only here for the discussion you will probably want to skip down below the table now. But for the hymnal geeks, as the title suggests, here is an analytical breakdown and comparison of the contents of these two new hymnals with a few others.

I want to clarify at this point that this is a first-order technique that I use that allows me to get a feeling for the content and tone of a hymnal within three to five minutes. It uses particular markers (sources) as indicators of larger trends. For a more detailed, and time consuming, analysis there is a second-order analysis which would do component analysis on the full contents. A third-order analysis that drills down into the words of the hymns themselves – included or omitted verses and altered words – as well as the musical settings of each is even more enlightening but much more time consuming.

As I said, I have picked out certain authors and translators whose inclusion or exclusion provides a quick guide to the particular bent of a hymnal. Some of them will be immediately obvious, like heavy inclusion of Martin Luther for the Lutherans and of Charles Wesley for the Methodists. For Presbyterians the ratio of Isaac Watts to Charles Wesley is usually greater than one. Also for Presbyterians, the heritage of exclusive Psalm singing shows through in generous inclusion of pieces from earlier Psalters.

The recognition of translators is also important and John Mason Neale is an indicator of the inclusion of earlier songs in Greek and Latin (e.g. All Glory, Laud and Honor) while Catherine Winkworth was a translator of German language works (e.g. Now Thank We All Our God).

For music from the Revival tradition the lead indicator is the number of songs by Fanny Crosby, but I also include those by Philip Bliss. And modern hymn writers are important and there are some subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, differences in styles that lean towards one tradition or another.

So here is a breakdown of the hymnals Glory To God and Lift Up Your Hearts in comparison to a number of past and present Presbyterian hymnals as well as The Hymnal For Worship and Celebration which is frequently cited as the most popular non-denominational hymnal in the US today and its revision the Celebration Hymnal.  The two hymnals of focus in this piece are highlighted to help you track the variations. The nicknames “The Green Hymnal” and “The Red Hymnal” are included as I have found that will immediately identify them to Presbyterians of a certain age.

The Hymnal
1933
“The Green Hymnal”
 		The Hymnbook
1955
“The Red Hymnal”
The Worship
-book
1970
The Presbyterian Hymnal
1990
Glory to God

2013
Lift Up Your Hearts

2013

 Trinity Hymnal
1990 		The Irish Presbyterian Hymnbook
2004
The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration
1986
Celebration Hymnal

1997


John Mason Neale
 		15 16 12 15 12 6 15 10 6 5
Martin Luther
 		4 2 6 6 5 3 5 0 1 1
Catharine Winkworth
10 14 22 19 11 9 19 4 4 3
Isaac Watts
 		23 20 10 13 14 12 36 9 15 13
Charles Wesley
 		15 15 10 13 14 15 21 17 16 16
Psalters 13 60 12 21 35 63 78 26 6 2
John Newton
 		6 7 2 2 2 4 13 7 4 3
Fanny Crosby
 		0 5 0 2 2 3 10 2 16 16
Philip Bliss
 		0 1 0 0 1 3 6 3 6 7
Spirituals 0 3 8 20 27 24 5 0 6 5
Brian Wren
 		0 0 0 11 11 9 0 5 0 0
Thomas Troeger
 		0 0 0 8 9 4 0 0 0 0
Ruth Duck
 		0 0 0 2 16 8 0 2 0 0
Edith Margaret Clarkson
 		0 0 0 0 0 2 6 1 7 3
William Gaither
 		0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 15 17
Keith Getty
 		0 0 0 0 0 9 0 5 0 0
Total musical selections
 		608 600 646 605 853 879 742 669 plus full psalter 628 818

First, a couple descriptive comments:

1. Yes, A Mighty Fortress is our God does not appear in the Irish Hymnbook

2. In looking at the new hymnals I find that going forward I need to include Taizé music/prayer as a category. While it has not been included in hymnals I have looked at before, Glory to God has 21 pieces and Lift Up Your Hearts has 18. None of the other hymnals I include in this analysis has any pieces from the Taizé Community but the Irish Hymnbook has 10 from the Iona Community I mention below.

3. If you are not familiar with it, the Trinity Hymnal, as well as the Trinity Psalter, are published by Great Commission Publications, the publishing house of the OPC and the PCA.

4. I will admit that Psalters are a pain in the neck to tally in this first-order model. Unlike authors where you look in one place, Psalters have a variety of names and in some cases the pieces are listed by author and not the Psalter.

