Category Archives: Analysis

PC(USA) 2014 Membership Numbers

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At about the same time that I was drilling into the religious affiliation numbers from Pew Research the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of the General Assembly was releasing their membership numbers for 2014. Since the numbers did not show much new, and not much beyond the general pattern of the Pew numbers, I did not rush to print with an analysis. In addition, there was an interesting change in one number that I wanted to find out more about. Now I am ready so let’s dig in.

Between 2013 and 2014 the PC(USA) decreased by 209 congregations, dropping from 10,038 to 9,829. An interesting point in 2014 is that the church returned to dissolving more churches (110) than they dismissed (101). The last two years the dismissed churches (2012: 110; 2013: 148) outnumbered the dissolved churches (2012: 86; 2013: 74). It is important to note that if a church majority unilaterally leaves for another denomination without the formal dismissal from the presbytery they usually either remain on the books if there is a continuing congregation or are listed as dissolved.

Regarding gains, no churches were received from other denominations and 15 churches were chartered. Here again, there are some shadow congregations as many of the 1001 New Worshiping Communities are not chartered and are working under a new model in many presbyteries so that it may be a long time, if at all, before they would be chartered and appear in these stats.

So over all the change in the number of churches in 2014 represents an annual decline of 2.1%.

Membership numbers are also declining from 1,760,200 in 2013 to 1,667,767 in 2014, an annual drop of 5.3%. The largest category of loss continues to be Other – people who leave without transferring – at 78,107. Certificate, or transfer, losses are second at 51,352 and transfers to the Church Triumphant (deaths) were 28,389. The largest categories for gains is profession of faith for those over 18 with 24,051 joining the church and 16,637 transferred in.

The PC(USA) had a total of 65,415 join the church and 157,848 leave for a net loss of 92,433 and a ratio of loss to gain of  2.4.

A couple of comparisons: The Pew survey found that the percentage of individuals in the U.S. who identified as mainline Protestants declined from 18.1% of the total population in 2007 to 14.7% in 2014. Converting that to absolute numbers that would represent a 14.1% decline in the number of members of the mainline. For the PC(USA), the decline was from 2,209,546 in 2007 to 1,667,767 in 2014 or a 24.5% decrease, a number significantly ahead of the mainline as a whole.

The second comparison is with the Church of Scotland. A little while back I looked at their numbers and compared them to the PC(USA). Now that I have the 2014 numbers I can add that last PC(USA) data point and do the full comparison. From 2003 to 2014 the Church of Scotland had a 10.8% decline in the number of churches while the PC(USA) had an 11.2% decline. For membership, the Church of Scotland declined 31.1% and the PC(USA) declined 30.7%. Very close numbers and I have updated the graphs of the ratios from the previous post and you can see they have very similar trends. In both graphs the PC(USA) is in blue and the Church of Scotland in red.

CofS_PCUSA_Congregations_2014b CofS_PCUSA_Membership_2014b

There is one piece of data in the report that really caught my attention: The number of PC(USA) candidates for ministry declined by about 50%. With thanks to the folks at Research Services and Assistant Stated Clerk TE Timothy Cargal for answering my question, this is a known issue and represents a change in reporting method. Rev. Cargal answered this question for someone else in the comments of the report download page:

Most of this change resulted from transition in January 2014 from one reporting system used by the presbyteries that relied on mailed in forms to a new, easier online reporting system. During the transition, many individuals who had left the preparation for ministry process in previous years by withdrawal, removal, or even ordination, but for whom this information had not been reported, were removed from the system. The new system encourages more accurate reporting because presbyteries have direct access to the system and so make more regular use of it. Additionally, those under care can now also see their status in the system through their online exam accounts and encourage their presbyteries to make sure their individual profile records are accurate. We are seeing a decline in inquirers and candidates (just as the Association of Theological Schools is reporting declines in total seminary enrollment across the country), but nothing on the order of 50% in a year.

So, from a statistics point of view this is a reset of the number and no comparison of 2014 to preceding data is relevant. In addition, this is one of my bellwether numbers every year and I have commented on it multiple times in the past. The implication is that previous numbers have lower reliability so my past analyses and comments must now be viewed with a more critical eye.

It is still interesting to note that there are 562 (new system) candidates reported and 292 ordinations last year. But, Rev. Cargal helps us out here in a piece he just wrote for the PC(USA) Preparing for Ministry blog. The new system gives greater granularity and he shares with us that as of mid-May there are 288 candidates that have been certified ready to receive a call. (For those not familiar with the system, “certified ready” is short for the last formal status in the PC(USA) preparation process: certified ready for examination for ordination, pending a call.) So of those 562 candidates just over 50% were certified ready. Furthermore, those 288 are close in number to the 292 ordained last year.

But Rev. Cargal informs us of another interesting data discrepancy: While 292 ordinations were reported on forms to the OGA Records Manager, only 166 teaching elders listed in the online rolls have a 2014 ordination date. It looks like we will have to stay tuned for resolution of that discrepancy.

Looking further at Rev. Cargal’s analysis, he notes that of the 288 certified ready candidates in the system, about 3 of every 10 have been searching for less than a year, 4 of 10 have been searching between one and three years, and the remaining 3 have been searching for more than three years. He also says that for those that have been ordained, 29% were ordained within six months, 30% ordained in the next six months, 25% ordained in the following year and 16% after more than two years.

I am glad to see that better numbers have resolved one of the big issues that I have had with the PC(USA) call system, the high number of candidates and low number of ordinations. I am curious to see the more detailed comparative statistics in the fall to see what additional light those data might provide regarding the current status of the PC(USA) call system.

So is the PC(USA) in a death spiral? Losing 92,000 members a year would bring the church to zero in about 19 years. If the loss is 5% each year over that time in 20 years the church would have a membership of a bit more than 600,000. If it were to return to the average mainline loss from Pew of 2% per year then the PC(USA) would have about 1.1 million members in 20 years.

There are a couple of factors which could work in the PC(USA)’s favor over the next two decades. First, maybe it has its controversy now behind it so going forward the church could find a missional rallying point and work to decrease or reverse the decline. The other is that the PC(USA) has started thinking about what church membership means in the current cultural context and as New Worshiping Communities grow these annual membership reports may not properly reflect the numbers affiliated with the PC(USA). We may end up with a new model of being a church that is less concerned with statistics, per capita and formal membership.

Finally, if you are concerned with the overall decline in church affiliation currently in the news, I would encourage you to consider the long view and have a look at a piece by Tobin Grant, “Religious decline in America? The answer depends on your time frame.”

So, regarding membership and the pastoral preparation and call process there is a lot here for us to do some further thinking about. I am not sure where it will take me next, but this is GA season and with a bunch of GA’s coming up next week more analysis on this will probably wait a while. As I always say… Stay Tuned!

The Latest US Religion Demographic Data

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Ah, the Siren Song of new data…

In case you were not on social media yesterday the Pew Research Center released their new report on American’s Changing Religious Landscape and it is all over the interwebs from national mainstream media, to local news outlets, to the religious news sources to bloggers to the people in the pew. And don’t worry if you have missed it because it probably only quantifies what you already know. I like the way Derek Rishmanwy put it on Twitter:

The cool thing about Pew numbers is how versatile they are; bloggers can wear them with triumph, grief, & multiple shades of schadenfreude!

And a nod to Andrew Wilson and his tweeted observation:

Ironic, a few days after the UK discovered just how inaccurate polls can be, to see so much excitement / distress in the US over … a poll.

All that to say, I initially thought I would just look at it and say “Nothing to see here. Move along folks.”

But remember that my mantra is “I never met a data set I didn’t like,” so casting caution to the wind I jumped into the fray. Now join me as I drill down into a very small piece of the data released with this report.

