Category Archives: Analysis

Digging Into Presbyterian Statistics — PC(USA) Presbytery Growth Rates

Well, I see that the U.N. Secretary General has declared that today, October 20, is the first Worldwide Statistics Day. Now, I am not sure if that is a recognition of worldwide statistics, or a worldwide recognition of statistics, but I am only too happy to add my contribution in the spirit of the latter interpretation.

As regular readers are aware I am a bit, OK a lot, of a PresbyGeek or PresbyNerd when it comes to denominational statistics. And I have the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) office of Research Services to thank as by “enabler.” If you are not aware, they put out a daily Tweet with some tidbit or factoid of information. I sometimes think that what they tweet is superficial or incomplete, but just like I do the best I can with Presbyterian History in 140 characters, they do the best that they can in that space as well.

Back about three weeks ago they put out the following tweet –

Membership increased in 2009 in 13 presbyteries. Does that include yours? http://bit.ly/cxn1mn #pcusa

That factoid got me wondering about what growth rates were long-term, and not just for 2009.

So, time to dig out some data. Presbytery size for 2008 and 2009 came from the annual Comparative Research reports, Table 4. The oldest edition of Table 4 that I am aware of is 1996, so turning to the trusty WayBack Machine, that data is also available. So all of that was fed into a spreadsheet and the annualized growth rate over the 13 year period 1996-2009 was calculated along with the annual rate for 2009.

Now, looking at the data, two presbyteries (Atlantic Korean-American, Eastern Korean) were excluded because they were formed after 1996 so there is not a long-term growth rate for them over the same time period as the other presbyteries. Two more presbyteries were seen as significant outliers and removed from the analysis as well. In the long-term growth category Midwest Hanmi had a growth rate of 4.4%, over twice the growth rate of its next closest presbytery. In the short-term column San Joaquin dismissed several churches in 2009 and so had a growth rate of -24.3%, ten percentage points higher than the next closest presbytery. The concern was that when the correlation was calculated these significant outliers would leverage the correlation result.

So what do we get for these 169 presbyteries? Here are the descriptive statistics:

	Annualized Long-term	2009 Short-term
Mean	-1.7%	-3.0%
Median	-1.9%	-2.6%
St. Dev.	0.8	2.4

As you can see there is generally good agreement in each distribution between the mean and median. Between the two distributions the mean and median are significantly lower and the standard deviation of the short-term is significantly higher indicating a much broader distribution. Visually, here are the two distributions. Both horizontal and vertical axes are scaled the same to facilitate direct comparison of the charts.

The broader nature of the short-term distribution is now apparent but without other short-term distributions to compare it to drawing specific conclusions from this is a bit more challenging. If fluctuations have a random nature to them stacking multiple broad annual distributions to produce the long-term distribution will generally result in a decrease in the standard deviation.

The left-ward shift in the distribution, or higher rate of decline, is statistically significant, and whether this represents a one-time higher decline or the end-member of a trend towards increasing rate of decline can not be told from this graph alone, my previous analysis of the decline rates suggests the latter.

But my main interest is in a comparison of short-term and long-term rates and particularly looking at specific presbyteries. So, here is the graph of the correlation of short-term versus long-term growth rates.

As you can see there is noticeable scatter in the data but a general positive trend. However, with an R-squared correlation coefficient of 0.14 the correlation is not strong. With a slope of >1 there is the suggestion that for all presbyteries the short-term rate is of greater magnitude than the long-term rate.

But here is what I really wanted to get at: The Research Services tweet pointed out that in 2009 13 presbyteries increased in size. (And the three with the largest percentage membership increases were excluded from this analysis as described above.) Over the long-term the membership has increased in five presbyteries (Charleston-Atlantic, Middle Tennessee, Northwest, Seattle, and the excluded Midwest Hanmi). Of those, only Northwest (Puerto Rico) and Midwest Hanmi have shown an increase in membership over both the 13 year long-term and 2009 short-term periods. In fact, it was probably not necessary to exclude Midwest Hanmi since for a long-term growth rate of 4.4%, the trend-line calculated above predicts a short-term rate of 6.0%, reasonably close to the actual of 5.4%. The leverage would not have been too great.

