Category Archives: Analysis

The 2019 PC(USA) Membership Numbers – Our Annual Rorschach Test

A couple of days ago the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) released the Comparative Summaries of Statistics for 2019 and the corresponding press release and narrative. This does, of course, provide new data points for my growing data set and gives me an opportunity for some statistical analysis which is, for me, a “source of innocent merriment.”

In a general sense, the results are predictable – The membership of the two branches that would become the PC(USA) in 1983 peaked in 1965 at 4.25 million members and has been declining ever since. In terms of the direction of change in 2019, it is still a decline. But the good news is that the decline rate has been decreasing. What that means we will get to in a minute.

Specifically, the PC(USA) finished 2019 with 1,302,043 members, a net decrease of 50,635 or 3.7%. There were 45,079 members added to the rolls, roughly half through Professions of Faith and Reaffirmations. There were 91,552 members lost, with about 13% transferring to other churches, 26% moved to the Church Triumphant, and the bulk, almost two-thirds or 56,133 members were deleted from the rolls for other reasons.

The number of churches decreased by 120, or 1.3%, to 9041. The statistics show that 19 were organized, 95 were closed, none transferred in, and 24 transferred out to other denominations. There are also 110 New Church Developments/Fellowships – a decrease of six, and 176 New Worshipping Communities – an increase of 18.

So what does this look like in the context of the last 27 years:

Year	Num Churches	Num Change	% Change	Num Members	Num Change	% Change	Mem/Church
1993	11,416	-40	-0.3%	2,742,192	-38,214	-1.4%	240.2
1994	11,399	-17	-0.1%	2,698,262	-43,930	-1.6%	236.7
1995	11,361	-38	-0.3%	2,665,276	-32,986	-1.2%	234.6
1996	11,328	-33	-0.3%	2,631,466	-33,810	-1.3%	232.3
1997	11,295	-33	-0.3%	2,609,191	-22,275	-0.8%	231.0
1998	11,260	-35	-0.3%	2,587,674	-21,517	-0.8%	229.8
1999	11,216	-44	-0.4%	2,560,201	-27,473	-1.1%	228.3
2000	11,178	-38	-0.3%	2,525,330	-34,871	-1.4%	225.9
2001	11,141	-37	-0.3%	2,493,781	-31,549	-1.2%	223.8
2002	11,097	-44	-0.4%	2,451,969	-41,812	-1.7%	221.0
2003	11,064	-33	-0.3%	2,405,311	-46,658	-1.9%	217.4
2004	11,019	-45	-0.4%	2,362,136	-43,175	-1.8%	214.4
2005	10,959	-60	-0.5%	2,313,662	-48,474	-2.1%	211.1
2006	10,903	-56	-0.5%	2,267,118	-46,544	-2.0%	207.9
2007	10,820	-83	-0.8%	2,209,546	-57,572	-2.5%	204.2
2008	10,751	-69	-0.6%	2,140,165	-69,381	-3.1%	199.1
2009	10,657	-94	-0.9%	2,077,138	-63,027	-2.9%	194.9
2010	10,560	-97	-0.9%	2,016,091	-61,047	-2.9%	190.9
2011	10,466	-94	-0.9%	1,952,287	-63,804	-3.2%	186.5
2012	10,262	-204	-1.9%	1,849,496	-102,791	-5.3%	180.2
2013	10,038	-224	-2.2%	1,760,200	-89,296	-4.8%	175.4
2014	9,829	-209	-2.1%	1,667,767	-92,433	-5.2%	169.7
2015	9,642	-187	-1.9%	1,572,660	-95,107	-5.7%	163.1
2016	9,451	-191	-2.0%	1,482,767	-89,893	-5.7%	156.9
2017	9,304	-147	-1.6%	1,415,053	-67,714	-4.6%	152.1
2018	9,161	-143	-1.5%	1,352,678	-62,375	-4.4%	147.7
2019	9,041	-120	-1.3%	1,302,043	-50,635	-3.7%	144.0

So what is one of the reactions to the 2019 data? The headline on the PC(USA) news article from the Office of the General Assembly is “PC(USA) statistics show a leveling off in membership decline.”

So yes, from the peaks in the 2016 numbers the rate of decline for both churches and members has shown a consistent decrease in the rate of decline. So things are getting better. But are they levelling off? Let’s look a little bit closer.

Both the number of churches and the number of members had a somewhat consistent decline for the first part of this time period through about 2004. The membership decline was creeping up but still hung below 2%/year. The rate of decline in the number of congregations was similar hanging at or below 0.4%/year. Both then show a bit of acceleration up to 2011 with the rate of church decline rising to just below 1%/year and the membership decline rising to a bit over 3%/year. Then in 2012, there was a rapid increase to a plateau that continues in the 2016 data. The rate of decline of the number of congregations was right around 2.0%/year and the decline in total membership was generally above 5%/year. Since 2016 the numbers have been dropping but still hang at numbers above the earlier periods on the chart. Here are the graphs for the number of churches and the number of members.

So is it leveling off? Well, it could be, but a good likely scenario is that it returns to the lower rates of the 1990’s.

Another reaction comes from the Stated Clerk J. Herbert Nelson. The OGA article includes his full statement concerning the 2019 statistics in which he begins by saying “For the first time in more than thirty years, the PC(USA) is not reporting membership losses. Our membership remains at 1.3 million. This is good news!“

So yes, if you work with two significant figures and truncate after the two significant figures that is a correct statement. But, if you use standard scientific practice for significant figures we have to remember that the 2018 number to three significant figures is 1.35×10⁶ (1.35 million members). The rule for rounding is that if the first insignificant figure is a five it gets rounded down if the next number is even and up if the next number is odd. In other words, it gets rounded so that the last significant figure is even. So, in this case, the PC(USA) membership in 2018 to two significant figures is 1.4 million. (Remember, I am a science professor in my other life.)

However, one of the rules of significant figures is that exact numbers, which a count of the membership of the church would be, has all numbers significant so there is a difference between 1,352,678 and 1,302,043.

OK, now my turn to take the Rorschach test.

Looking at the numbers I see two things. First, I see a decline rate that is returning to mainline/oldline baseline. Over a decade ago I looked at the seven denominations that are classified as the mainline, or sometimes oldline, churches. At the time some of them, like the PC(USA) and the Episcopal Church were heavily embroiled in controversy. Others, like the American Baptist Church and at the time the United Methodist Church, had little internal controversy. My conclusion was that there was a common baseline decline in the branches of a bit less than 1% per year. In addition, the more controversy a denomination was involved with the higher the decline rate. For the PC(USA) this peaked a few years ago with a total decline of 5.7%/year so an additional decline of about 5%/year beyond the baseline rate.