5. It is worth noting that the Old Hymnal contains a section of about 100 Psalms, some of which are metrical Psalms taken from Psalters and some of which are Psalm paraphrases. That explicit section has been eliminated in the New Hymnal.

As I look at the table above the thing that jumps out at me first is the increase in the content of the hymnals. You can see that most of the 20th Century hymnals I track above tended to have just a bit more than 600 musical numbers. However, in the last couple of decades the musical content has increased up into the 800’s. Doing a quick calculation this means that there is enough material to go about five and one-half years with three hymns per Lord’s Day without repeating one. (This ignores the fact that there are only 76 hymns in the Advent and Christmas categories in the New Hymnal which at three hymns per worship service and seven days of celebration in each cycle would last you only three years without repeating.)

However, while the total size has increased dramatically the indicators that I have tracked have only changed slightly with some of the older sources declining slightly and some of the more recent increasing slightly. The one exception is the recent decline in works translated by Catherine Winkworth suggesting that works from non-English European traditions are being displaced, possibly by works from other traditions. The appearance is that in general hymns which have stood the test of time are being retained while new material is being added. This is noted in the appearance of the Taizé music I mention above. In addition, Lift Up Your Hearts has 21 pieces by John Bell of the Iona Community and Glory to God has 18.

It has struck me that some of this added content is specific to the hymnals. For example, in Glory to God at least two members of the editorial board have multiple numbers in the hymnal — Alfred Fedak has 25 pieces and David Gambrell has 14. It is worth noting that Fedak has 13 in Lift Up Your Hearts along with 11 by their editorial board member Martin Tel and seven by another board member, Joel Navarro. In fact, several of the board members and an editorial assistant have at least one contribution to the hymnal. (And one board member has his name spelled differently on the board list and in the index of authors, but I digress.)

The point is not that this is a problem with conflict of interest, and this is not a new occurrence as Isaac Watts and John Newton each published collections of their own works. But it will be interesting to see if, like Watts and Newton, some of the contributions from the “in house” writers stand the test of time. (And yes, I do realize that the total output by Watts that is in any of these hymnals is less than 2% and that it will take a long time to see if the new works “stand the test of time.”)

But, relative to the markers that I have been using, these two hymnals have retained much of the tone of Protestant and Reformed hymnals with the use of early and Reformation era music to a degree that the popular non-denominational hymnals do not. The non-denominational works are also much lighter on Psalter works, pieces from other racial ethnic traditions and works of traditional modern hymn writers (e.g. Duck and Wren). The new hymnals also continue the trend of sparingly using the revival era hymns that the non-denominational hymnals heavily use as well as music that might be categorized as praise songs. The praise style pieces are not completely missing and where these two hymnals show the greatest divergence is that Lift Up Your Hearts appears to have a slightly more contemporary praise feel than Glory to God with a piece by William Gaither, if this marker is indicative of the hymnal as a whole. In addition Lift Up Your Hearts has a solid number of works by contemporary-style modern hymn writer Keith Getty. (And no, I am not going to go there today.)

As I indicated above, the real story here does not appear to be significant abandonment of the pieces, or at least the sources, that have appeared in previous hymnals. Rather, it is first a broadening to include alternative and diverse sources and traditions of music. Second, it is a selective inclusion of more modern works with Glory to God leaning towards the traditional modern and Lift Up Your Hearts leaning towards the contemporary modern.

Let me conclude by noting that the editorial boards for hymnals live in the same tension that all who are concerned with the future of the church are in. On the one hand is tradition and doctrine and a denominational hymnal says something – it is carefully put together to reflect the theological stance and values of the denomination, at least to the extent the editorial board reflects it. On the other hand, there is societal expectation and there are certain hymns that have stood the test of time and the audience expects to see them in the hymnal and, to some extent, with a particular set of words. My favorite example of this is the hymn Rock of Ages by Augustus Toplady. Toplady was, as one paper puts it, an “extreme Calvinist” who first published the poem in his Gospel Magazine in one of his regular articles strongly arguing against the Arminian theology of John Wesley. Yet today it is regularly found in Methodist hymnals as it has become part of the standard set of hymns people expect to find in a hymnal.

It is clear that the editorial boards of each of these hymnals made specific choices to reflect the underlying doctrine of their respective denominations. Choices were not made to include popular hymns just to boost sales. But it should be remembered, at least in the case of Glory to God, that the final product did not have the explicit approval of the General Assembly. That body only approved the creation of a committee that would create the hymnal. So does it really reflect the denomination at this moment, especially if there is an ecumenical edition?