Well, lots more could be done with this but that is enough for Worldwide Statistics Day. If you looked carefully at the spreadsheet you can see that what I really prepared it for was my own tracking of the presbytery voting trends in the next few months. In particular, I am very interested to see how the votes on the three big issues, the Belhar Confession, the new Form of Government, and Amendment 10-A correlate, or don’t as the case may be. You are welcome to check back but I don’t intend it to be the “up to the minute latest and greatest source of news.” I’ll probably update it weekly with what I can find and it will be my base for further statistical analysis. If you are interested in that feel free to follow along. Stay tuned…

Young People And The Church — Another Interesting And Informative Study

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As my regular readers are aware one of my interests and concerns is for the future of the church, especially as it relates to youth in the church and keeping them involved in the church. Part of my interest of course is because my household is a bit of a focus group, research study, or test bed for youth in the church. At the present time I have one who has left the mainline for an evangelical church, one who seems to be finding a home in the confessional leanings of the mainline, and one who is trying to find their way between those two. I do however count myself fortunate that all three of my children are involved in active congregations.

So it was with much interest that I listened to the October 3rd edition of the White Horse Inn where host Michael Horton interviewed Kenda Creasy Dean, Methodist Elder and Princeton Theological Seminary professor, on her new book Almost Christian: What the faith of our teenagers is telling the American Church. I have added this to my list of books to acquire (easy) and read (got to figure where in the queue to place it). In the interview there was a ton of great information drawn from the National Study of Youth and Religion project and published in the book. While a lot of the interview, and probably the book as well, was about the faith and beliefs of teenagers and “moralistic therapeutic deism”, what was of most interest to me was the discussion about the study’s findings related to what did, and did not, make youth stick with the church as they got older. For all of the details on the nature of the teenagers’ faith, including the great description of it as “benign whateverism,” I encourage you to listen to all 33 minutes of the interview.

So, here are a couple of the quotes I found most informative, hopefully not too out of context (listen to the interview for that), and cited statistics from Prof. Dean (not necessarily in order and somewhat edited from conversational language to written form):

[Talking about teens with highly devoted faiths] Four things stood out
for me: One was that they had what I call “a peculiar God story.” They
had a God story that was distinct to their community’s understanding of
the world. They were able to articulate that God story… The second
thing that they had was a community of faith that mattered to them
deeply and they felt like they belonged… The family sense was extended
to faith communities, and they also felt like they belonged spiritually
though. It wasn’t just a social connection, they really felt cosmically
connected to God in their congregations… The third thing was that
they had a sense of, I call it a sense of vocation, a sense of purpose, a
divinely inspired purpose maybe. A sense that God had put them here for
a reason and that reason was to help participate in God’s plan for the
world in some way. And the last thing, and this is really striking, is
that these particular kids, the highly devoted kids in the study, had
markedly higher levels of hope than anybody else.

The young people who have highly devoted faiths, that’s the 8% of the
kids in the study who actually did find faith as a pivot point around
which they organized their lives in explicit ways, had much stronger
connections to adults in their communities of faith, and to adults in
general, than their peers who did not have highly devoted faiths. I
also think its true that we really tend to overestimate the amount of
time that young people are spending in congregations, even if they are
active in a congregation, they are likely to be around members of the
congregation an hour or two a week. And we overestimate the difference
that hour or two makes in their lives — they don’t actually have enough
time to form deep connections. And over and over again studies show
that pastors think that people come to church because of the pastor or
because of their interest in deepening their faith or whatever. Most
lay people say they come to church because of the relationships.

One of the interesting things about the longitudinal studies, one of the
findings was that the most significant factor in whether a young
person’s faith weathers the transition from high school to the young
adult years is the religiosity of parents while they were teenagers.

The interview has a great extended discussion about the use of the catechism and how it was intended for use within the household, even to the point of posting it on the dining room wall and discussing it around the dinner table. Prof. Dean makes two interesting points about this beyond the value for teaching the faith. The first is that it is being done in the household setting. The second is that the catechism provides youth, and all of us for that matter, with a language to talk about our faith. She points out that in the study most teenagers “have very, very few language resources when it comes to faith.”

Prof. Dean is an engaging speaker and produces a couple of good lines to make you smile:

What we haven’t been able to do very well is to tell the Christian story, or to teach the Christian story, in a way that it looks like it matters in this world of competing narratives… [I]t means that young people need to be in contact with folks whose lives are demonstrably different because of their faith. Because just hearing about it is like hearing Cinderella, and Cinderella doesn’t really make a difference about the way we live our lives — it’s a story we tell. And for a lot of young people that’s the way they experience their encounter with the Christian story as well.

[Talking about parents letting children “chose for themselves”] Well the
way we let them chose for themselves for a couple of generations was to
just sort of assume that when they got old enough we might expose them
to religion but we wouldn’t actually teach them anything because we want
them to be free to chose for themselves. And the interesting thing is
we don’t have that confidence when it comes to Algebra, but somehow when
it comes to faith we just sort of thought it would emerge when the time
is right.