It is probably time to return to that analysis, but the first thing I see, as I mentioned above, is not so much a levelling off of the PC(USA) decline rate but return to the slow steady decline of around 0.5%-1.0% of the late ’90s in the table above.

The second thing I see is in that right-hand column of the table. As the PC(USA) decline continues the church loses members at a proportionally higher rate than churches are closed. Between 1993 and 2019 the average number of members per church has dropped by almost 100 members/church from 240.2 members/church to 144.0 members/church. Graphically, the change looks like this.

To look at this from another point of view, if the 2019 membership change is thought of as the dismissal of 120 churches and their members in 2019, the average number of members dismissed in those 120 churches would be 422 members.

On the one hand there is an important place for small churches. They are important to small rural communities and for niche ministries and settings. However, a denomination full of small churches would challenge the sustainability of the Presbyterian concept of the graded councils from the local to the national level.

The Church of Scotland in the radical restructuring plan that was initiated two years ago and adopted last year realized this. This plan restructures the Kirk broadly so that it is more flexible and sustainable. This restructuring includes consolidating churches and merging presbyteries. But an important difference is that the Church of Scotland has authority for these decisions set at the national level while American Presbyterianism locates ultimate authority at the presbytery level. That makes broad decisions like this more challenging.

There are probably two more topics to mention briefly. The first is the rough projection of where the PC(USA) is headed. If indeed the church is headed towards the mainline decline trend, if in five years it reaches a church decline trend of 0.3%/yr and a membership decline of 1.0% that would suggest that in 50 years the PC(USA) will have about 7,500 churches and 730,000 members and so would have just under 100 members/church.

The other thing to mention is that the PC(USA)’s new model for ministry is not in these numbers. As mentioned earlier it reported 110 new church developments and fellowships in 2019 and 176 New Worshiping Communities. That is a slight decrease in the first and a slight increase in the second. The New Worshiping Communities (NWC) are dynamic, non-traditional forms of community. Many of these are pretty small, some are short-lived, and generally, their creative and dynamic nature means that they don’t have members in the typical sense of Presbyterian churches. So their attendee numbers are not reflected in the annual statistics.

So there we have this year’s statistical report with three views of what is seen in the numbers. Lots of other numbers in that Comparative Summary of Statistics if you want to take the Rorschach test and see what you see in the data. Have fun.

Great Reformers And Personality Tests

2 Replies

I have a bunch of writing projects with deadlines at the moment, so I ended up missing the date for my blog post for Reformation Day. I had planned to go lighter this year since I put a lot of effort into “Reformation Month” last year. So when I heard the conversation I quote below it got me thinking that it would be a good starting point for a “and now for something completely different” Reformation Day post.

It has become a bit of a parlor game in my household at the moment to take enneagram tests and analyze each other using those. I am not a big fan of them but a couple of other family members are. And it is worth mentioning that all this was triggered by our pastor trying to use this with our church session. But that is a post for another day.

Now, if you are not familiar with the enneagram, it is a system for ~~classifying~~ ~~your personality~~ categorizing root motivations based on nine different types and ~~relationships between the types~~ includes how people can act in a variety of dynamic situations. In its use in spiritual formation it is intended for guiding personal growth and transformation. (For more info you can investigate some of the sites I link to in this post.) [The paragraph above was updated based on input from an experienced source.]

One family member mentioned a comment made on the podcast Typology that he correctly thought would interest me. While a typical episode of this podcast drives me crazy, it was an interesting historical remark that was made. In Episode 15 the guest, Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and one of the U.S. authorities on the enneagram, comments on Martin Luther (starting at the 18:52 mark):

“I’m never sure if Martin Luther, since we’re about to celebrate him, if he was a One or an Eight. What do you think? Have you ever analyzed Luther?”

The host, Ian Cron, replies (slightly cleaned-up):

“I think arguably an Eight given what I would call his guilt-free delight in the world – the beer drinking, the excess, the sin boldly. You know, that kind of energy.”

Fr. Rohr then continues:

“Ya, and that’s what undid him. You know, I did a conference right before I turned 70 with the Lutherans in Switzerland and the title of the conference was “Was Luther a Mystic?” And the consensus among these Lutheran theologians was – I wouldn’t have dared said it – they said he started as one. He clearly had some early Christ experiences. But then in the second half of his life, his anger so controlled him that he became a dualistic thinker himself. That was their analysis. It’s unfortunate. And of course, we Catholics have to take the blame for that because we painted him into a corner where he had to defend himself. And you paint an Eight into a corner and they come out with claws bared.

My guess would be Luther was probably an Eight.”

He then goes on to more briefly comment on John Calvin:

“Calvin maybe more a One.”

So what is the consensus out there for Luther and Calvin? Based on a web search Luther is more likely to be classified a One than an Eight with The Change Works, Enneagram Central, Saturate, Enneagram Explorations, and Typology Central favoring that type. And interestingly John Calvin frequently appears on most of those same lists of Ones.

So what are the characteristics of a One? Well, one of the things about the enneagram is that from the way it was introduced and has evolved there is no one central authority for the descriptions, although there is pretty much a consensus. People seem to like the Enneagram Institute, so here is a snippet of their description of a Type One. Type One is, appropriately, the Reformer (in their classification – different sources use different labels). They are “The Rational, Idealistic Type: Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic.”

Ones are conscientious and ethical, with a strong sense of right and wrong. They are teachers, crusaders, and advocates for change: always striving to improve things, but afraid of making a mistake. Well-organized, orderly, and fastidious, they try to maintain high standards, but can slip into being critical and perfectionistic. They typically have problems with resentment and impatience. At their Best: wise, discerning, realistic, and noble. Can be morally heroic.

For comparison, a Type Eight is the Challenger. They are “The Powerful, Dominating Type: Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational.”

Eights are self-confident, strong, and assertive. Protective, resourceful, straight-talking, and decisive, but can also be ego-centric and domineering. Eights feel they must control their environment, especially people, sometimes becoming confrontational and intimidating. Eights typically have problems with their tempers and with allowing themselves to be vulnerable. At their Best: self- mastering, they use their strength to improve others’ lives, becoming heroic, magnanimous, and inspiring.

Making a choice is left as an exercise for the reader. If it helps, the Enneagram Institute has a page on distinguishing Ones and Eights. As they say in there “Ones try to convert those who resist them: Eights try to power through them.”

So what about that other great personality metric, the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator. For Luther, he regularly appears on lists of famous people who were INTJ, including one from Personality Club, and another from IDR Labs.