The marked expansion of the contents of the hymnal may have an interesting consequence, intended or unintended. Studies have shown that a typical congregation has a standard pool of only about 150 pieces that they sing outside of special seasons like Advent and Christmas. With a hymnal that is expanded by upwards of 30% it is more likely that any given congregation will find their special 150 hymns in the hymnal and may be more likely to buy it. It could be that the expansion of the contents, which was partly intended by the editorial board to give any particular congregation a greater range to sing from, will actually do more to increase the number of congregations that buy the book.

Finally, I was a bit tongue in cheek at the beginning where I commented about the hymnal being a nice pew rack decoration but never used if the Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs are always projected on a screen in front of the congregation. But more and more this is becoming the case and where a congregation does this they create their own virtual hymnbook which can be subjected to the first through third-order analyses I talk about above. The use of projection particularly allows for the type of modifications that a third-order analysis highlights with eliminated verses and different musical settings easily accomplished. This takes us into the realm of not only every church having its own specific musical reflection of its doctrine, but one that can be tweaked at a moment’s notice. Not only is the landscape different for each congregation but it can be a constantly shifting landscape as well.

It will be interesting to see how widely each of these hymnals finds acceptance. Early in the pre-order period that was a comment that about 600 congregations had already ordered their new copies. That is about a 6% market penetration in the PC(USA). Given all the options today in terms of hymnals on the market as well as the option of dispensing with hymnals all together when the words are projected I would be interested in what sort of adoption ratio there is by GA next summer.

So that is what I see at a first-order level here. As I get into it more it will be interesting to see what other trends I find.

Presbyterian News Headlines For The Week Ending October 13, 2013

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Just a quick update here to list a few of the news headlines that caught my attention. It was a generally quiet week and since I am in the middle of a couple of other analyses for this blog I will keep it short.

I saw a couple of articles this week about denominations selling off unused churches. The second is one that I don’t normally track but the pattern is worth noting.

Kirk’s historic churches for sale – from Herald Scotland; “BUYERS have been moving to secure a slice of Scottish heritage after a
surge in the number of historic churches being put up for sale by the
Kirk.”

Uniting Church puts properties up for sale to clear debts – from ABC News; “The Uniting Church is putting $100 million worth of property in
Victoria up for sale in an attempt to clear its debts by December 2014. The collapse last year of the church-run school, Acacia College, left the church with a $36 million debt.”

In continuing developments from the previous update:

Presbyterian Moderator pays a visit to graffiti-hit church – from the News Letter; reaction continues following the sectarian vandalism

ANC equal with God on earth? – from News24; President Zuma’s comments at the Presbyterian Synod meeting continue to draw critical reactions

And another from Ireland:

Presbyterians spend £6.2m on new projects – from the News Letter

A story linking Scotland and the church bombing in Pakistan

Kirk minister Aftab Gohar forgives his family’s killers – from BBC News

While in the South Pacific

Vanuatu Presbyterian Church calling for ban of same-sex marriage – from Radio New Zealand International

Finally in the PC(USA)

Largest Presbyterian Church’s (PC USA) Property Ownership Case Headed to Court – from The Christian Post; It was decided that the case would be heard in state, not federal, court. And note that the news outlet consistently gets the size rank wrong: while they are the largest in Texas they are the fourth-largest across the denomination.

Film reaches out to Presbyterians as Detroit prepares to host convention – from the Detroit Free Press; a film made by a local Presbyterian promoting the city for the General Assembly.

So there is a snapshot of that week. Hoping to get a couple of new posts up in the next few days.

Church Dismissals In The Synod Of Southern California And Hawai’i — Part 2: Some Numbers

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In the first part of this discussion I gave a bit of my experience with responding to a remedial complaint that was filed after the Presbytery of San Gabriel dismissed two churches to ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.

With the mediated settlement of that complaint and dismissal of the case by the Synod Permanent Judicial Commission it opened the door for San Gabriel and other presbyteries in the synod to resume the process of working with churches that had requested dismissal. So what does the landscape look like now?

A Quantitative Analysis of Churches in the Dismissal Process
I scanned the web sites of all eight presbyteries in the synod and found three presbyteries that make their meeting minutes available on their website and in the minutes they listed churches that have requested beginning the dismissal process. Each presbytery has their own process so the lists are slightly different based upon the process. I may add to this analysis as I am able to get further information for other presbyteries. I do know that I am not missing much from past years because based on the Presbytery Summary Statistics reports through 2012 most presbyteries in the synod have not dismissed any churches and only a couple have dismissed at most one church.