First, in the event you have not taken a look, let me give you the bullet points everyone else is focusing on. Between the last survey in 2007 and this one in 2014:

  • The proportion of the population identified as part of mainline denominations has dropped 3.4% from 18.1% to 14.7% of the population
  • At the same time those classified as part of evangelical Protestant churches has dropped 0.9% from 26.3% to 25.4%
  • There was a 1.2% gain in non-Christian faiths (now 5.9% of the total population) and a 6.7% gain in what they identify as Unaffiliated which has grown to 22.8% of the population.

Now, Pew favors reporting in percentages since they are most interested in the proportional interplay of groups. But it is instructive in this case to convert this into absolute numbers. So in 2007 the estimated population of the U.S. was about 301.6 million. By 2014 it had grown to 318.9 million. Using the above numbers that means that the mainline decreased from 54.6 million to 46.9 million. However, in an absolute sense the number of evangelical Protestants grew from 79.3 million to 81.0 million.

OK, now my two biggest pet peeves about this data set. (Yes, this data set pushes the limits of meeting data sets I didn’t like).

  • The basic categories for Protestants are mainline, evangelical and historically black. In other words, if you are not the first or the last you must be evangelical – that mushy category that is tough to define. So, for example, you are combining into a single group those that subscribe to the Westminster Standards with those that have “No creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, no name but the name Christian.” I think this classification could be a bit more granular.
  • The category Unaffiliated is similarly a catch-all, at least at least as I look at it. The category includes Atheists (3.1% of the population), Agnostics (4.0%) and Nothing In Particular (15.8%). Furthermore, the Nothing In Particular are further divided into Religion Not Important (8.8%) and Religion Important (6.9%). Jack Jenkins over at Think Progress dissects this corner of the classification a bit more.

Specific to that first bullet point though, Appendix B says:

Protestant respondents who gave a vague answer to denominational questions (e.g., “I am just a Baptist” or “I know I am Methodist but don’t know which specific Methodist denomination I belong to”) were placed into one of the three Protestant traditions based on their race and/or their response to a question that asked if they would describe themselves as a “born-again or evangelical Christian.”

OK, so if I am PC(USA), but don’t know or admit that I am PC(USA) and acknowledge to being born again, I get placed in the Evangelical Presbyterian category. Likewise, someone in another Presbyterian tradition that does not identify which one but does not consider regeneration to be technically the same as being born again, they would be placed in the mainline. To this point the report goes on:

Overall, 38% of Protestants (including 36% of evangelical Protestants, 35% of mainline Protestants and 53% of those in the historically black Protestant tradition) gave a vague denominational identity, necessitating the use of their race or their born-again status (or sometimes both) to categorize them into one of the three major Protestant traditions.

That appendix does list 16 different Evangelical Presbyterian categories that were reported, some of which were specific (exempli gratia: Presbyterian Church in America, Cumberland Presbyterian, Bible Presbyterian), some of which are ambiguous (does Reformed Presbyterian refer to the RPCNA or to the Hanover Presbytery?) and some are general catch-all categories like Ethnic Presbyterian and “Presbyterian, ambiguous affiliation.”

[I will note that the main report does have a two page section (beginning on page 30) on identifying evangelicals and they discuss how it can be by denomination (so Presbyterians are never evangelical), by the born-again test, or by a more detailed analysis of their beliefs. The latter is outside the scope of this report but they expect another report on that later.]

So in the report of data they group Presbyterians into three categories: the mainline PC(USA) and two Evangelical categories: PCA and everyone else. I found it interesting that in the population numbers reported in that appendix the size of the PC(USA) and the size of the Evangelical everyone else was the same with each being 1.1% of the population in 2007 and 0.9% in 2014. The PCA held steady at 0.4% of the population. For comparison purposes, if the PC(USA) had about 1.7 million members in 2014 and the US population was 318.9 million that means that only 0.5% of the population of the US was a member of the PC(USA). So based on the Pew results the adherents, or those who identify with the PC(USA), almost doubles when you consider how people self-identify or the survey classifies ambiguous answers.

Moving on to the detailed data, I will focus only on Presbyterians and refer only to the breakout pages for Presbyterians. There is one for Mainline Presbyterians generally and a subset for the PC(USA). Similarly, there is one for Evangelical Presbyterians and the subset for the PCA. So keep in mind that for the the general evangelical numbers, about half are the PCA. In addition, since I am not sure what a mainline Presbyterian who is not in the PC(USA) is I will simply focus on the PC(USA) data. But there is another 0.5% of the population that they classify as being mainline without being PC(USA).

And as I start this drill-down let me add this warning: I will be looking at small changes in some of the categories but my interest must be tempered with caution, or even skepticism, because the table of Margins of Error shows that for these sample sizes the margin is between +/-7% and +/-5.5%. That means that while many of the differences between the numbers below are interesting, very few of them are statistically significant.

So let’s start with Age.

I find it interesting that differences between all the Presbyterian categories were so similar in the 2007 survey. In general, they all had about 10% in the 18-29 age group, and 30% in each of the other age groups – 30-49, 50-64 and 65+. Yes, there are some slight differences but the pattern looks solid and there are uncertainty ranges (and the ambiguous classifications) to consider so I don’t get too concerned about that range.

Between 2007 and 2014 the PC(USA) and the PCA show very similar patterns of change in the age ranges. The youngest range stays the same, the 30-49 range decreases markedly ( -11% for the PCA and -9% for the PC(USA) ), the 50-64 range also remains the same and the 65+ range increases markedly ( +12% for the PCA and +6% for the PC(USA) ). The general evangelical as a whole shows less change in each category except that there is a marked increase in the 50-64 range ( +6%).

Gender composition

In terms of gender composition the PC(USA) remained steady at 45%/55% men to women. The PCA and the overall general evangelical both had a 5% shift from men to women.

Racial composition

Each of the groups became more diverse over the last five years with the PC(USA) dropping from 91% to 88% white, the PCA from 86% to 80% white and the general group from 88% to 81%.

For the PC(USA) the change was distributed over all the other categories with Black respondents increasing from 4% to 5%, Asian from 2% to 3% and Latino from 2% to 4%.

In the PCA it was a similar pattern for Black adherents with an increase of 5% to 6%. Asian members decreased from 4% to 3%. The biggest increase was in the Other/Mixed category jumping from 1% to 5% and a noticeable increase in the Latino category from 4% to 6%.

For the combined general evangelical category the Black percentage increased from 4% to 6%, the Asian from 3% to 5%, Other/Mixed from 1% to 4% and Latino was constant at 4%.

Income and Education

These two demographic measures appear to have some correlation as you might expect. For the PC(USA) the peak in annual household income shifted from the $50,000-$99,999 group in 2007 (37%) to the $100,000+ group in 2014. Actually, considering the margin of error the two bins are pretty close in 2014 with that lower bin having 29%. For education, the distribution is pretty flat in 2014 with just about 25% in each of the categories – High School or less, Some College, College, Post-graduate.

The interesting thing across all three classifications of Presbyterians for income is that it is bi-modal as they have binned it. In all the cases there is a lower peak in the <$30,000 bin. For 2014 the PC(USA) it is 24%, for the PC it is 27% and for the general evangelical it is 28%.

For the PCA and general evangelical the income distributions have their primary peak in the $50,000-$99,999 range with 31% in the PCA and 21% in the general. Likewise, the education peak for both groups is in the Some College bracket with 37% of the PCA and 35% of the general.

I suggested the income/education correlation, but another one comes to mind. Is the apparent correlation age reflecting the higher incomes in the PC(USA) does an older demographic with higher earning power or with more two-wage earner households account for that result.

Switching and Retention

The last set of data I want to look at is the information on individuals switching denominations and the retention of members. For this we need to turn to the section in the full report beginning on page 32. Overall, 19.0% of the country grew up in the mainline Protestant church. In the survey the measurement is that 10.4% of the population has left, 6.1% have switch into the mainline giving 14.7% now in the mainline. For evangelical Protestants the numbers are 23.9% that grew up in it, 8.4% left, 9.8% joined and now 25.4% are in that category.