The consensus opinion on John Calvin was that he was also an INTJ, with a Christianity Today article, and an essay on Calvin by Timothy George that put him as that type. And in looking at this, I found an interesting article on how the Meyers-Briggs basic outlook varies with how John Calvin would frame the question in his Institutes.

So in fact, the purpose of the personality assessments is to know ourselves better. And this question is part of the first chapter of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion that addresses “The Knowledge of God and of Ourselves Mutually Connected.” So the final word today goes to Calvin and the last line from that chapter…

But though the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are bound together by a mutual tie, due arrangement requires that we treat of the former in the first place, and then descend to the latter.

Who Speaks For The Church – Or At Least The General Assembly?

Last Week In The Presbyterian Church In Ireland: Everyday Disciples And Essentials

2 Replies

Last week was a busy one for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland with their Special Assembly on Everyday Disciples and in that the roll-out of the new Essentials discipleship program. A close look at the Essentials material in a moment, but first a brief review of the Special Assembly.

Beginning on Monday of last week, over 600 people gathered at Ulster University in Coleraine for this Special Assembly around the theme Everyday Disciples and focusing on discipleship. It was not a deliberative assembly but a four-day event to prepare and energize members in their own discipleship walks as well as reaching out to others. In the church’s news article in advance of the Assembly the Moderator of the GA, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Noble McNeely is quoted as saying:

As Christians, Jesus calls us to be His disciples in all aspects of our lives. The title and theme of our Special Assembly is in recognition of the increasing necessity for today’s followers of Jesus to be equipped by the Church to be effective disciple-makers in their various spheres of everyday life.

Many of us however, recognise that we have perhaps concentrated too much on programmes and activities in our churches and have not been as strong on providing the essentials to facilitate making mature disciples.

The daily keynote addresses from our two principal speakers and the range of seminars available will help us to consider seriously the need for daily discipleship. It will also help us to understand better how we can be involved in a 21st century reformation of church and society.

The two principal speakers were pastors from U.S. churches who spoke on the theme of discipleship with an emphasis on a believer’s life and the local church. The first speaker was Rev. Randy Pope, pastor of Perimeter Church (with the PCA) in Atlanta. The second speaker was the Rev. Dr. Ray Ortlund, Jr., pastor of Immanuel Church in Nashville. More on the speakers from both the PCI news article as well as one from the Belfast Telegraph.

I saw no indication of a live stream of the event but there was a healthy (OK, one non sequitur has crept in) and helpful Twitter presence so I would encourage you to check out the hashtag #everydaydisciples. And tracking there, from all that I saw the conference had a laser-sharp focus on the topic of discipleship and good quality keynote sessions and workshops. I appreciated the high quality of the stream of tweets but have resisted pasting any in here.

At the end of the Special Assembly a new discipleship program called Essentials was rolled out. I have purchased a copy and am favorably impressed with the focus, quality and helpfulness of this resource.

So, for your £12 you get the eight videos and five participants books with additional books £1 each. There is also a leader’s guide and a preaching plan included. And with the purchase you get access to the videos online for download in a number of different formats.

As you might have guessed it is an eight session program with each session taking the participants through a step in the journey of Jesus with his disciples. Here is a breakdown of the sessions:

Come – COME AND SEE: Discipleship starts with awareness of Jesus before activity for Him
Call – FOLLOW ME: The essential call of discipleship is to follow our Master Jesus
Community – SHARE LIFE: We can’t do discipleship alone. We learn to follow Jesus as part of His church
Culture – STEP OUT: Disciples don’t escape or embrace culture, but engage with it as they follow Jesus
Courage – SPEAK UP: Disciples aren’t just called to live well in culture, but also to speak up for Jesus
Cost – DENY YOURSELF: Following Jesus brings a cost in every area of our lives
Challenge – GO MAKE: The challenge of becoming disciples who make disciples
Continue – LOOK UP: We never graduate from needing Jesus but continue following him in every age and stage of life

I really liked this progression and thought it was a useful and logical way to develop the concept of discipleship. And it should be clear from the progression above that this resource, like the Special Assembly, was about both our own discipleship as well as equipping disciples to make disciples of others. I also liked that this is not a prescribed formula for doing discipleship but a journey and way of life from which helping others develop as disciples is an integral part.

Each session has a Before You Watch opening discussion with some intro questions and the Bible reading. The book gives a basic idea to keep in mind during the video and provides space in the book to jot down thoughts or comments. And in the After You Watch section a time to respond and discuss based on the five concepts of React, Reflect, Apply, Story, and Respond.

Each video is about 15 minutes long (plus or minus about one minute) and are all follow the same pattern, opening with a brief intro, then the Bible passage followed by a couple of individuals commenting and reflecting on the Bible reading. Finally, just under half the video is a member, or in a couple cases two members together, telling a part of their spiritual journey relevant to the topic of that session. The videos are well produced, the timing of them and the segments in them right for the audience and generally interesting to watch. The almost four minute promo video on the web page uses segments from all the videos and gives you a flavour for them.

It is worth saying up front that this series is not intended for a world-wide audience as it is produced for individuals from Ireland with themes and stories that resonate within their cultural setting and experience. For example, near the beginning of video three as the speaker talks about Christian community he makes reference to a number of experiences in that society in saying “Doesn’t Jesus know this is Ireland… We do division really well.” The cultural focus is definitely a benefit in getting the material out to the intended audience. For me it detracted little from the videos but if used in another setting some interpretation may be necessary if viewers are unfamiliar with the cultural themes.

Overall I was very favorably impressed with this resource. High quality and well thought out. I can only say that I went through the whole thing on my own and not with a group but it seems like it should work well. It is not high-pressure and the spiritual journeys shared in the everyday members of the church are well chosen and engaging and would seem to give plenty to talk about in a group discussion.

There were a couple of minor items that did jump out at me: One was that the scripture passages which, while appropriate, were not in chronological order. While session one and session two did come from early in the Gospels, session 3 then jumps to the end of John and the High-Priestly Prayer to talk about community. If the over-arching framework is disciples on their journey being developed by Jesus something more in order might have been more powerful. The second is pretty minor and that is a mention by the person in session 5 in telling his story talking about leading someone to Christ and the Sinners Prayer. It is a quick passing reference and not in the spirit of “this is how its done” but in some Reformed circles that particular prayer is not highly regarded for various reasons. (e.g. Ligonier, TGC)

Finally a couple of nice touches I liked in the series. First, the series is bookended in forming disciples – at the beginning the call to become one and at the end the commission to go and make them. And second, the final session ends in prayer – a good conclusion and reminder of where, as disciples, we are grounded.