Listed below are the churches that I found from the presbytery records and after them their status and reported membership for 2012 from the PC(USA) statistics.

For the Presbytery of San Gabriel there are two churches now dismissed and the presbytery has formed Pastoral Engagement Teams for three additional churches that have requested dismissal:

Glenkirk Presbyterian Church, Glendora – dismissed (1127 members)
First Presbyterian Church of Covina – dismissed (344 members)
First Presbyterian Church of Monrovia – engagement team (222 members)
San Gabriel Presbyterian Church of San Gabriel – engagement team (165 members)
Korean Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church of Rowland Heights (865 members)

For the Presbytery of Santa Barbara in reading Stated Clerk’s reports I found the following churches that have written to request dismissal. There is one more church, Emmanuel Presbyterian of Thousand Oaks, that first requested dismissal and then asked to have the request removed temporarily. These churches are listed as reported in the document and while the PC(USA) database name may be slightly different in general matching the church and the statistical report is not a problem. Here are the listed churches and sizes:

Malibu Presbyterian Church (303 members)
Orcutt Presbyterian Church (286 members)
Solvang (314 members)
Port Hueneme (192 members)
Templeton (178 members)
Morro Bay Presbyterian Church (159 members)
Community Presbyterian Church of Cambria (192 members)
Community Presbyterian Church, Ventura (387 members)
Trinity Presbyterian Church, Camarillo (269 members)
Cottonwood Community Fellowship, Los Alamos (20 members)
Orchard Community Church, Ventura (264 members)

Finally, the most recent Presbytery Council report from the Presbytery Los Ranchos has a complete list as of that date of the churches that have notified the presbytery that they have either entered discernment or are requesting dismissal:

Christ, Huntington Beach (enter discernment) (505 members)
First, Westminster (requests dismissal) (250 members)
St Paul’s, Anaheim (seek dismissal) (52 members)
Christ, Lakewood (seek dismissal) (152 members)
Community, Long Beach (included with Lakewood) (84 members)
Los Alamitos, Good Shepherd (seek dismissal) (617 members)
St. Andrew’s, Newport Beach (enter discernment) (3064 members)
Journey Evangelical, Westminster (seek dismissal) (243 members)
Trinity United, Santa Ana (enter discernment) (1556 members)
Wintersburg, Santa Ana (seek dismissal) (467 members)
Cornerstone (worshiping fellowship) (seek dismissal) (fellowship – not included)

So there is the data set. Let me add at this point that for both the churches requesting dismissal as well as the statistics for the presbyteries as a whole New Church Developments (NCD) and Fellowships have been excluded because statistics are not reported in the same way as chartered churches. It should also be remembered that this is a forward looking analysis as only two of the churches in the lists have actually been dismissed and three in Los Ranchos have only entered discernment. It also presumes that all of the members of a church are transferred with the dismissed congregation, a situation which is common but on occasion a continuing or remnant group may be identified.

For the analysis that follows you can see my spreadsheet showing all the churches in each of these presbyteries and the statistics I discuss.

For the Presbytery of San Gabriel if all five churches are ultimately dismissed the presbytery could lose 2710 of its 9429 members or 28.7% of its membership. These five churches have an average membership of 542.0 compared to the presbytery average of 214.9. Their median size is 344 while it is 89.5 for the whole presbytery.

For the Presbytery of Santa Barbara the departure of these eleven churches would reduce the presbytery size by 2564 or just a bit more than one-third (34.1%) from the current total membership of 7510. The mean size of the churches requesting dismissal is actually a bit less than for the presbytery now, 233.1 versus 242.2, and the median is slightly higher, 264 versus 220.

For the Presbytery of Los Ranchos the potential membership shifts are significantly larger. Membership could drop by 37.4% with a loss of 6990 members from the current total of 18,699. The churches that may depart have an average size of 699 members which is almost twice the average size of churches currently, 381.6. Similarly, the median would be 358.5 versus the current median of 216.

Looking at the largest churches, in San Gabriel the Glenkirk church is one of three similar sized large churches in the presbytery. In Santa Barbara the largest church on the dismissal list is only the fifth-largest in the presbytery. However, those familiar with PC(USA) churches will quickly recognize the presence of St. Andrew’s of Newport Beach on the Los Ranchos list. At 3064 members it is one of the largest churches in the PC(USA) missing the 15th place on the 2012 annual list of large churches by 20 members. It is almost twice as large the second largest church on the possible dismissal list and a bit more than twice the size of the largest church on the remaining list. It accounts for 16.6% of the possible membership loss and without it in the list the average size of possible departing churches drops to 436.2 and the median to 250. Each of these is now much closer to the current average (381.6) and median (216) of the presbytery.