Looking at all Presbyterians, 3.0% of the population grew up in a Presbyterian church of some flavor. Those who have left make up 2.0% of the US population and those that have joined make up 1.1% for a current total of 2.2% of the population.

Now, returning back to that margin of error stuff – in compiling all this data is struck me that there are some interesting differences between these three groups, but based on the demographic data in the report these three groups of Presbyterians are not that different after all.

So where do we go from here?

One thing that struck me was the “the sky is falling” response. As I said in the early discussion there is nothing new about these demographic changes. A lot of attention is being paid to the Unaffiliated growth but this group comes in a number of flavors and I am not sure combining them gives much insight. Looking at the data my interpretation is that the Nothing in Particular category has now become the point for loosely or barely affiliated individuals to now identify with. As Ed Stetzer puts it in his helpful analysis

One of the primary reasons it appears as though “American Christianity” is experiencing a sharp decline is because the nominals that once made up (disproportionately) Mainline Protestantism and Catholicism are now checking “none” on religious affiliation surveys.

In the long view what is happening now is more of a pruning or consolidation. A vital core is still there for the church to move forward.

However, this consolidation does not seem to favor the mainline. There are enough theories as to why that is the case that I won’t go there now. But I think the same principle applies — there is pruning and consolidation going on with that branch. The key will be finding a central core and shared vision to organize around in the years ahead.

Can the mainline do that? It will be interesting to see. There is certainly a lot of pruning going on in the PC(USA) although you will get significant discussion as to whether there the mainline is the core that needs to be pruned or the part that is being shed in the consolidation. But with the Split-P’s the divisions come and reunion later comes as well. We will have to see which groups can develop strong cores or whether the declines will overtake them before they can.

I also wanted to add that for purposes of forecasting future trends grouping and reporting the data a bit differently would be useful. The primary example is the age data where the ranges are large enough that having a report with shifted age ranges so that individuals in the 2007 report are in the same group in the 2014 report would be useful. Even better, maybe a report with the age ranges reflecting the customary demographic groups – Builders, Boomers, Gen X and Millennials – could be considered. The purpose of course is to isolate the groups to see if they fit the oft-reported trends. Similarly, when dealing with something like household income it would be helpful to not just see it in the bins but also report the quartiles of the data.

So there are a few of the things I was chasing here. A couple other items jump out at me but this close to the opening of the Church of Scotland General Assembly convening that I want to chase those any further. Lots to think about here so something to return to later if times get slow. And there is always that report on Evangelical Protestants. But for now…

… On to Edinburgh

Church of Scotland Statistical Report (And Comparison to the PC(USA) )

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As I was looking through the reports to the Church of Scotland General Assembly 2015 I found the most recent statistical report at the end of the Legal Questions Committee Report.

The numbers in the report help to quantify the comments about the declining number of adherents in the Kirk. For example, over the last year the number of individuals On the Rolls has declined from 398,389 to 380,163, a decrease of 4.6%. Since 2003 – the time span covered by the report – the Total on the Rolls has decreased 31.3% from 553,248. Similarly, back in 2003 there were 1546 congregations, in 2013 it had dropped to 1389 and in 2014 the number had further dropped to 1379. Since 2003 it reflects a 10.8% drop and a 0.7% decrease in the last year.

Looking at the categories of membership change, over the last decade I found it interesting that membership loss to the Church Triumphant (deaths) was almost always right around half of the losses. Removals by transfer shows a fairly steady decline while removals in the other category are consistently higher than transfer but jumps around a bit. On the plus side, admissions by Profession and by Resolution run about equal while admissions by Certificate are a bit higher. However, in the bottom line the number of removals was about three times the number of admissions in 2003 and they gradually diverge over the next decade until by 2014 the removals were more than four times higher than the admissions.

Considering the similar patterns seen in the PC(USA) I thought I would compare the two data sets to see how similar they are.

The numbers for 2014 for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are not out yet so the decade drop to 2013 will be considered. The PC(USA) numbers can be found in the annual Comparative Statistics reports.

In 2003 the PC(USA) reported 11,064 congragations and 2,405,311 members. The Church of Scotland had 1,546 congregations and 553,248 total on rolls. In 2013 the PC(USA) had 10038 churches and 1,760,200 members. The Church of Scotland had 1,389 congregations and 398,389 total on rolls.

The decade drop in number of congregations is 9.3% for the PC(USA) and 10.1% for the Church of Scotland. The membership drop is 26.8% for the PC(USA) and 27.9% for the Church of Scotland. A difference of just about 1% for each of the measurements.

Since the two branches have significantly different numbers of congregations and members I have plotted comparison graphs using their numbers normalized to 2003 and so it shows the proportion of members or churches in each of the following years. The red line and points are for the Church of Scotland the the blue line and points are for the PC(USA).

CofS_PCUSA_Congregations_2014CofS_PCUSA_Membership_2014

There are some interesting differences between the plots, particularly the higher rates of decline for the Church of Scotland earlier in the time period and an increased rate of decline for the PC(USA) in the last few years. But overall, declines for both are fairly steady and very similar.

This raises all sorts of questions about why this is. This is too limited a data set to really speculate too far, but similar combinations of factors are certainly in play for both. On the one hand they have been wrestling with very similar internal discussions and actions regarding the role of same-sex partnered leaders within the church. On the other hand, they both have the bigger cultural issues that are causing the decline of mainstream/established churches throughout the western developed world. Figuring out the interplay and strength of those two components, and some others we might be able to think of as well, will take a much broader set of data to consider.

The strength of the similarity came as a bit of surprise to me because of the accounts I see about the rapid decline of Christianity in Europe (exempli gratia) and I expected to see Scotland declining noticeably faster than the American branch. If there are significant differences between the continents, this either speaks well for the Church of Scotland or poorly for the PC(USA), or both. More work is needed here.

It is probably worthwhile briefly noting one additional statistical item from the report and a point of significant divergence between the two branches. The final table in the Church of Scotland report shows that at the end of 2014 there were 215 vacant charges, just about one-fifth of all the charges in the Kirk. Furthermore, 39 students were training for the ministry. In the PC(USA) the Church Leadership Connection Applications and Positions Report shows that there are currently 45 Head of Staff positions being searched for and over 800 individuals who might want those positions. There are 213 solo pastor positions in the search process and 1421 individuals who are searching for such a position. And in 2012 – the last year these statistics are available for – there were 12,807 active teaching elders and 1,078 candidates for 10,262 churches. (And for those not familiar with the PC(USA) system, candidates are those students in the final stages of training or those who have finished and not yet ordained to a call.) And yes, I have skimmed over a whole bunch of nuance in both sets of numbers, but it does show the marked difference between the scarcity of Church of Scotland clergy and the abundance of PC(USA) clergy.

The membership and congregation data is however an interesting and enlightening comparison and it shows two related and culturally similar Presbyterian branches in similar circumstances. I will keep an eye out for additional data sets which may throw more light on the forces which might be controlling the similar behaviour. But that is what I see in the data now – your mileage may vary.

Postscript: If you are interested in the data set and the calculations you can view them on a Google Sheet.

PC(USA) Amendment 14-F Voting At The Midway Point

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With ten more presbyteries voting on Amendment 14-F this past weekend the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has effectively reached the half-way point in voting on the amendment to the Directory for Worship section of the Book of Order which will change the definition of marriage. Of the 171 presbyteries, 84 have now voted and the presbyteries are clearly concurring as the unofficial tally now sits at 61 yes and 23 no. You can follow the voting at both the Covenant Network web site and the Presbyterian Laymen web site. The official tally from the Office of the General Assembly is at 37 to 16, but it lags the voting a bit because of the time necessary for notification to reach them.

If all you are here to find out is if 14-F will pass, my models have a 99%+ certainty it will (baring some very significant and unforeseen development). For the presbyteries that have voted so far eleven have switched their no vote from the last similar vote on 10-A to a yes on 14-F for a 32.3% conversion rate. In the opposite direction two have switched from yes to no giving a 4.0% conversion rate in that direction. Projecting that out it would give a final vote of 117 yes and 54 no.