Bottom line – I liked the series and found it a good framework and model for such a resource. Clearly some significant thought and testing has gone into designing it and producing it. Yes, it is produced with a particular cultural setting in mind but I think the value of this outweigh’s the downside of portability. And you can’t argue with the cost and I have not figured out if the production budget is depending on volume of sales or subsidy, but I suspect the latter. However, I can say I enjoyed working through the series on my own and can say I was stretched a bit by it.

My thoughts for what they are worth. Your mileage may vary… (to use one of our cultural idioms 😉 )

PC(USA) Membership Numbers For 2016

27 Replies

A couple of days ago the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) released the summary of statistics for 2016 and the corresponding narrative. This does of course provide new data points for my growing data set and gives me an opportunity for some statistical analysis which is, for me, a “source of innocent merriment.”

On the one hand, it is tempting to just tell you that if you read my analyses from the last couple of years you can move on since there is really nothing new in this year’s numbers. The bottom line is just about the same as 2015 and 2014 – number of churches down 2.0% and membership down 5.7%. OK, you are welcome to move on now if you want.

On the other hand, the commentary – some might refer to it as the spin – from the OGA invokes their new slogan, motto, mantra, tag line, I am not sure what they are calling it, regarding the PC(USA) that “We are not dying, we are Reforming.” There is an interesting statistical facet on that so in the second part I will drill down into that a bit.

But first, let’s run the numbers. Here is what I have for the last 24 years:

Year	Num Churches	Num Change	% Change	Num Members	Num Change	% Change
1993	11,416	-40	-0.3%	2,742,192	-38,214	-1.4%
1994	11,399	-17	-0.1%	2,698,262	-43,930	-1.6%
1995	11,361	-38	-0.3%	2,665,276	-32,986	-1.2%
1996	11,328	-33	-0.3%	2,631,466	-33,810	-1.3%
1997	11,295	-33	-0.3%	2,609,191	-22,275	-0.8%
1998	11,260	-35	-0.3%	2,587,674	-21,517	-0.8%
1999	11,216	-44	-0.4%	2,560,201	-27,473	-1.1%
2000	11,178	-38	-0.3%	2,525,330	-34,871	-1.4%
2001	11,141	-37	-0.3%	2,493,781	-31,549	-1.2%
2002	11,097	-44	-0.4%	2,451,969	-41,812	-1.7%
2003	11,064	-33	-0.3%	2,405,311	-46,658	-1.9%
2004	11,019	-45	-0.4%	2,362,136	-43,175	-1.8%
2005	10,959	-60	-0.5%	2,313,662	-48,474	-2.1%
2006	10,903	-56	-0.5%	2,267,118	-46,544	-2.0%
2007	10,820	-83	-0.8%	2,209,546	-57,572	-2.5%
2008	10,751	-69	-0.6%	2,140,165	-69,381	-3.1%
2009	10,657	-94	-0.9%	2,077,138	-63,027	-2.9%
2010	10,560	-97	-0.9%	2,016,091	-61,047	-2.9%
2011	10,466	-94	-0.9%	1,952,287	-63,804	-3.2%
2012	10,262	-204	-1.9%	1,849,496	-102,791	-5.3%
2013	10,038	-224	-2.2%	1,760,200	-89,296	-4.8%
2014	9,829	-209	-2.1%	1,667,767	-92,433	-5.2%
2015	9,642	-187	-1.9%	1,572,660	-95,107	-5.7%
2016	9,451	-191	-2.0%	1,482,767	-89,893	-5.7%

So what have we got? Both the number of churches and the number of members had a somewhat consistent decline for the first part of this time period through about 2004. The membership decline was creeping up but still hung below 2%/year. The rate of decline in the number of congregations was much more stable hanging a bit below 0.2%/year. Both then show a bit of a acceleration up to 2011 with the rate of church decline rising to just below 1%/year and the membership decline rising to a bit over 3%/year. Then in 2012 there was a rapid increase to a plateau that continues in the 2016 data. The rate of decline of the number of congregations has been right around 2.0%/year, the number for 2016, and the decline in total membership has generally been above 5%/year, with the 2016 number at 5.7%, a tie with the previous year for highest rate in the time period.

It is a bit interesting to see the headline of the narrative from the OGA: “PC(USA) membership decline continues but slows.” The answer to this headline is a bit of yes, and no. They are correct that in terms of net numbers the membership loss in 2016 is the lowest that it has been in three years. Good news? Not really, because as noted above the decreasing total membership number means there are fewer members to lose so the net number is magnified and the rate of decline, as expressed in percentage loss, is actually among the highest it has been.

Moving on, let me make some comments based on the slogan “We are not dying. We are Reforming.”

One important aspect of this is that the annual statistical reports and these summary statistics are more and more missing a developing component of the denomination. These reports reflect traditional congregations, but the PC(USA) is developing New Worshiping Communities which are not in the reports. While not yet substantial enough to offset the significant losses in the traditional congregations they do reflect one of the ways the denomination is trying to reform itself.

The second aspect, and one of the reasons I have posted the long timeline above, is what is happening to the denomination with the membership changes. Going back to 2000 I have the reports on categories of membership gains and losses. Members are gained through transfer, affirmation of faith, and “other.” Similarly, losses are counted in transfers to other churches, transfer to the Church Triumphant (id est, deaths), and again, the ever popular “other.” In the case of losses this can generally be though of as people who walk out the door and don’t come back.

So, at the end of 2000 the PC(USA) counted 2,525,330 members. In the intervening 16 years they gained 328,519 members by affirmation of faith of those 17 and younger. There were gains of 638,308 from affirmation of faith of those 18 and older. From transfers in it was 444,527 members gained and from other it was 200,440. So the total new members received in those 16 years was 1,611,794.

Going the other way, 573,098 were transferred to churches in other denominations, 528,030 joined the Church Triumphant, and 1,553,301 are in the other category. The total losses were 2,654,429. It is interesting to note that this is just slightly higher than the total membership in 2000. There is not much that can be done to stop, or induce to come back to church, the members lost to death, so the losses from transfers and walking away are 2,126,399.

My point, related to the reforming aspect, is that with turnover of this magnitude the PC(USA) of 2016 is not the same PC(USA) of 2000. That is not to say that aren’t some of those members from 2000 still around. But it must be acknowledged that unless there are a lot of people who leave and return the number that flow through the denomination is fairly high. (And I would note that there are some of the leave and return, as evidenced in my own church when there is a pastoral transition.)

If you want a graphical depiction of how this develops with time, here is one that I put together. It is a bit simplistic because all losses come out of the year 2000 total membership (the “Base Membership” in the figure). And at any given time the total membership of the PC(USA) would be the Base Membership plus the Members Added – the top edge of the orange indicated by the arrow on the right side of the figure.