For all these statistics I have been comparing the descriptive statistics with the set of churches currently in each presbytery. For comparison purposes the denomination wide numbers have a mean church size of 180 and a median size of 89. Los Ranchos and Santa Barbara are both above those sizes for the current presbytery, the group of possible departing churches and the remaining presbytery after departures.  San Gabriel before dismissals has a slightly larger mean and is right even with the median. After these possible departures the first two would remain above but San Gabriel’s mean and median would drop below the national numbers for 2012. However, with both the departures from the PC(USA) and the ongoing general declining trend it would seem likely that San Gabriel’s future size would still mirror the denomination as a whole.

So what does all this mean and should we care?

To begin with, the pattern seen in these three presbyteries is similar in magnitude and statistics to that seen previously in the presbyteries of Mississippi, Tropical Florida and Central Florida, but not in the Presbytery of Alaska. It looks like we can statistically verify the conventional wisdom that in the great majority of cases the PC(USA) is preferentially losing larger churches to dismissals to more conservative or evangelical reformed bodies.

The clearest implication, at least in my mind, is that the preferential departure of larger churches will have a non-proportional impact on governing body finances. Governing body financial needs don’t scale linearly with membership or number of churches but their income generally does. (And yes, for the moment let us presume that these congregations were at least paying something in per capita and mission giving although I am aware that there was a trend among some of these churches not to.) There are a lot of fixed costs in staff and administration that will be there whether there are 50 churches or 75 churches. To lose generally about one-third of revenue, particularly from the larger sources, will have a major impact on budgets because there will not be proportionally lower expenses to the governing body.

From a polity and theological point of view, the implication is that initiatives by those with a progressive viewpoint in the PC(USA) to change the Book of Order will have a greater chance of passing GA and the presbyteries. Changes in voting patterns can be attributed to a number of factors including individuals having a new perspective, the replacement of older elders, teaching and ruling, with younger ones, the attrition due to members leaving individually as well as departures of churches as a unit. At some point an analysis of all this would be worthwhile.

It is tempting to conclude from this analysis that conservative churches in the PC(USA), as represented by those seeking departure, are in general larger than moderate or progressive churches. This does not immediately follow since it can be argued that larger churches would leave preferentially because they are in a position to better support themselves in a fledgling body like ECO while smaller churches are more dependent on financial, administrative and spiritual support that governing bodies of an established church, like the PC(USA) are able to offer.

Returning to the 2012 list of the 15 largest churches in the PC(USA) there is a strong suggestion that larger churches are more likely to be conservative. Of the 15 churches on the list six of them (Peachtree, Christ, Highland Park, Memorial Drive, Bel Air and First Bellevue) also appear on the membership list of the Fellowship of Presbyterians. While not half, the question is raised whether that is proportionally more than moderate and progressive churches that make up the remaining nine spots. This is reinforced by checking the list of member churches of the Covenant Network and there are only two (Fourth, Village) that appear on the list. I have another analysis in progress where preliminary results show that conservative churches, departing or staying, are more likely to be larger than their progressive counterparts. Hope to get that finished and posted later this week.

So the data on dismissals in the PC(USA) gro
ws. It will be interesting to see how each of these requested dismissals progresses and I have other information that there could be some interesting developments in a couple of cases. We will see what happens.

Church Dismissals In The Synod Of Southern California And Hawai’i — Part 1

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It was just about one year ago now that at a special called meeting of the Presbytery of San Gabriel two churches were dismissed to ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians (ECO). In this two part piece I want to discuss the journey that this started as well as take an analytical look at where a couple of presbyteries in the synod are headed at this point. I don’t know if this first part is of any interest to others but what I first envisioned as a brief intro to where the synod is has now turned into its own moderately detailed discussion of my experience with this case. If you just want to see the quantitative analysis feel free to just jump to Part 2.

Part 1: Judicial Case Against The Presbytery of San Gabriel
On 20 October 2012 at a special meeting of the Presbytery of San Gabriel the dismissals of Glenkirk Presbyterian Church of Glendora, CA, and the First Presbyterian Church of Covina, CA, were approved. Polity wonks may recognize the timing of this action was just before the Synod Permanent Judicial Commission (SPJC) rendered its decision in the case of St. Andrews Session v. Presbytery of Santa Barbara (St. Andrews decision) and the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (GAPJC) decided the case of Tom and others v. Presbytery of San Francisco (Tom decision).