But as regular readers know, the vote tally is only a small part of what I am really interested in. Let’s start drilling down and see what the numbers say about the PC(USA).

For my data I am using the numbers listed on the two unofficial web sites I linked to above. I am making one change from past years and now the totals will include reported abstentions where I disregarded them in the past.

Of the 84 presbyteries that have voted so far, 74 have recorded votes on 14-F but only 68 have recorded votes on both 14-F and 10-A.

In terms of summary statistics, the percentage yes vote on 14-F has both a median and mean of 59% while the percentage yes vote on 10-A has a median of 54% and a median of 56%.

For the vote totals to date, the ratio of 14-F votes to 10-A votes has a mean of 0.83 and a nearly identical median of 0.82. In other words the number of presbyters casting votes is down about 17%. Of the 68 presbyteries reporting both votes, eight of them had more votes on 14-F than 10-A, including Chicago by one. But using my rule of thumb of a 3% natural variation between meetings, seven presbyteries fell between 0.97 and 1.03 with Blackhawk just missing at 1.04. Three presbyteries were below unity and four above.

Considering the three presbyteries well outside this range, Holston’s ratio was 1.17, Philadelphia was 1.19 and San Diego was 1.13. Philadelphia voted yes while the other two voted no.

For the eleven presbyteries that switched from no to yes, ten had recorded votes and the median yes percentage went from 45% to 56%. But to argue that they lost a significant number of churches and that has swung the theological balance is a bit simplistic since the ratio of the total number of votes has an identical mean to the whole group (0.83) and in fact the median is higher at 0.86. As a group there is no disproportionate drop in numbers so if an exodus from the PC(USA) is invoked to explain a shift it must be accompanied by replacement of presbyters as well, at least across the group.

For comparison purposes, a ratio of 0.83 in the number of presbyters between 10-A and 14-F is identical to the decrease in the membership of the PC(USA) from 2010 to 2014 if the decrease in 2013 is also used to estimate the 2014 membership numbers. (The 2014 numbers are being collected now and will be released in a few months.)

OK, let me throw a couple of pretty pictures at you and then wrap this thing up.

Let’s begin with the frequency distribution of the Yes Vote Ratio for 10-A and 14-F. As a geek bonus, I have added to the plot the distribution for this year’s presbytery voting in the Church of Scotland on their act providing a way for ministers in same-sex relationships to be ordained and installed.

yesdistribution1

Distribution of yes vote ratios

For comparison, remember that the mean for 10-A was 0.54, for 14-F was 0.59 and the mean for the Church of Scotland vote was 0.53. Similarly, in the same order the medians are 0.56, 0.59 and 0.58.

It is striking that all three distributions show the very similar bimodal distribution with a low peak down around 0.35 to 0.40 and a high peak around 0.60. While shifts between 10-A and 14-F are apparent – such as the decrease in the 0.45 peak from 10-A to 14-F and the increase in 0.40 for 14-F, I am going to resist the temptation to analyze too much right at the moment.  I will leave that for another day.

For my second pretty picture here is the correlation between the yes ratios for the 10-A vote and the 14-F vote to date for 67 of the presbyteries.

yescorrelation1

Correlation of 10-A and 14-F yes voting.

For these data points there is a clear trend and a strong correlation. The R-squared is 0.78 and the cluster has a slope of 0.91 and a y-intercept of 0.09. This would argue that the difference between 10-A and 14-F voting is, taken as a whole, generally uniform with an increase in the number of yes votes by an average of 4.5%.

I do need to address one missing data point in this plot, which will provide a useful segue into asking if this plot is even relevant. I have dropped the data point for Stockton Presbytery from this plot because it was a very significant outlier with a 10-A yes value of 0.12 and a 14-F yes of 0.56 – the largest single vote swing so far. I do not know the specifics of presbyter representation in that presbytery although their ratio of 14-F to 10-A is 0.82 which is right on the mean for the group. The vote numbers themselves were 23/18 for 14-F and 6/44 for 10-A.

It is tempting to say that the drastic change in the vote is a product of drastic losses in the presbytery. But unlike other presbyteries in that position where yes voting stayed roughly the same and no votes decreased (e.g. Lake Erie which went from 36/44 to 35/26) the change for Stockton is a shift in votes, not a depletion of one side. One possibility is that there was a change in attitude since the last vote. Another is that the departures were more heavily weighted in loss of members and not churches so the shift represents those that stayed and took the place of departing presbyters. Or maybe, with the dismissal of churches the presbytery changed representation rules so the number of presbyters at meetings did not decrease by that much.

[UPDATE 2/25/15: After looking at some records and checking with a friend in Stockton Presbytery the answer is that to counteract the loss of eight of 21 churches the number of RE’s from each church were doubled. On the one hand, this explains the dramatic shift in the theological position. On the other hand much of this statistical analysis presumes no replacement of presbyters in this way.]

One final option is that the presbyters viewed 14-F as a different situation than 10-A, and that is the question that underlies any comparison of these two votes. Can they be compared in the manner I have been doing or should they stand as their own individual cases.

From a polity perspective it may be stretching it too far to consider the two comparable. 10-A dealt with ordination standards and was a change to the Form of Government section. On a basic level this is a question internal to the PC(USA) and is closely tied to our understanding of governance and call. In contrast, 14-F is a change to the Directory for Worship and while it has certain ties to polity it is as much an external discussion as same-sex marriage has quickly been accepted across our culture.

On the other hand, I would argue that they are comparable for one major reason: For both sides in the discussion when 10-A passed they made a point of highlighting marriage as the next step in equality and justice on one side or the erosion or orthodoxy and confessional standards on the other. For the last four years it seems that many people anticipated the vote on 14-F as the next logical step in the journey that the PC(USA) is on.

From the analysis above I would argue that 10-A and 14-F can be compared. Whether it be about the issues or about the overarching themes of equality or orthodoxy the similarity of distribution and strength of correlation suggest presbyters are generally approaching the two issues the same way.

So, as the data accumulates I will be continuing to crunch numbers and see what we can say about the PC(USA). There is no question that it is on a journey and it will be interesting to consider what these data are telling us about where that journey will be leading. We do know one piece of the journey is the reconfiguration of the Synods and maybe some presbyteries, so this may be the last amendment vote that we can do these incremental statistics. It will be interesting to see.

Stay tuned…

PC(USA) 2013 Membership Summary — A Look At The Categories

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I have to admit to being caught a bit off guard when the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) released their membership numbers a couple of weeks ago. The summary numbers are typically released right around the time of the start of General Assembly in years that it meets. As for whether the early release was because they were ready or they wanted to get bad news out well before the GA I will leave to others to speculate.

Once again, I took a look at the numbers and wondered “what can I possibly say about them that is not being said by others and is worth my time?” Well, in thinking about it a bit I decided to drill down and look specifically at the categories of membership gain and loss and see if there was interesting information if we picked them apart a bit.

For the data set I use the Summary Statistics released by the Office of the Stated Clerk. While for many things the Comparative Statistics from Research Services are more detailed, for the gains and losses categories the Summary works better. Rummaging around on the web site I got summaries from 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013 taking the data back to 2005.

I decided not to deal in absolute numbers but to look at gains and losses as percentages of the total membership relative to the previous year’s total membership. This will help filter out the trend and allow a better year-to-year comparison.

First let’s look at where the gains have come from for the last nine years. Gains are reported in four categories – Profession of Faith, Reaffirmation, and Restoration for those 17 and younger, the same for those 18 and over, Certificate (i.e. documented transfers) and Other.