And a finding that runs counter to many mainline churches I know and to Prof. Dean’s expectations:

[Talking about vocation and social justice and mainline youth being less likely to associate moral responsibility with following Jesus Christ.] There may be less living it out, but there is certainly less living it out and connecting it to your faith. And as a mainline Protestant this finding horrified me — this is like “oh man, how have we missed this?” But I think one of the reasons is mainline Protestants… we tend to shy away from any kind of God language whatsoever. Well, the effect of that is, you might be the most socially active congregation in the world but if you never connected it to your faith young people obviously assume it’s because you are nice people. We go on these mission trips where we never talk about God because we are nice people, not because we are Christian and this is how Christ called us to treat one another. In fact one of the findings in the longitudinal study is that when it comes down to it the practices that matter in helping faith endure past the high school years prayer and reading the Bible matter a lot. Going on mission trips don’t make a bit of difference.

Kenda Creasy Dean has a lot to say about how youth and young adults get integrated into the church — in fact one of the chapters in her book is titled “Mormon Envy.” This integration of young people is something I have also come to appreciate about the LDS church. The LDS communities have several features that make them particularly good at passing on their faith. For more on this I would point you to a Beliefnet blog Flunking Sainthood and their comments on Dean’s book. Here are a couple of relevant quotes from the interview:

What Mormons have that other communities have not really looked at as intentionally is faithful parents. It’s one of the most striking findings from the study is how closely young peoples’ faith mirrors their parents’ faith. As you know, families are the most important faith community if you’re part of the Church of Latter Day Saints. But parents are hugely influential as conduits of faith in Mormon families. That tends to be less true for example, I’m a mainline Protestant, for mainline Protestants a common scenario would be that parents will think faith is important but they don’t have enough faith formation themselves to have any confidence at handing it on to their children themselves. So, they take their kids to church to “get them done” by the professionals who can hand on faith in their stead. Well, that turns out not be be as effective as when it is passed on in the context of a family community.

I think a lot of Protestants tend to think, and I tend to think this way myself, “my kids didn’t get this while they were in high school, but there is plenty of time, they’ll get it eventually.” … Mormon urgency doesn’t allow for that.

Based on my experience and previous reading these are the quotes that really resonated with me from an interview that was full of interesting data and interpretation. And one of the things that I very much appreciated was Prof. Dean’s acknowledgement of the number of times where the data surprised her.

What is the message for the church? For me it is a validation that we need to invite the youth to be active members of the church, not just attending services and youth group on Sunday, but encouraging them to be active in some area of ministry in the congregation where they build relationships across generations, we can challenge them to do something, and through their activity they can not just hear, but participate in the God story of the congregation. Secondly, we need to communicate to parents how important a role they play — that they can not leave the religious education of their kids to the church but they have to be the primary educators. And then the church has to give them the tools to do that.

If you want more on-line there is an excerpt from the book available and another interview on Patheos.

To close, here is a quote Prof. Dean gave from Tony Campolo –

We are not going to lose this generation because we ask too much, we are going to lose them because we ask too little.

Addendum: Now, here is an interesting parallel that arose yesterday in our church’s education hour. My friend Scott was teaching a class based on Albert Raboteau‘s book Slave Religion. After discussing how slave owners used Christianity as a justification for having slaves but then kept the religion from them someone asked the obvious question, “why would a slave convert to Christianity if it justified their oppression?” Scott summarized the answer from Raboteau (p. 244-246) as 1) The Bible provided a language to talk to God, 2) they saw the parallel of their situation to the story of Israel in bondage in Egypt and their liberation, and 3) it provided hope for the future, particularly regarding eternity. I was struck by how these three paralleled Dean’s points about the highly devoted youth — How the Israel story for the slaves is part of their God story that is distinct to the community’s understanding of the world. How they both find the distinctive of hope and eschatological vision. And while there is not really a parallel in Dean’s four central characteristics of devoted teens to the language point, it does correspond to how the highly devoted teens have acquired the language to talk about God. Another distinctive of later Slave Religion that was mentioned but not included in this list was the high-level community structure and participatory worship, especially regarding singing. I was struck by how these characteristics of, shall I say, devoted Christianity are similar across cultural contexts.

All Churches Great And Small — Congregation Size Distribution And Changes In The PC(USA)

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I have been poking around with some data for a little bit now and I think it might be time for some of it to be discussed here…

One of the things that has interested me recently in the vast multitude of data that that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) office of Research Services puts out is the size distributions of congregations. Undoubtedly, one of the reasons that I have been looking at it is because in my professional work with earthquakes there is a very well-established and useful relationship for magnitude distribution of quakes. I have found that a similar, though proportionately different, relationship seems to hold for congregation size distribution in churches. More on the details of that another time, but here I want to take a first look at congregation size in the PC(USA) over time.