Relevant to the San Gabriel action the St. Andrews decision called into question the validity of ECO as a reformed body and the Tom decision raised some issues with the details of the process and the terms of dismissal. The leadership of San Gabriel recognized the implications of both of these cases and began a process to take actions to bring future dismissals into compliance and to try to remedy deficiencies in the two dismissals already approved. In addition, a revision of the Gracious Dismissal Policy (GDP) included not just the specific requirements of the Tom decision but also the numerous lessons learned from the first application of the policy.

However, a remedial case was filed by 12 members of the presbytery specifying nine defects in the presbytery action based on the St. Andrews and Tom decisions. The SPJC accepted the complaint and issued a stay of action putting the dismissal of the churches on the agreement date of 31 December on hold. San Gabriel Presbytery itself put on hold all additional requests for dismissal and other presbyteries in the synod also stopped or slowed down their dismissal processes waiting for the outcome of this case since it might clarify the earlier SPJC decision about the status of ECO as a reformed body.

Before I go any further I need to do the full disclosure thing: I was asked and agreed to serve on the Committee of Counsel that responded to the complaint. Therefore, while I had a front row seat for this judicial process that seat was from the defense table so I have a particular perspective on all these proceedings. In addition, the comments, views and perspective that I will be sharing here are mine alone and, expect in the rare instance I state otherwise, do not necessarily reflect the perspectives and opinions of the other two members of the Committee of Counsel, our legal help, or the leadership of the presbytery.

Following the decisions the presbytery set about to try to retroactively fulfill the spirit of the St. Andrews and Tom decisions by doing three things. The first was to begin the previously mentioned revision of the Gracious Dismissal Policy. The policy was extensively rewritten, incorporating both the lessons learned as well as a great deal of language taken directly from the Tom decision, and this new draft policy was distributed early in 2013. Three opportunities were provided at open sessions outside of regular presbytery meetings for members of presbytery to ask questions and provide feedback. A first reading was done at the March presbytery meeting and the revised GDP was approved by the presbytery at the May meeting with a couple of amendments from the floor to the gracious dismissal process.

While the new GDP is loaded with procedural adjustments based on lessons learned, there are to my mind two significant changes based upon the Tom decision. One is the now explicit requirement for the consideration of the value of the property and the implications of the trust clause in the negotiated agreement with churches and the presentation to the presbytery. The second is the explicit inclusion of the requirement that a 10 year reversionary clause be included in any agreement so that if within the first 10 years after dismissal the church would leave a reformed body the property would revert to the presbytery or the church would have to make payment for the property. This was a point of a lot of discussion — not whether or not to have the reversionary clause but what to actually put in the GDP. In the modern world of the PC(USA) there is a line of thought that you don’t specify numbers in policy documents but take everything on a case-by-case basis. So there was discussion about whether to specify a number and if a number was specified whether to make it binding or advisory and how large a number to put there. It is worth noting that in the debate around these matters the two dismissed churches made it clear that they intended the switch to ECO as a permanent move and not a quick route to independence. I sensed that a few in the presbytery were skeptical of this claim but time will tell.

The second action the presbytery took was to hold a stand-alone debate and vote to approve ECO as a reformed body that a church can be dismissed to. In the original action this was bundled into the dismissal vote itself. This passed the presbytery with a roughly 2/3 approval. Following the vote Dr. Jack Rogers was given the opportunity to speak about, among other things, why his expert testimony against ECO in the St. Andrews case applied only to the union presbytery issue and not dismissals of congregations.

Finally, at another presbytery meeting a member of the pastoral engagement team for the presbytery presented all the financial information that the Tom decision now calls for as well as the ministry rational for the agreements negotiated with each of the two churches that asked to be dismissed.

At the same time that this was going on members of the presbytery leadership were meeting with groups of the twelve individuals who had signed the complaint. The objective was to share the steps the presbytery would be taking as well as discuss possible remedies they might be interested in. I was not part of these discussions and so can not speak specifically to them. Furthermore, I can not speak to anyone’s particular motivations, but over the next few months ten of the twelve individuals contacted the SPJC and asked that their names be removed from the complaint.

The two remaining complainants and the Committee of Counsel continued with the judicial process including entering into mediated negotiations and with those negotiations in progress asking for a postponement of a pretrial conference in March. By the time we reached the rescheduled confer
ence in May the complainants had agreed to drop all but the two charges that dealt sepcifically with the trust clause.