 Year  Profess <17 Profess >18 Certificate Other Total
2005  1.04%  2.10%  1.54% 0.62% 5.29%
 2006  1.05%  2.07% 1.46% 0.53% 5.10%
 2007  0.97%  2.00%  1.33% 0.51% 4.81%
 2008  0.95%  1.98%  1.30% 0.46% 4.68%
 2009  0.96% 1.97% 1.17%  0.48% 4.57%
 2010  0.91% 1.93%  1.04% 0.45% 4.33%
 2011  0.90%  1.81% 1.00% 0.59%  4.30%
 2012  0.84%  1.61% 0.99% 0.57%  4.00%
 2013  0.81%  1.49% 0.97% 0.68% 3.95%



Here is the data in graphical terms. This is a stacked graph so for any given component its value is the distance between that symbol and the one below it. The plotted value of the top symbol (for Certificate gains) is the number in the Total column in the table above.


It is interesting that the Other category has held relatively constant – there was a bit of a dip but some recovery in recent years. The Profession of Faith for 17 and under has a bit of a drop, significant in its own right but smaller than the remaining two in both an absolute and proportional comparison. The real decreases are seen in the Profession of Faith for 18 and over and the Transfer by Certificate. So we have not just a problem retaining the youth as they grow up but getting them back to church as adults.

Turning to the categories of losses, here is the breakdown shown in corresponding table and graph form. This table also includes the percentage net change to the total membership number.

 Year Death Certificate Other Total Total Net Change
2005  1.53%  1.21% 4.60%  7.34% -2.05%
 2006  1.50% 1.21% 4.41%  7.12%  -2.01%
 2007  1.48%  1.34% 4.53%  7.35%  -2.54%
 2008  1.54%  1.55% 4.73%  7.82% -3.14%
 2009  1.53% 1.30%  4.68% 7.52% -2.94%
 2010  1.56%  1.44% 4.27% 7.27%  -2.94%
 2011  1.58% 1.14% 4.74% 7.46% -3.16%
 2012  1.53% 2.67% 5.07% 9.27% -5.27%
 2013  1.55% 2.71% 4.47%  8.73% -4.79%



It is interesting here that losses from Death are fairly stable and the losses by Other show some greater variability but do seem to fall into a bit of a range. To no surprise the spike is in losses by Certificate from churches being dismissed and their membership being transferred to the new denomination. And, as usual, the largest source of loss is the Other category – members walking out the door.

Bottom Line? Not only is the PC(USA) losing members – accelerated in the last couple of years by dismissals – but the gains are decreasing on a percentage basis each year as well. Without an increase in gains there is no way to offset the losses.

So how do we explain this? While a number of explanations come to mind let me discuss four possibilities. And let me emphasize that these explanations are not exclusive from one another and that this data set alone is probably not sufficient to clearly distinguish between them – more work would have to be done.

1. The departing churches were the biggest contributors to growth. For many this is a temping explanation and there is a hint that this may be a contributor. It does appear that as the dismissals have accelerated over the last two or three years that the gains in membership by profession of faith have an accelerated decrease. A quick plot, not shown here, did show a suggestive correlation, but the data are clustered to the point that interpolating between the clusters would be problematic.

This is an easy explanation to fall back on since building churches and making disciples are part of the mission statement of ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians and so you could argue that churches drawn to ECO would be more growth-focused. The problem is that the trend has persisted for longer than ECO has been in existence so this could be only a partial and recent contributor, recognizing that there was an earlier exodus to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

2. Fatigue or Distraction: Another thing that comes to mind is that the PC(USA) is falling behind in making disciples because it is tired or it is distracted. Maybe we are tired out or distracted by our internal discussions about various issues (fill in the blank yourself or see what bubbles to the surface at GA next week). Or maybe, with an aging population we are losing the energy and drive to reach out to bring others into the church or distracted by the work of keeping the church, both people and building, going.

3. Public Relations Problems: In a similar vain, rather than our internal discussions only distracting us, maybe it presents a public relations problem for the church. Are we presenting to those that we are tying to reach an image that is not appealing, one that does not resonate with the culture today? And this may not be just a result of the ongoing discussions in the church but could include those other issues that are brought up like worship style and music as well as building style or conditions.

4. Counting the Wrong Thing: Maybe, just maybe, we are counting the wrong thing. We are frequently told that younger generations are not joiners. We have an ecclesiastical theology of the Body of Christ and a covenant body that sees joining as a statement about being called by God belonging to Christ. That may work in our theology but does not necessarily work with current culture. I would not advocate giving up that ecclesiology, but for statistical purposes recognize that our worshiping communities may not all reflect that view. There is the drive to form 1001 New Worshiping Communities and at the present time their structure and activity is not reflected in the annual statistics as they are currently collected and reported. So can we hold onto our covenant theology but for statistical purposes recognize some who are part of us but see the joining through the eyes of modern culture and our outreach?

Just a few thoughts I have, you probably have a few of your own.

The take-away for me from this exercise is that our losses are just one part of the equation and that our decreasing gains are a significant issue that also must be addressed if the PC(USA) is to consider itself a vital denomination.

PC(USA) GAPJC Decision — Presbytery Of NYC v. McGee And Others

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Last weekend the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (GAPJC) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) heard a remedial case brought against the Presbytery of New York City (PNYC) concerning details and process related to their Gracious Dismissal Policy (GDP). The complainants filed the case against the Presbytery concerning irregularities in the Gracious Dismissal Policy shortly after it was adopted. The Synod PJC agreed with the complainants and the Presbytery appealed it to the GAPJC.

The Executive Summary is that the GAPJC sustained none of the specifications of error in the SPJC’s decision, the GDP has been rendered null and void, and this decision has given other presbyteries something to think about. The first specification of error dealt with the claim that the PNYC GDP “conferred a unilateral right on a congregation to depart from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).” The second was that the GDP “does not give effect to the Trust Clause.” Specifically, PNYC had specified a formula in their GDP for compensation for property and the GAPJC reaffirmed that this must be determined on a case-by-case basis. The third specification of error related to dismissal simply because there were theological differences. The GAPJC said:

It is the nature and weight of theological difference that is critical in a justification for dismissal. The mere presence of theological differences does not preclude coexistence within the PC(U.S.A.).

The fourth specification may be, from my experience, the one with the most implications. It was in regard to a congregation in schism and the GAPJC responded that “It is clear what a presbytery must do when confronted with a property issue… a presbytery is obligated to serve the interests and guard the rights of the ‘true church
within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).” The final error related to PNYC allowing churches to retain their records.

OK, now let’s drill down into the detail.

In the matter of Presbytery of New York City Appellant (Respondent) vs. Ruling Elder Mildred McGee, Teaching Elder Flora Wilson Bridges, Ruling Elder Douglas Howard, Teaching Elder Lonnie Bryant, Ruling Elder Daniel Amiot Priso, Teaching Elder Phillip Newell, Ruling Elder Emmanuel Gouad Njayick, Teaching Elder George Todd, Ruling Elder Estella Taylor, and Ruling Elder Norita Chisolm, Appellees (Complainants) in Remedial Case 221-08 the GAPJC did not sustain any of the five specifications of error the Appellant charged regarding the trial decision before the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Northeast.

The case results from the PNYC adopting a Gracious Dismissal Policy on January 29, 2013 by a vote of 56 in favor and 49 against. The complainants filed a remedial complaint with the SPJC on February 13, 2013 and along with the complaint a request for stay of enforcement, which was granted. The complaint was filed specifically in regards to the adoption of the GDP and not in connection with the application of the GDP in the dismissal process of a church as was the case in the Tom and Anderson cases (noting that the latter was a complaint to a SPJC which was settled in mediation).

The complainants listed seven charges in their complaint and in the decision of the SPJC five of the seven charges were sustained. There is a direct relationship of these five sustained charges in the SPJC decision to the five specifications of error in the GAPJC decision so I will not dwell on those any longer. The respondent appealed the SPJC decision to the GAPJC.

The first specification of error by the respondent was that “The SPJC erred in constitutional interpretation by holding that the Presbytery GDP conferred a unilateral right on a congregation to depart from the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)…” This stems from a number of details of the GDP and a general sense in the GDP that if a church fulfills a certain set of steps it will be dismissed. In particular, there is no requirement that the presbytery votes to dismiss the congregation. The argument was put forward that since the presbytery approves the GDP that counts as their approval of any and all dismissals that follow the GDP.