It is a simple first-order model but it helps to show the interplay of the gains and losses how the losses build up with time. There is significant membership flow and so membership turnover is one way the PC(USA) is reforming.

To really consider the membership dynamics a more multidimensional model is needed that considers losses in both categories and that some gains may be individuals in a previous year’s losses. If I find some time I might play around a bit with modeling this with more parameters. Definitely would make losses proportional between the Base Membership and the Members Added. Maybe add a bit of reentry into membership from the Other and Transfer Losses. And if the demographics of the latest Presbyterian Panel are reported some estimate could be made of the retention time in the denomination. (Yes, there is a reason this is starting to sound like an aquifer model.)

I will note in closing that on a first look I see no changes in trends in this year’s numbers compared to the last few years. One interesting trend that continues is the increase in the number of candidates ( 2014 – 562; 2015 – 632; 2016 – 653) and the decrease in the number of ordinations ( 2014 – 292; 2015 – 249; 2016 – 215). Watching the Church of Scotland General Assembly this week they have a number of empty charges (id est, called positions) and mentioned this over-supply in the PC(USA) as a possible source of trained pastors.

And so we look forward to the release of the detailed comparative statistics in the fall to get a better breakdown on some of these summary numbers. But for now, at least as I read the reported numbers, it appears to be a bit of status quo in the PC(USA).

Stay tuned…

And now back to our regularly scheduled General Assembly tracking.

The Curious Case Of The Kuyper Prize

1 Reply

So apparently the tent is not that big…

But I am getting ahead of myself here.

First, in case you need the elevator pitch on what is happening, Princeton Theological Seminary announced that the Abraham Kuyper Lecture would be delivered by a Presbyterian pastor of some note, the Rev. Timothy Keller who is about to retire as the senior pastor of a church in New York City. A bit of a ruckus arose because TE Keller is apparently not the right type of Presbyterian pastor – it turns out that he is a member of the Presbyterian Church in America. An initial attempt by the President of PTS, TE Craig Barnes, to explain the situation apparently did not help and so, with the gracious consent of both the Kuyper Committee and TE Keller the prize will not be awarded this year but in the interest of academic freedom and hearing a variety of voices Mr. Keller will still give the lecture.

When I initially heard about the prize I must admit that I was a bit surprised at the choice of Tim Keller. On the one hand, considering the description of the prize is:

The Abraham Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life is awarded each year to a scholar or community leader whose outstanding contribution to their chosen sphere reflects the ideas and values characteristic of the Neo-Calvinist vision of religious engagement in matters of social, political and cultural significance in one or more of the ‘spheres’ of society. A condition of the Prize is that the recipient deliver a lecture on a topic appropriate to the aims of the Center. This lecture normally opens the annual spring conference, which is usually on a related theme.

Tim Keller – with his pastoral and missiology work – has easily done this. He founded, developed and put a program of expansion in place for church planting in an urban setting. If you want a statistic here, his multi-site congregation is roughly half the size of the combined total of the 101 PC(USA) congregations around him in New York City Presbytery. He has left a mark on Manhattan of “social, political and cultural significance.” On the other hand, my jaw dropped a bit at the chutzpah of a unit of PTS inviting a Presbyterian of another flavor to give the lecture knowing that he did not share some of what are becoming essential tenets of the modern PC(USA). It was no surprise to me that the controversy broke out.

Several strong voices of opposition appeared on the internet regarding the decision and how TE Keller was a part of a religious tradition that, while Presbyterian in governance, did not model the inclusiveness now expected in the PC(USA) and at its seminaries. Exempli gratia: Carol Howard Merritt, Traci Smith, and a faculty, staff and alumni online petition.

On the other hand, I was appreciative of the Kuyper Center reaching out to TE Keller and although I understand the motivation behind the criticism I was saddened to see such a strong reaction. I will not deny his overall theological views and their incompatibility with the modern mainline, but I want to take a few steps back and consider all this in a wider temporal and spacial context. A few points came to mind.

First, the topic of the lecture is not about what we as American Presbyterians disagree on but on something which we share regarding the social impact of the church. I believe that the walls that American Presbyterians have put up in the name of orthodoxy do a disservice to the proclamation of the Gospel and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world. (I sometimes wonder if we are a bit too much like an award winning heretic joke.)

Second, Tim Keller seems like a reasonable leader for those in the PC(USA) to reach out to if the point is to develop this dialog. Within each denomination the membership is spread across a range of opinions on any given issue and it is helpful to remember that within the PCA there are some who became a part of it when the Reformed Presbyterian Evangelical Synod merged with the PCA in 1982 and those from the RPES gave up their ordination of women. While TE Keller did not come in through that branch, his church has been the target of criticism for having deaconesses serving along side deacons in the church leadership. As the PC(USA) knows very well, church beliefs evolve and maybe an evolution will be seen in the PCA’s stance with time. And I dare say, we acknowledge there are those within the PC(USA) who do not affirm the latest moves towards inclusiveness and might there actually be a few individuals who are still not fully in favor of the ordination of women?

Finally, what does this controversy say to PC(USA) ecumenical partners, many in Latin America and Africa who still do not ordain women? Is this saying, there are certain non-negotiables in what we say presbyterianism means and you don’t fit it? Or is this broadcasting a double standard for what it means to be an American Presbyterian versus a global Presbyterian?

I should probably finish by saying there has been a lot of criticism of PTS for the flip-flop and to a wider audience I suspect the perception is turning out more negative than positive. Again, Exempli gratia: Owen Strachan, Denny Burk, and Rod Dreher. In the mainstream media there are stories from the Washington Times and the Deseret News picked up the RNS story. And it appears in Abrahan Kuyper’s homeland a Dutch news site has picked it up as well.

And so with that, we will see how this all goes. One commentator has even noted that Abraham Kuyper would not qualify for the prize named for him under these new unwritten expectations.

So how large is the tent? Hang on to your hats as we try to find out.

A First Look At Some New PC(USA) Numbers

8 Replies

Over the last couple of weeks the Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has released two sets of data that will be the focus of attention at the upcoming General Assembly. At some point in the next few of months I hope to really drill down into the data some more, but to do that there is a third report that I am waiting for so a detailed analysis will have to wait for its release. But because they will be the focus of attention in a couple of weeks, here are some initial comments.

The first one I will look at is the annual report of the summary statistics for the denomination including the 2015 membership data. To some degree this is either “move along, nothing to see here” or a case of Alfred North Whitehead’s famous quote “It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.” But here we go anyways.