It was actually at the May pretrial conference, during an adjournment of the SPJC, that we finally all agreed in principle to a specific framework for a settlement. The SPJC set a trial date and we told them we hoped we would not need it.

Over the next few days the framework was filled in and a final settlement was worked out. This settlement included a statement acknowledging that while the presbytery acted in good faith in the decision of 20 October, in hind sight and with the new guidance of the Tom decision there were details of the process that did not meet that guidance on the implementation of the trust clause. In acknowledgement of the trust clause and the presbytery’s new GDP each church extended the reversionary clause to 10 years. In addition, they each made an additional payment as a symbolic gesture of a payment for the property and in recognition of the legal expenses the presbytery had incurred on their behalf.

Beyond that there was recognition of the revisions to the GDP, of which the complainants had their input, and the presbytery will be asked to send an overture to the 221st General Assembly asking the Office of the General Assembly to provide more guidance for presbyteries seeking to discern which reformed bodies churches may be dismissed to. The settlement does not however require the presbytery to approve such an overture.

The churches fairly quickly made the necessary changes and payments on their side and in late June they, and their clergy, were transferred to ECO. The new GDP was approved in May and the pending overture is the last piece that needs to be presented to presbytery. Once that happens I am looking forward to having the Committee of Counsel being dissolved, hopefully with thanks.

Some reflection on the experience
First, it is impossible to ignore the emotional toll all this took on me at all points in the journey. I have many friends and colleagues in the two churches that requested and were granted dismissal. I fully understand that they did what they felt they had to do. It did take some doing to say goodbye and then help them on their way as I helped to defend the presbytery’s actions. Similarly, almost all of the original 12 complainants are friends that I have worked with over many years in this presbytery and synod. This was for me very much a family struggle and while I am glad that I could be part of the resolution, I am saddened by how this originally developed and the tensions and, yes, hurt feelings it caused.

Second, I believe that the eight months in which we settled this was
about as quickly as the judicial process would allow. It was done using
the alternative dispute resolution and did not go to trial. There was a
lot of work involved but we could set the pace of the mediation sessions
and make it happen without having to set those dates with the SPJC.

Having
said that, the logical extension is to ask whether this had to go to
the judicial process at all. The two remaining complainants did indicate
their view that the judicial process is an important part of our polity
and they felt it offered them the protection and supervision they sought
in resolving the complaint. From my perspective I would have rather tried to work it out earlier and gone to the judicial process if that failed. However, because of both the timing of the dismissals and the window to file a complaint – remembering that the charges were based upon cases that were decided in the weeks following the original action – the complainants felt time was short and if they were to keep the judicial option open they needed to file the complaint.

Finally, and this is one point where I think I can say my sentiments are shared by the rest of the Committee of Counsel as well as some of the presbytery leadership, I am very grateful for the patient way that the two dismissed churches stuck with us in the judicial process. They were as gracious about the delay as the presbytery was in dismissing them in the first place. We kept their leadership updated concerning what progress was, or was not, being made and when the additional terms were being discussed they might not have been eager to have modifications but they were extremely helpful in making it happen.

So that is a moderate-length version of where the Synod of SoCal and Hawai’i finds itself at the moment. While this case did not go to trial and so did not definitively settle the question of the eligibility of ECO as a reformed body that churches can be dismissed to, the fact that this case is no longer raising that and other questions within the synod means that presbyteries can once again feel comfortable with having their dismissal processes proceed.  In Part 2 I take a closer look at the dismissals in three of the synod’s presbyteries.

Presbyterian Headlines For The Week Ending October 6, 2013

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And now for this past week’s – and yes, I really do mean this this past week singular – news headlines. A bit more than last week happening out there.

As I mentioned in the last post, the news from Mizoram is a bit of a hold-over because it hit as a developing story right at the end of the preceding week. So here are the headlines for the Presbyterian synod in northeast India related to the upcoming elections:

Church urges parties not to use insurgents in Mizoram polls – from Business Standard; “[T]he largest church in the state also urged all political parties,
candidates and campaigners not to indulge in character assassination,
baseless allegations against political opponents and use muscle and
money power to get elected.”

Mizoram sets up election watchdog – from The Morung Express; the watchdog group is supported by the Synod

Mizoram synod asks voters to shun poll prophets – from Times of India; “The Mizoram synod of the Presbyterian Church of India, in its poll
message to the masses, urged the voters to reject so-called
prophecies and predictions on which party would win the coming assembly
elections in the state. The synod said such self-proclaimed prophets did
not believe in God.”