This particular requirement is specifically addressed in a set of additional comments in the SPJC decision about the challenges of decision making in a narrowly divided presbytery:

We are sensitive to the difficult situation in which the PNYC finds itself and appreciate its sincere desire to deal with that as well as it can. [snip] Considering that the presbytery mustered a majority vote, however slim, for the GDP under consideration in this case, and with the case-by-case requirement satisfied in these cases, it ought to be possible for the PNYC to reach agreement on approval for such dismissal arrangements.

The GAPJC echoes this comment in their writing on the first specification of error:

While it may be understandable for a presbytery to develop a policy dealing with congregations considering dismissal with the intention of avoiding costly litigation, the GDP at the center of this case breaches the bounds of the Constitution of the PC(U.S.A.). [snip] A final vote by the PNYC is purposefully denied in the GDP in order to avoid divisive and argumentative response to a dismissal request, as admitted by the PNYC in the record and during arguments.

In responding to, and not sustaining, this specification of error the GAPJC finds three constitutional irregularities with the PNYC GDP: 1. The GDP is “self-executing” having the congregation jump through three hoops and meet the payment requirements in the GDP and dismissal will be granted. 2. The last of the three hoops is a congregational vote making that the effectual step of dismissal. And 3. “that a predetermined, formulaic mechanism runs counter to constitutional provisions for mutual dialogue and particular discernment.”

The GAPJC decision notes that the Constitution at G-3.0301a and G-4.0207 “reserves as a direct act of the presbytery the authority to dismiss a church,” thus arguing against the first two constitutional issues. Furthermore, case law helps clarify the latter two issues. In Sundquist v. Heartland Presbytery (219-03) the GAPJC affirmed “Withdrawal from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is not a matter that can be considered at a congregational meeting.” In the case of formulaic application in polity matters the GAPJC ruled against that in ordination matters in the case of Larson v. Los Ranchos Presbytery (221-04).

The second specification of error was that the SPJC had erred regarding its decision “that the GDP does not give effect to the Trust Clause.”

This issue relates back to the various formulas incorporated into the GDP to determine payments to the presbytery for dismissal and specifically a payment of 10% of the assessed value of the property. The GAPJC decision reiterates the findings in the case of Tom v. San Francisco Presbytery (221-03) and continues on to say:

Under the facts of this case, the PNYC argues that the requirement of due diligence under the Trust Clause has been met by adopting a formula for determining the value of the property at the time of enacting the GDP by the PNYC. However, the fiduciary nature of the Trust Clause requires an individual determination of the facts and circumstances related to dismissal of any church rather than a set formula, which may not be appropriate to the particular circumstances of a congregation. As stated by the SPJC, there must be an “individual assessment and valuation of the church’s unique situation, finances, history, spiritual needs and financial needs” when considering dismissal.

and

In addition, the exercise of the fiduciary duty must be carried out during the course of discernment of a particular church’s request for dismissal. A formulaic predetermination fails to account for the individualized requirement demanded by proper application of the fiduciary duty incumbent upon a presbytery.

and finally

Thus, the presbytery, in exercising its authority to perform due diligence under the fiduciary duties required by the Trust Clause, is required to make an appropriately timed, individual, unique determination of the circumstances applicable to any church requesting dismissal. In accountability to the PC(U.S.A.) as the beneficiary under the Trust Clause, such determination must be reasonable and based on documented facts.

With the third specification of error we begin to get into fresh territory with this decision, that being polity areas without substantial previous case law or interpretations. The specification is: The SPJC erred in constitutional interpretation by holding that the GDP did not provide specific guidance regarding discernment of theological differences as a basis for dismissal, in violation of F-1.0302a and F-1.0301.

The GAPJC begins their brief response to this specification saying:

The PNYC adopted the GDP “to provide for reconciliation and resolution within the Presbytery of New York City” and to permit their congregations to be dismissed to join another Reformed denomination for theological reasons. The policy did not seek reconciliation and resolution as the initial step in the process (G-4.0207). The policy accepts notice from a congregation of perceived theological differences as sufficient for dismissal without concern for mutual discernment and dialogue (Sundquist). It is the nature and weight of theological difference that is critical in a justification for dismissal. The mere presence of theological differences does not preclude coexistence within the PC(U.S.A.).

The section concludes with this:

The SPJC rightly concluded it was important that the PNYC “ensure that dismissal is the only viable remedy for the relevant theological differences.”

The fourth specification of error also helps to clarify an area that seems to be an occasional but potentially murky situation – the deference to be shown to a minority who indicate their loyalty to the PC(USA). The specification of error concerned “that the GDP did not provide an opportunity for the minority of a church in schism to retain the
property of a congregation.”

The GAPJC decision notes that in the formulaic dismissal process adopted by the PNYC there was no consideration of G-4.0207 and the determination of a true church in the group wishing to stay with the PC(USA). The second paragraph of this response puts this in more general terms:

It is clear what a presbytery must do when confronted with a property issue. Under G-4.0207, a presbytery is obligated to serve the interests and guard the rights of the “true church within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),” regardless of who is in the majority of any session or congregational vote. The presbytery shall determine if one of the factions is entitled to the property because it is the “true church within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),” majority notwithstanding. Any negotiation and decision about the disposition of the property must consider this interest of the true church. The GDP failed to comply with G-4.0207.

More on this in a moment.

The last specification of error is a bit of a technicality in my opinion, but the PNYC GDP allowed the church to retain its records. The GAPJC succinctly notes that upon dismissal the church ceases to exist as a PC(USA) council and the presbytery takes possession of the records as the successor council. The church may retain copies for historical purposes.

Discussion
As I read this decision the interpretations for errors 1, 2 and 5 seems to me to reinforce previous interpretations rather than really breaking new polity ground. It is primarily a reiteration and application of constitutional requirements and polity interpretations that have been written on before. To me, these sections are consistent with the interpretations and practice in previous cases.

I would note a polity discussion I was involved in since the release of this decision stemming from the section regarding error 1. In PC(USA) polity there are congregational meetings and then there are meetings of the congregation. This may seem a minor semantic difference but under our polity there is a big difference. Section G-1.05 of the Form of Government defines and controls Congregational Meetings with subsection G-1.0503 regulating the business that may be transacted at them. As the 218th General Assembly said – and is subsequently quoted in the Sundquist decision and this one – “Withdrawal from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is not a matter that can be considered at a congregational meeting.” So what is going on when a congregation has a meeting to vote to accept the dismissal terms? If we keep reading in Sundquist it says:

This does not mean that a congregation is prohibited from requesting dismissal. However, it is the presbytery (or its duly appointed administrative commission or its Committee on Ministry) that has the responsibility to consult with the members of a church about dismissal (G-11.0103i). The presbytery is required to afford all persons affected by a dismissal notice and an opportunity to be heard on the subject (G-9.0503b(2); Item 04-20). These consultations (which may be in the form of listening sessions, hearings or other consultations) are for the benefit of informing the presbytery as it considers a request for dismissal, but are not meetings at which any business of the congregation may be conducted…

So the meetings to discuss and vote on the terms of dismissal are meetings of the congregation held in conjunction with the presbytery for the purpose of consulting with the presbytery on this particular matter. For most GDP’s that I am familiar with, this meeting considers terms already negotiated and not subject to change at that meeting. In my experience the congregation may vote to select between different predetermined financial arrangements but no new terms or options may be proposed in the course of the meeting.

In summary, a Congregational Meeting is a specific constitutionally defined meeting usually called by the session for the congregation to transact certain business named in the constitution as the sole right and responsibility of the congregation. There are also meetings of the congregation (or whatever you would like to call them) which may discuss other items but may only transact business in a manner that is in cooperation with the presbytery which, as noted in the present decision when it quotes a 1991 GA Authoritative Interpretation, “Nowhere is written that the congregation is permitted to make the decision that the presbytery commits itself in advance to confirm.”