The money quote is always the totals so the PC(USA) finished 2015 with 9,642 churches, 20,077 teaching elders and 1,572,660 active members. That is a 1.9% drop in churches, fairly consistent with the 2.1% and 2.2% in the two preceding years. The number of teaching elders declined by 1.5% after declines of 0.9% in 2014 and 1.4% in 2013. The membership decline has been rising slightly with a 4.8% drop in 2013, a 5.3% drop in 2014 and then a 5.7% drop this past year.

Often times the story is “look how many churches and people are leaving the PC(USA) for more conservative denominations.” Now I will not deny that is an issue in these numbers but let’s add a little perspective here. The statistics show that in 2015 the PC(USA) dismissed 104 churches to other denominations. In the same year they dissolved/closed 91 churches. In general, over the last four years the number of churches dismissed has typically been roughly the same as the number closed. (2012: 86 closed, 110 dismissed; 2013: 74 closed, 148 dismissed; 2014: 110 closed, 101 dismissed) Over those four years there have been 13, 24, 15 and 14 churches organized.

It is the same story with membership losses. While the church lost 47,728 members by certificate of transfer in 2015, 27,469 joined the Church Triumphant (death) and 79,002 were lost to “other”, i.e. walking out the door and being dropped from the rolls. In general, the number of members transferred has been about half the number in the other category over the last several years. For perspective, the total gains by profession of faith, transfer, and other over the last year were 59,092.

In case you have not picked up where I am going with this my point is that dismissals are only part – roughly half – of the problem. Even ignoring dismissals of congregations and members the replacement rate in the PC(USA) is still well below the losses to dissolutions, deaths and disappearances.

There is another important component to keep in mind and that is the statistics use an old model and do not reflect a new paradigm. The major development emphasis in the PC(USA) right now is the 1001 New Worshiping Communities and as most of those are not chartered and do not have regular members they are not in these numbers. I could not find a specific current number but the number of 1001 NWCs appears to be between 250 and 300 at this time.

One piece of good news in the numbers is that for 2015 the total giving was up by 0.5%. With the decrease in membership this means that the per member giving rose 6.6% from $1043 to $1112.

The second report that was issued is the final report on The Church In The 21st Century. This resulted from a church-wide consultation and conversation on the denomination’s identity and where the PC(USA) should head. The report itself focuses on an online survey to which over 3000 members responded. There are two versions, a report only version with OGA annotations called When We Gather At The Table, and The Church in the 21st Century report from Research Services that has the appendix with detailed statistics. While the narrative is very similar, and in places identical in the two reports, I will be working from the latter one for the detailed statistics.

Maybe the most important thing to remember about this report is that it is self-reporting and not a random sample. Here are the two important paragraphs printed in both reports (page 6 of the detailed report):

Because this project invited the input of any and all people and entities of the PC(USA) (individuals, congregations, seminaries, mid-councils, and various affiliated groups [e.g. new worshiping communities, immigrant fellowships]) within a short time frame, creating a probability sample to ensure a representative group of Presbyterians was not feasible. Instead, a convenience sample (that is—a sample of volunteers) was used. As such, we cannot calculate a response rate.

Findings from the resulting convenience sample will not be as generalizable as findings would be if they had been taken from a (random) probability sample. However, an analysis of the demographics of those who participated in the study reveals that the sample somewhat matches the known demographics of Presbyterians as a whole. Exceptions are noted in the Demographics section, which follows.

So here is the caution: You can not take the numbers in this survey and say “According to the survey we know X about the PC(USA).” You can say that we know X about those that responded to the survey.

So does this mean that the survey is not useful? μὴ γένοιτο (by no means) But to consider what it does represent let’s take a look at a couple of points about who responded.

The report in Appendix A gives the results of each question. While I wish they would give the raw numbers we can work with the total responses and percentages of each question. To begin with, there were 3,427 responses and 98% were PC(USA) affiliated so that would be about 3358 PC(USA) individuals. Now, 3,055 submitted an answer to the question of whether they were ordained. Of those, 30% said they were teaching elders so that is about 917 meaning the other 2138 are members of churches. Considering those numbers, that means that 4.6% of teaching elders responded (based on the 2015 numbers discussed above) and 0.14% of members responded.

Let’s drill down on those members for a moment. Of the total of 3,055, 41%, or 1253, are ruling elders. Converting that into percent of members of churches, 59% of those who respondents who are not teaching elders self-identified as ruling elders. For comparison to a more controlled sample, in the 2011 demographic profile of the Presbyterian Panel 36% of members surveyed said they were ordained ruling elders.

In the new report participants were asked to rate their social orientation and theological orientation on a scale of 1 to 7. Based on the responses the report categorized 62% of all participants as socially liberal, 9% neutral and 29% conservative. The question was also asked for theological orientation with 54% liberal, 11% neutral and 35% conservative.

There is no perfect way to compare these results to the denomination as a whole. The question about social orientation has not been asked in previous surveys but the report makes a comparison to a question about political party affiliation in an earlier, more controlled study. A similar theological question was asked in the 2011 demographic profile with 19% of members saying they were liberal or very liberal, 39% saying they were moderate and 39% saying they were conservative or very conservative. The problem is that the earlier numbers are for members while new survey also includes teaching elders, who – based on that same survey question – are known to identify as more liberal, and there is no cross-tabulation or analysis of variance information to back out member versus ruling elder versus teaching elder groupings like the demographic profile does.

Has the denomination grown more theologically liberal? The departure of conservative congregations has almost certainly made this the case. But by 35%? That seems like a stretch. Similarly, has the middle shrunk by 28%? Maybe, but that is hard to understand as well.

Instead it seems more likely that the respondents to the survey are those that are the most connected and care the most about the PC(USA) — a fact that the survey acknowledges. The high response rate of teaching elders and ruling elders relative to members in general certainly seems to show this. By extension then it would follow that those on the theological ends are also more concerned and interested in being heard and those in the middle did not have as great an interest so they have a smaller response rate.

So what this survey says is that a lot of hard-core PC(USA) folks care about the PC(USA). Is it no wonder that when asked why it was important to a respondent to be part of the PC(USA) the top three answers were Theology (41%), Polity/Governance (29%), and Thinking Church/Educated Clergy (24%).

So that is what well-connected and involved members of the PC(USA) care about and see as the denomination’s identity and strengths.

But let me end this with this caution: While the study is a great snapshot of the identity and thoughts of the PC(USA) at this time it is biased towards those that know and care the most about the church. In one sense that is OK, because they are the ones who will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting related to restructuring in the years to come. But in another sense it is a problem because it reflects the status quo. If the PC(USA) is looking to recover and move forward it needs a close examination, more than can be done in one week at GA, ask some hard questions and make some difficult decisions. It is not just closing ranks around what it knows and understands but challenging some of the strongly held beliefs reflected in this report and possibly develop a new identity.

