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.
Speaking to the losses – I assume “certificate loss” means those that transfer outside the PC(USA), not just between two PC(USA) churches? What falls under “other” losses? Does that include death? Purging inactive folks? As you probably know, the membership roll of the local church can be a highly emotional issue.
Thanks for checking me on the details. You are correct that I was not explicit in saying that a “certificate loss” is a transfer out of the denomination and for almost all of the numbers I did not include the deaths in the statistics. The only number with deaths included is the “net” changes from year to year.
I have added a clarification on this to the original post.
I agree that in my experience the membership rolls can be very emotional. There is a lot of discussion about the New Form Of Government having no “inactive members.” A lot of people don’t want to have to cut the ties so dramatically.
As I looked through church statistics a lot of details jumped out at me that I did not include in the post. Sometimes I had to wonder how much was departures and how much was purging the rolls. A prime example is Northeast PC of St. Petersburg, Florida. The church split in 2007 and the losses that year show 92 certificated and 90 other. Of the others, was that purging the rolls? Or was it members who departed without asking for the transfer? For this work I just lumped them together. Maybe someday I’ll do some research and sort it out.
Another interesting case is Highland Park PC of Dallas, Texas. During the recent denominational controversies their membership has been stable to growing slightly. But back in 2004 this 5000 member church recorded a loss of “other” of 851 members. Maybe controversy in the church, maybe just purging the rolls. If a cleaning of the rolls then in this one event they took as many members off the PC(USA) rolls as are in four average churches and saved themselves a bunch of money in per capita.
There are a lot of interesting stories in the numbers. I wish I had the time to research all 10,000+ churches.
(I’m in the PCA, not the PCUSA, but I have family that are and am interested in goings on – so if you would indulge a few more questions) Are there any categories besides “loss of certificate” and “other?” Which category would an excommunication fall under, for example?
Do you know of an attempt to study why the individuals (who are not part of a church) are leaving? All this is much greater than one person can do, but it would be interesting to look at churches with major loss and see if neighboring congregations in, say, the EPC (or other denoms) had an increase within 1 year OR if folks are just leaving the institutional church period.
Also, have you looked at statistics on the gain/loss of ordained pastors? How do they compare to the general trends you’re talking about above?
No problem with the question… Glad to take them on.
For the summary statistics there are only three categories of losses: certificate (transfer), death, other. Everything falls into one of those categories.
These are the reported summary statistics so I would expect excommunication to fall under “other,” and I would expect it to be a very very small percentage of the “other.” In practical terms, you almost never see an excommunication in the PC(USA). In the case of a regular member they are usually pastorally advised to move on, if the session even worries about it in the first place. There has been at least one high-profile case recently but I think that technically in the end the individual was just “removed from the rolls” as a procedural measure against the church not a decision against the individual.
In the case of elders and deacons it is still a rare event. In the cases that I am aware of the individual has usually seen the writing on the wall, “renounced jurisdiction” (gave up the ordained office) and left without being thrown out.
As for the studies of where people go, I know that they have been done, but I don’t have references right off hand. I can tell you that a friend of mine who is much more familiar with this aspect than I am says that 50% of those that leave do not move on to a different church but stop going to church.
For the pastors, in the PC(USA) the number of pastors is growing. (I should point out that I have not consistently used statistics sheets and there is the “official” set, and then there is another from the research office I sometimes point to. The official sheet has a lot more detail including the pastors and churches.) Between 2006 and 2007 the number of churches in the PC(USA) declined by 83, the number of ordained pastors grew by 8. Ironic that we keep having more pastors for less members. It would seem that the pastors are not doing their jobs.
Hope this helps
Steve