OK, that was a bit of a polity wonk discussion to distinguish the two types of meetings but 99.99% of the church will still consider both types of meetings as the same thing. C’est la vie. And other polity wonks are invited to try their hand at playing this game and giving their distinctions between these meetings. (And thanks to my correspondents for helping me refine this discussion.)

Returning to the specifics of this decision… In the interpretation of errors 3 and 4 the decision does not really shake things up but I see it as a call for presbyteries to examine their own GDP’s or at least to be careful to properly address these items in the negotiated settlement with a church.

For example, it appears advisable that presbyteries be intentional about considering the question of whether theological differences are great enough to warrant dismissal. It may even be a reasonable practice to be so specific about this as to spell it out explicitly in the negotiated agreement. I am not sure that it is necessary to take this to the extreme and hold a specific vote on this point much as a specific vote is required to certify that the body to which the church is being dismissed is another qualifying Reformed body. But it may be advisable to specifically list steps that have been taken to attempt reconciliation and resolution as the initial steps in the process, possibly in an appendix to the agreement or as part of a timeline presented in the introduction to the report.

Similarly, in light of this decision it now seems advisable that a presbytery be intentional and transparent about its due diligence when it comes to a congregation with a PC(USA)-loyal minority. Again, investigation, discussion and documentation appears to be the order of the day in leading up to any negotiated settlement and that settlement must “serve the interests and guard the rights of the ‘true church within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),’ regardless of who is in the majority.” This decision does say that “The presbytery shall determine if one of the factions is entitled to the property because it is the ‘true church within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).'” I will venture a bit of pushing the polity envelope here and suggest that the determination be made on a case-by-case basis as other property decisions are but that the “true church” must be properly provided for. Retaining the property with the PC(USA) may be the right thing to do, but mission may dictate otherwise. Is it best to continue the congregation in that location or has the neighborhood changed? Is the property of size and condition that it can be maintained and utilized by the PC(USA) group? While it needs to be documented retaining the property may not be preferable to another arrangement that provides for that group. And please realize that I write this from a distinctly urban multicultural perspective – your situation may be different and retaining the property for a group in a rural more culturally homogenous setting may more often than not be the best thing to do.

Let me suggest that the bottom line on this decision, as on other decisions, is that there are certain hard and fast items a presbytery must consider in dismissals. In this case it is that the church is dismissed by action of the presbytery, that the property must be properly considered in light of the Trust Clause, that theological differences must be considered and reconciliation attempted and if appropriate an inquiry into whether it is a church in schism and a “true church” can be identified and cared for. While not mentioned in this decision, the GAPJC in other decisions has noted that the presbytery’s authority is broad as long as it is guided by the church’s constitution and polity. With this in mind, presbytery decisions should be well reasoned and documented, rooted in the circumstances, context and mission of that particular presbytery while being guided by PC(USA) polity.

So that is what I gather from this particular GAPJC decision. Your mileage may vary.

At this point let me make an editorial note that I will be going into GA mode for a while. I am hopelessly behind on the headlines and probably will not get caught up on those. Most of my attention for the next couple of months will be related to the Assemblies, beginning with the Church of Scotland later this week, and then I will fall back into more general items later in the summer. For the Assemblies, it promises to be an exciting few months so we will see what develops. Stay tuned…

The Diversity Of Dismissals From The PC(USA)

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As regular readers know I have not just been following the many twists and turns of the dismissals of churches from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as an outside observer but at the level of my own presbytery I have found myself deeply involved in the process. And so it is with a great deal of interest that I have been following the recent news about dismissals of churches elsewhere. And while I have been seeing the mainstream media focusing on the “stay or go” side of the story, because of my level of involvement locally I have a great deal of interest in the fine details of the terms under which the churches are considering dismissal. My intent today is to drill down a bit into that aspect of the story with regards to two recent cases.

First, I did want to reflect for a moment on how dismissals have changed over the last two or three years. I have always been intrigued that before about three years ago the largest churches in the PC(USA) seemed to be staying with the denomination even if they were expressing concern about the direction that the church was headed. From my discussions with others the reasons seem to be two-fold. The first is that they did not see a good place to go. The only destination similar enough to the PC(USA) for most to even consider was the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) and over the years there were a good number of churches that headed in that direction to the extent that now the EPC has more than doubled in size based on the number of congregations. But as the EPC was working through these growing pains it was generally not seen as a good destination for what passes as a mega-church in the PC(USA). With the founding of ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians in 2012 a more suitable destination was available.

To be completely accurate, one of the churches on the list, First Presbyterian Church of Orlando, did transfer to the EPC. But while it was the first on the list of largest churches to depart it was at about the same time that ECO was founded and another church, First Presbyterian Church of Colorado Springs, began their dismissal process soon after.

The second reason is that the PC(USA) was trying to work out what was meant by Gracious Dismissal. As I will talk about in a minute, it looks like we still are. So while the motion was passed by the 218th General Assembly in 2008 it appears we have reached a point where a number of the kinks have been worked out and there is some greater understanding of what might be involved. This was aided by the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission’s decision in Tom, et al. v. Presbytery of San Francisco (Tom decision) that somewhat clarified the application of the Trust Clause in these matters.

So, we have transitioned from a point where none of the 15 largest churches in the denomination were actively moving towards departure just a few years ago to the point today where several have or are considering it. If we consider the 2011 list of the 15 largest churches in the PC(USA) there are two churches that have now been formally dismissed ( including FPC Orlando to the EPC ) and three more that are in the dismissal process, at least at the beginning of this month…

Which brings us to one of those churches that voted this past Sunday and in doing so decided to stay with the  PC(USA) – First Presbyterian Church of Houston.

As I mentioned above, the media story here has been “stay or go” and while there was a strong majority of the membership that voted to transfer to ECO they fell 36 votes short of the 2/3 supermajority required in the dismissal agreement with Presbytery of New Covenant. This was out of a total of 1,681 members who voted.

One article from the Houston Chronicle gave these thoughts from pastor and head of staff, Teaching Elder Jim Birchfield:

“This is the toughest possible outcome in many people’s minds,” Senior Pastor Jim Birchfield
said. “To fall a few votes short will be very tough for them. I’m a
little bit disappointed. I came out very strongly and passionately in
favor of (the move).”

Birchfield said it was too early to assess the long-term
repercussions of the attempt to switch denominations, and he declined to
predict whether some members will leave the church as a result. He said
his immediate task is to begin smoothing over the differences for the
sake of keeping the 3,100 member church intact.
“We have to begin reconciling the two sides, and that will begin
immediately,” he said. “We’ll also begin reconciling among the
leadership. For the most part, we have had a very gracious debate.”

I would note that there is a longer article from the Chronicle available to digital subscribers.

Other news sources covered similar aspects of the meeting with the Texas Tribune providing this description of the debate:

For more than an hour on Sunday, church members provided testimony for and against leaving PCUSA, some of it tearful.

Those in favor of leaving PCUSA spoke of the national organization’s
“theological drift” and called for a more “Christ-centered theology.”

and

Opponents of the switch argued for theological diversity. PCUSA does
not require churches to ordain openly gay pastors if they choose not to.
They bemoaned what they saw as inevitable fallout from the decision,
and said that appealing to stricter evangelist views would only further
isolate young members from the church.

In particularly fiery testimony, one opposing member said she feared
the switch would make her “a member of a congregation that distinguishes
itself by its homophobia.”

For a more nuanced look at the meeting I would refer you to the article from the Presbyterian Outlook which has a bit more on the process and procedure.

But returning to the Texas Tribune article, one paragraph caught my attention and I want to use it as the starting point to drill down a bit. They describe the property of the church like this:

First Presbyterian of Houston was an obvious target for the fledgling
denomination. The Houston church has roughly 3,100 members, owns
property valued at more than $100 million and boasts an $18 million
endowment. The church is 175 years old.