We will see where this goes. Stay tuned…

Postscript: I do want to acknowledge that there is a lot more material in the new identity reports and if you care it is worth a read. While I found it frustrating that more raw data was not released with it there is a lot of interesting info in there. Due to my intended focus of this article, as well as time constraints, I won’t be diving into it more now I may return to it later, probably in regards to how it is received by the General Assembly.

A Closer Look At Denominations And Twitter

Musings On How Big Is The PC(USA) Big Tent – Part 1: Herding Cats?

9 Replies

So I got this research idea over lunch today: I have been considering ways to quantify how big the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) tent really is and I thought that maybe Twitter accounts might be one metric. I am not sure how well this actually does what I want but it was an interesting experiment and so I thought I would share it as a musing.

The idea started when I was thinking about the articles I write as previews for various general assemblies and including the official social media links in the article. There is usually an official Twitter account for the denomination, maybe one for the GA itself, sometimes a news account, a couple of official individuals and typically a ministry agency or two. Check out the Presbyterian Church in Ireland post if you want a good example and one I consider typical.

But thinking about the PC(USA) I knew that it had a bunch more accounts so I started compiling a list. Here is the list of what I found in about an hour of searching. I was surprised at how many different official Twitter accounts the PC(USA) has. Besides the general official one (@Presbyterian) I found the following 37 (in no particular order):

PC(USA) Store https://twitter.com/PCUSAStore
Camps and Conferences https://twitter.com/PCUSAcamps
Special offerings https://twitter.com/PCUSA_SO
Foundation https://twitter.com/Pres_Foundation
General Assembly https://twitter.com/presbyGA
World Mission https://twitter.com/PCUSAMission
Curriculum https://twitter.com/CMP_PCUSA
Youth Ministries https://twitter.com/Youthpcusa
Foundation (Old account) https://twitter.com/PCUSAFDN
Giving Catalog https://twitter.com/PresbyGifts
Recursos PCUSA https://twitter.com/RecursosPCUSA
Presbyterian Women https://twitter.com/PWPCUSA
Presbyterians Today periodical https://twitter.com/presby_today
Presbyterian Hunger Program https://twitter.com/presbyhunger
UKirk Ministries https://twitter.com/ukirkministries
The Presbyterian Leader (appears inactive) https://twitter.com/presbyleader
Compassion, Peace and Justice Ministries https://twitter.com/PresbyterianCPJ
1001 New Worshiping Communities https://twitter.com/1001NWC
Theology and Worship https://twitter.com/TheologyWorship
PC(USA) UN Ministry https://twitter.com/PresbyUN
Presbyterian Peacemaking Program https://twitter.com/PresbyPeaceProg
Research Services (appears to have gone inactive) https://twitter.com/PCUSAResearch
WKJ Books https://twitter.com/wjkbooks
Mission Yearbook for Prayer (inactive?) https://twitter.com/MYB4Prayer
YAV Program https://twitter.com/yavprogram
Board of Pensions https://twitter.com/BoardofPensions
Call to Worship periodical https://twitter.com/Call2Worship
Presbyterian Historical Society https://twitter.com/PresbyHistory
ThoughtfulChristian https://twitter.com/TTC_Thoughts
Unbound Justice periodical https://twitter.com/UnboundJustice
Immigration Issues https://twitter.com/PCUSAImmigrant
Youth Triennium https://twitter.com/PYTRIENNIUM
PC(USA) News (appears to have gone inactive) https://twitter.com/PresbyNews
PC(USA) News (an even older inactive account) https://twitter.com/pcusanews
PC(USA) Washington https://twitter.com/PCUSAWashington
PC(USA) Evangelism (inactive) https://twitter.com/PCUSAEvangelism

[Update: The above list was one lunch-hours work. As I find more I am adding them here:

ACWC (Advocacy Committee on Women’s Concerns) https://twitter.com/ACWCPCUSA

These additions are not reflected in the numbers discussed below. /Update]

Please note that this does not include churches, presbyteries or synods. I did not include accounts for wrapped-up special projects like the MC Commission or the Glory to God Hymnal. It does not include any seminaries or conference centers like Stony Point or Montreat. No affinity groups like APCE or alumni groups like YAV Alumni are in the list. And no individual accounts for officers of the denomination’s entities. It does include both the old and new Presbyterian Foundation accounts as well as two inactive Presbyterian News accounts of different vintages. It also has some periodical publications like Call to Worship, Presbyterians Today and the Mission Year Book for Prayer (which appears to have gone inactive). As I was compiling the list my criteria for inclusion if I did not recognize the entity was whether it had a web page URL that began with pcusa.org or presbyterianmission.org. But to be clear, some that I know are PC(USA) entities have their own branded web URL’s like 1001 New Worshiping Communities with www.onethousandone.org. You are welcome to argue with my include/cut line but the list is massive enough that one or two inclusions or deletions won’t change my musing about it.

Big tent? You have to admit that there is certainly something for everyone in those 38 Twitter accounts – although I am a bit disappointed to see the Evangelism account has not been active for almost four years so that pulls one edge of the tent in a bit. The list can be reduced a bit by removing the six inactive accounts and the three that I see as direct sales accounts (Store, WJK Books, ThoughtfulChristian, but not Giving Catalog). That still leaves 29 active Twitter accounts that cover the wide range of areas the PC(USA) is in. And it should be remembered that some of these represent multiple accounts in the same entity, such as Theology and Worship having a Twitter account for both general items as well as one dedicated to their periodical “Call to Worship.” It is also interesting to observe that neither of the two big top divisions, the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency, have stand-alone accounts but both tweet under the most general @Presbyterian account.

Some thoughts…

With so many sub-areas it does raise questions about the church. There is so much going on has the PC(USA) spread itself too thin, especially in light of declining membership? Do each of these areas end up as its own constituency and so the Big Tent ends up covering a multitude of separate groups with little mixing between them? With limited resources do these different areas compete for scarce resources or does their social media outreach provide the means of providing resources for their ministry?

As the title of this piece implies, when I looked at this list and from my knowledge of the activity on social media, I had to wonder if managing this large assemblage was akin to herding cats. How much does each area define its own mission, goals and objectives versus how much do they work together on a set of well-defined goals and objectives that are related to the mission of the body as a whole? Is there coordination of these accounts around common themes and events or does each sort of work its own themes out and focus on its own activities?

A quick test of this: The next churchwide event is the Big Tent event at the end of the month. I went through the 29 active Twitter feeds and looked to see how many had some reference to Big Tent since May 1. Some had numerous references, some had only one and sometimes that was a retweet. But in total I found 13 of the 29, almost half, had at least one mention of this summer’s churchwide event. I am not sure if that is good or bad but it does suggest there is not strong coordination across the entities regarding churchwide priorities.