Mizoram parties appeal to Election Commission for changing Assembly poll schedule – from The Economic Times; To move voting to more convenient times and move the counting day off of Sunday

Moving on, there was an important series of headlines from Northern Ireland this week as well:

Churches launch peace initiative in Northern Ireland – from Christian Today; An interdenominational effort that includes the Presbyterian church.

Graffiti daubed on walls of Ballyarnett Presbyterian Church – from BBC News; “Sectarian graffiti has been daubed on the walls of a Protestant church in Londonderry.”

Bishop Good condemns graffiti attack on Ballyarnett Presbyterian Church – from Diocese of Derry Raphoe press release

And near by in Scotland two Church of Scotland clergymen of some note left the Kirk and were received into membership in the Free Church of Scotland:

More ministers defect over gay clergy row – from The Scotsman

Moving to Africa:

Zuma: ‘Church must help with difference between right and wrong’ – from eNCA; in South Africa “Zuma urged the Evangelical Presbyterian Church to continue supporting government and helping to build a caring society.”

On Zuma’s conflation of church and state – a commentary on the event from PoliticsWeb

Presby Church, traditionalists clash in Beposo – from GhanaWeb; A clash resulted when a local church did not observe a request for no noise making that is part of a traditional festival.

In Michigan, a group trying to save a presbytery camp has a new bid:

Camp preservation group ups ante $2.9 million – from The Commercial Record

And if US Presbyterians who are furloughed as part of the government shutdown are looking for something to do here is what some are up to:

Furloughed NASA workers volunteering their time – from WVEC.com; “About a half a dozen volunteers are renovating a wing at Yorkminster Presbyterian Church in York County.”

Finally, it is commentary and not journalism from a religious news outlet, but an interesting piece that may be of interest to some Presbyterians:

The Emergent Pope: Pope Francis Meets Frances Schaeffer – from The Christian Post

 

OK, so is it really Monday and I am now caught up on headlines? I guess I am getting a handle on this. Got a couple more things in draft form now so this might be a good week for blogging. We will see.

Presbyterian Headlines For The Week Ending September 29, 2013

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Well, this was a bit slower week for Presbyterian news but here are a couple of things that caught my attention.

Let’s start off with the PC(USA) and two headlines of note for the week:

Whitworth enters into new partnerships with Presbyterian church – from Whitworth University News; “Last week, Whitworth President Beck A. Taylor strengthened
Whitworth’s relationship with the Presbyterian church by entering into
formal partnerships with the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and
Universities, the North Puget Sound Presbytery, and the Presbytery of
the Inland Northwest. All three entities are a part of the Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.).”

Presbytery of Boise files lawsuit over Caldwell church – from Idaho Press-Tribune; “The Presbytery of Boise of the Presbyterian
Church USA filed legal action this afternoon in Canyon County to recover
Boone Memorial Presbyterian Church in Caldwell.“

Moving on to the Church of Scotland, a wide variety of headlines for the week:

Grangemouth-based minister mourns family Peshawar victims – from BBC News; “A Church of Scotland minister who lost several family members in
Sunday’s bomb attack on a church in Peshawar has taken part in a
memorial service at the Pakistani city’s cathedral.”

Kirk anti-poverty work wins European award – from Ekklesia;
“The Priority Areas Committee of the Church of Scotland has won the
European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN) Award 2013 for their role in
transnational inspiration and learning in the fight against poverty and
social exclusion.”

Church to meet over preacher’s lectures – from Herald Scotland; “PLANS for two Scottish lectures by a controversial
American preacher are to be discussed by Church of Scotland figures at a
meeting next week. Glasgow Presbytery is expected to seek to address
concerns raised by some Church figures over the booking of Bishop Jack
Spong – an Episcopalian who rejects the idea of a supernatural God and
does not believe Christ died for man’s sins – at Cairns Church,
Milngavie, and Orchardhill Parish Church in Giffnock.”

Unions join Kirk in plea for free meals – from Herald Scotland;
“TRADE unions and the Church of Scotland have joined a
call for all children in primaries one, two and three in Scotland to
receive free school meals. Scotland’s biggest teaching union, the EIS, public sector union
Unison, and the STUC joined children’s charities and anti-poverty
campaigners urging the Scottish Government to adopt plans for English
schools.”

Right at the end of the week there were a variety of headlines and statements from the Presbyterian Mizoram Synod in northeast India in advance of their elections. That spilled over into the next week so I will move those into my next installment.