Now consider the material that was provided by the church from a link that was on it’s Season of Decision web page. The link has now been removed but as of this writing the document with the details of the terms for possible departure is still available. (But could disappear soon.) Besides the rationale for the departure the document has some legal notes, the report of the presbytery team and the details of payments the church would have had to make to the presbytery. I have not figured out which of the two listed options would be used but the larger of the two would have been payments to the presbytery on a five year declining scale totaling $343,236. The rationale for the amount is not given and based upon negotiations in my own presbytery I would not expect it to be so. But for a $100 million property and $18 million endowment it seems like a pretty good deal. This will become more apparent in a minute.

One other item on that page caught my attention, particularly in light of the actual vote tallies, and this could have changed this picture dramatically. While no specifics or formulas are given there is this paragraph about additional payments:

There are two additional payments that might be made to Presbytery. The amounts are not known at this time. If the required majority votes to be dismissed and more than 10% of our congregation vote to remain in PCUSA, and a petition to start a new church is signed by more than 25 members, and Presbytery approves the new church start, we will owe a payment to start a new church. In addition we will likely be required to make a voluntary gift to the Presbytery’s New Church Development Fund.

It is interesting to wonder about the what-ifs had those extra 36 members been there and the vote had gone the other way, but just barely, what the magnitude of these payments would have been. (And I had to smile at the language about being “required to make a voluntary gift…” Probably a required gift of a voluntary amount.)

Let us now turn our attention to another vote, this time at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in San Francisco Presbytery scheduled for this coming weekend. When I started hearing details of this church dismissal I had to think that the presbytery was taking the instructions in the Tom decision very seriously:

When a congregation seeks dismissal under G-11.0103i (now G-3.0301a), it is the responsibility of the presbytery to fulfill its fiduciary duty under the Trust Clause. This fiduciary duty requires that the presbytery exercise due diligence regarding the value of the property of the congregation seeking dismissal. Due diligence, of necessity, includes not only an evaluation of the spiritual needs of the congregation and its circumstances but also financial analysis of the value of the property at stake. Payments for per capita or mission obligations are not satisfactory substitutes for the separate evaluation of the value of the property held in trust.

According to the information on the church web site the payment to the presbytery will be $8.89 million if the congregation votes to accept the terms and request dismissal. Yes, it is 1.5 orders of magnitude larger than the terms that FPC Houston got. In addition, for FPC Houston the quorum requirement was 30% of the membership, it is 50% for Menlo Park. And the required supermajority is 3/4 for Menlo Park while it was the 2/3 for FPC Houston. The differences due to presbytery policy are striking for two churches of very similar size (3,567 members for FPC Houston and 3,382 members for Menlo Park according to the 2012 list). As my title says – The Diversity of Dismissals.

The PC(USA)’s polity places dismissals firmly in the authority of the presbytery and each church was obliged to deal with their presbytery in coming to an agreement about the terms of dismissal. One of the places that Menlo Park discusses the terms of the agreement is in Pastor John Ortberg’s February 2nd sermon. In there he talks about the process of arriving at these numbers saying:

Where did this figure come from, and why is it so high? Sorry for the complexity around this, but we want to be as transparent as we can. From the perspective of our church, part of what is suboptimal in our current denominational system is that there are no clear objective guidelines to arrive at a financial figure in a process like this one.

But regarding this financial number, in looking at a lot of the material on their web site I have not seen a breakdown of where this number actually comes from, if there is per capita, mission, property and new church development built into it.

For more details about the voting process there is a short video clip online from February 16th where Ruling Elder Ken Perez discusses what is coming up. In that discussion he also announces that a 5 year reversionary clause on the main property has been added by the presbytery to the terms of the agreement. The church’s main web page about the dismissal has a lot of information and there is another page devoted to this weekend’s vote.

Let me return to TE Ortberg’s February 2nd sermon for a moment and highlight a couple of the comments he made. In his discussion he talks about the various options the congregation has relative to the large cost of departure. Besides paying the millions of dollars, one option is that they could turn down the offer and stay. Another is that they could walk away from their property. He discusses how neither of these fits the missional vision of the church. The fourth option is litigation and he responds to that option this way:

We could say, “We’ll go to court.” However, we think public litigation would be a bad witness for the church. It’s not good for the bride of Jesus. It’s not what God is calling us to do, and nobody wanted to do that.

While not doubting that this is their rationale in avoiding this path, and respecting them greatly for it, it is also worth noting that based on case law in the State of California, specifically the Episcopal Church Cases decided by the State Supreme Court, they would have an uphill battle in retaining control of the property through civil court.

I want to make two final comments about Menlo Park PC’s missional vision as expressed in a couple of different places. In the church’s online material the argument that is regularly presented for transferring is that the necessity of working with the presbytery is burdensome and getting in the way of their missional vision. As TE Ortberg says in that February 2nd sermon:

As you all know, we have a vision. We believe we have a mission. We want to reach thousands of people for Jesus Christ around this Bay Area that needs him so much. We want to launch new sites to help us do that.

We believe we simply cannot do that effectively if we remain in the denomination.

And this is a sentiment that is echoed in the comments by RE Perez where he talks about the issues they have had with the presbytery. Instead of emphasizing what may be a mismatch in the visions of the two governing bodies it sounds to my listening that he is leaning to a more congregational form of government and he wants to get the presbytery out of the way so the church can have more autonomy and flexibility.

Taking this one step further, as I look at all this material throughout it there is a tendency to speak of problems with the denomination when some of the issues are specifically with the presbytery. Picky polity point I know, but we do work on hierarchical structure where presbyteries do have identities and some autonomy from the synods and the General Assembly. It strikes me that the PC(USA) is getting painted with too broad a brush.

The second item I wanted to mention is a good article from The Almanac titled Changes Ahead for Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. In some ways I think the article does a better job of in explaining the church’s vision than the church’s own online material does. For example, it does discuss the issue of the church wanting to expand as a multi-site church while running up against the limitations of geographic presbyteries. It says:

MPPC Communications Director Nicole Laubscher
said ECO’s 110 churches are organized into nine presbyteries by both
geography and similarity, such as size, as opposed to geography alone as
done by the Presbyterian Church (USA).

“For us it’s about the pace of change,” she
said. ECO offers more flexibility, whereas PCUSA is designed for small
churches in a single location. “It creates tremendous barriers.”

When MPPC first sought to expand outside Menlo
Park, she said, “It was really hard. At the time, we didn’t know if we
would just get a no. Instead of being supported, encouraged and helped,
it was another barrier to hurdle. … it’s just not the right framework
to support a larger, multi-site church.”

In PCUSA, the presbytery, or regional
governing body, is responsible for planning and placing new churches.
Tom Conrad, chair of the PCUSA team selected to deal with the proposed
departure of the Menlo Park church, agreed the concept of opening
multiple sites doesn’t fit well with that organization’s system; as a
result, there are “precious few” multi-site churches.

The article also does a good job of exploring the downside to the dismissal agreement.

Some former and current members of MPPC said
they think the theological differences are influencing the church’s
desire to change organizations.

Debra Holvick, who stopped attending several years ago, got re-involved to be able to participate in the upcoming vote.

“This was the church I was baptized in, I went
to Sunday school there, I was married there, my father’s memorial was
held there, my mother remarried there and my children were raised
there,” she told the Almanac. “That church has been a huge part of my
life, so I felt responsible for it and I don’t want them to take it in
an unchristian-like direction and say this is part of who I am.”

Ms. Holvick said taking a stance against gay
clergy and same-sex marriage may not be a major motivation for changing
denominations, but it does come with the package.

Later on there are comments about whether the almost $9 million buy-out price could be “better spent funding scholarships and buying food for those in need in the local community…”

So we wait for the meeting this Sunday to see how the congregation as a whole discerns the will of God regarding its future affiliations. Stay tuned…

[Ed. note: For the record, I did resist using the cliché “Houston we have a problem” as a subtitle to this post. But yes, another post and its correction did use a variation on it.]

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.

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.

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.