OK, I will leave it at that for today. I saw a bunch of other points on which I could collect future data that might make interesting metrics of the big tent nature of the denomination. Maybe I will have time to chase some of those further at a later date. But for now, on to other things.

Brief Note On A California KAPC Civil Appeals Court Decision

3 Replies

About a week ago a California appellate court handed down a decision affirming the trial court decision in the case of Jun Ki Kim et al. (Respondents) v The True Church Members Of The Holy Hill Community Church et al. (Appellants). From here I will use the annotation of Kim v. Church for the parties. The particular church at the center of this is in the Los Angeles area and a member of the Western California Presbytery (WCP) of the Korean American Presbyterian Church (KAPC). The two sides have been involved in a dispute over the church leadership and membership in the WCP since early 2011 which has resulted in a bit of a long and complex ecclesiastical and civil saga.

I am going to keep this relatively brief, or at least not dissect this decision as much as I commonly do, for two reasons. First, the history of the dispute and the presbytery involvement is complicated. In the time frame of the complaint each side has alternately been excommunicated by the presbytery and recognized by the presbytery as the true church. At the present time the Kim group is supported by the presbytery and the Church group is out. In addition, each group when they were in control tried to withdraw from the presbytery and the presbytery did not approve of their actions. Whether a KAPC church can take the action unilaterally I am not sure as I have not found an English language translation of their Book of Church Order (BOCO) to consult.

However, in the end the pivotal event of consequence to the trial was the Church group calling a congregational meeting to vote on whether to secede from the WCP, which they did. The presbytery did not recognize that vote, removed the church leadership, excommunicated the Church side in the dispute and brought the Kim side back into the church and the presbytery. The Church side alleged that the presbytery overstepped their authority and did not follow the process. The trail court said it was an ecclesiastical matter and did not interfere with the steps take by the presbytery.

The second reason that I will only consider part of this decision is that in the specifications of error the first applies to ecclesiastical control while the other two are legal procedural matters regarding admission of evidence and cross-examination.

So the Church group appealed the trial court decision on the three specifications of error including “the court erroneously found in favor of respondents based on appellants’ excommunication from the Holy Hill Community Church (Church) by the Western California Presbytery (WCP).” After reviewing the factual and procedural background, the decision discusses the deference to the presbytery’s excommunication decisions. In the discussion there is a section on the “Overview of law governing judicial deference to ecclesiastical decisions” which is an interesting read about the division of church and state (begins on page 8). The discussion is generally applicable since it focuses almost entirely on the classic U.S. Supreme Court decisions and only at the end brings in the controlling California decision, Episcopal Church Cases (2009).

One of the interesting polity arguments the appellants make is that while there was an internal dispute in 2011 there was no internal dispute in 2013 when the presbytery stepped in and excommunicated them. The court disagreed:

Substantial evidence supports the trial court’s conclusion that there was “an internal church dispute which exists to this day.”… The mere fact that both factions—appellants and respondents—continued to participate in this case demonstrates that the dispute continued for at least as long as the case itself.

The money quote in this decision, at least as far as the ecclesiastical deference is involved, comes right at the very end of this section (pg. 12-13):

Appellants’ last two arguments seek to overturn the trial court’s ruling on the grounds that the WCP lacked authority to excommunicate them either because they validly seceded from the WCP or because no one from the Church had petitioned for any action by the WCP. They argue their secession was valid even though the WCP had previously removed [an] interim moderator, because BOCO rules permitted a “minister from the presbytery” to act as a temporary moderator. However, in arguing the validity of their secession vote, they highlight the entire reason behind the ecclesiastical rule, which is that courts are ill-equipped to interpret ecclesiastical rules, particularly in hierarchical church organizations. No party disputes that the KAPC is a hierarchical organization, consisting of various presbyteries, and that churches are subordinate to both the KAPC and the presbytery to which they belong. (See Concord Christian, supra 132 Cal.App.4th at p. 1409 [explaining distinction between hierarchical and congregational church structures].)

We have already determined that the court correctly deferred to the WCP’s decision as a higher ecclesiastical authority. Similarly, the ecclesiastical rule of judicial deference to the highest authority within a hierarchical church on questions of church governance and church membership requires that we defer to the WCP’s decision that appellants’ vote to secede did not comply with BOCO, and that the WCP had authority to intervene.

Now if this were a property case my usual caveat is that interpretation of church property cases is highly variable from state to state. Not being a property case and primarily a membership case we can see that at least this California court gives the hierarchical church, in this case the presbytery, significant latitude to intervene in this situation.

In reading this decision a detail about KAPC polity jumped out at me. I was interested in a couple lines from a section of the BOCO quoted in the decision concerning church property:

Their argument rests on language in BOCO, which states “[w]hen an internal dispute arises in the local church that is within the jurisdiction of a presbytery, regarding membership in the presbytery and the ownership of church property, the right to manage the church property shall temporarily be placed within the hands of the presbytery until the dispute is resolved and the normal operation of the local church is restored.”

An interesting process in implementing what might be considered a trust clause – in a dispute the property is automatically placed in the hands of the presbytery.

Three legal notes that I probably should mention about the decision. First, not withstanding the property reference I just quoted, this decision stays completely away from property disputes and explicitly says this is not a property dispute so there is no reason for the court to become entangled in the ecclesiastical issues. The ecclesiastical portion of this decision was about process and the power and authority of the presbytery regarding membership and leadership. Second, the WCP was originally a party in this case but following the second schism in 2013 where the Church party was excommunicated they dropped from the case. Finally, this appellate court was very deferential to the findings of the trial court and was primarily judging errors that would have affected the outcome of the trial decision, not just any little errors that might have occurred.

So is this case relevant to other civil litigation over church secessions and responses? Maybe. It is a well written decision that sets out the circumstances for hierarchical deference in this case and could be used as a model for others.

On the other hand, this is a lower appeals court decision in one state and while it might set an example or model, it does not set precedent outside that circuit. Its applicability to the State of California would be more important if further appeals take it to the state supreme court. In addition, most of the other cases I look at include litigation about the property which this decision explicitly says is not in play here. How likely are the circumstances in this one particular situation to be replicated in other disputes? This could be a unique example and other cases may be different enough that its reasoning and model are not applicable.

However, as a polity wonk I found it to be an interesting insight into both the process within the KAPC in situations like this as well as a court dealing with the interface of church and state and the boundaries placed by the U.S. Constitution in the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause.

An interesting diversion. Your mileage may vary.

Now back to the next round of General Assemblies…

The GA Junkie

The Politics of Presbyterianism