As I said, Research Services puts out a whole bunch of information about the church every year and for this post I want to focus on two particular data sets — Table 2: Distribution of PC(USA) Congregations by Membership Size and Synod (2009 data ) and Table 6: Fifteen Largest PC(USA) Congregations Based on Membership Size (2009 data ).

Unfortunately, with the revamped PC(USA) web site it appears that a lot of this older data is no longer on-line from the church, but thanks to the Internet Archive and the Way Back Machine we can get data back to 1994. The equivalent of Table 6 is there, while Table 2 goes back to 1995.

First, as usual, a couple of technical notes about the data. Concerning Table 2: 1) For my own purposes it would be helpful to have the distributions reported in equal size ranges (e.g. 0-50, 51-100,… 301-350, etc.) rather than the uneven ones in the table (0-50, 51-100, … 301-500…). (They are pretty evenly spaced on a logrithmic scale which does work well for some of my calculations.) 2) It is interesting that the largest range used is >1600 when going to >2000 would correspond to the usual definition of a megachurch. But it is also important to note that the PC(USA) tables are based on membership while the megachurch definition is based on worship attendance.

Now, I have taken the sixteen available annual reports for Table 6 and put together a spreadsheet covering 1994-2009. For those years when a church was not one of the top fifteen there is no entry in the rank column for that year and the membership number is taken from the on-line statistical report for that church. Since that is only a 10 year report numbers were directly reported for 1999-2009 and 1998 was calculated from the 1999 membership and the gains and losses reported that year. Those numbers are not included before 1998. And yes, I did graph up all the data but most of the lines are so tightly clustered that I did not think it added anything to include here. At a future date I may present it as groups of churches and include graphs of the subsets then.

OK, I think that does it for the obligatory introduction and geeky details — on to the data.

Turning first to the large churches over the course of these 16 annual reports (1994 – 2009) nineteen different churches have appeared on the list of 15 largest. Of those, nine have been on the list all 16 years, five were on the list at the beginning and have dropped off, one left the list and later returned, and four have been added. A couple of the congregations have held fairly steady positions on the list, only moving up or down four places or less in 16 years, and Peachtree (Atlanta) has held the number one spot for all 16 reports. All 19 churches were part of the PC(USA) in 2009.

Looking at membership numbers, five of the original 15 are larger than they were in 1996, a couple of them significantly larger. For the other ten, one has a minimal (<5%) decrease, but looking at the churches whole histories over this time most show fluctuations and it is not unusual to see periods of several years with very stable membership numbers. Over the whole time range one church, Fourth (Chicago) showed no declining years and two churches that joined the list had no declines in the time they were on the list – Second (Indianapolis, 99-09) and Christ (Edina, MN, 02-09). While some of the churches showed significant declines from 1994 to 2009, no church had declines all 15 intervals.

One of the most interesting properties of this list over time is that for the 15 largest churches there is a fairly constant total membership. The combined membership begins at 73,689, increases to a peak of 75,872 in 1998, generally decreases to 71,368 in 2004, and then moves up and down again until finishing at 71,722. This represents a 2.7% decline over 15 years and a 5.9% total variation.

But when looking at this pattern it is clear that the variation is less a function of the general decline of the PC(USA) and more a reflection of significant membership changes in individual congregations occasioned by some event or transition in the congregation, usually a change in the senior pastor. For instance, the 1998 peak marks the year just before changes at both Peachtree and Menlo Park.

In fact, maybe the thing I find most interesting in this analysis is the response of membership at these churches to changes, particularly in pastoral leadership. While I won’t explore this in depth now, here is the graph of church membership for three churches, Peachtree, First (Orlando), and First (Nashville). I have normalized the membership numbers to the peak just before the transition and placed that peak at Year 5 on the graph. The similarity of the growth-transition/drop-growth pattern is strikingly similar and I’ll be looking at it in more detail in the future.

normalized church membership change

But for our purposes today, what this analysis does show is that for the largest churches in the denomination over the last 15 years the decline as a group is nowhere near what it was for the denomination as a whole and factors that are usually cited for decline in the denomination are subordinate to local influences when it comes to changes in the size of the membership at these churches. It is not so much that the 15 largest churches at any given time are necessarily declining, but that there is rotation in the members of the list and the total size of the churches on the list remain relatively constant, or at least fluctuate within a certain narrow (+/- 3%) range.

Turning now to the other data set, it is important to note that for the largest churches in the denomination there has been a decline when viewed as the number of churches with membership >1600. I have compiled the data for the whole PC(USA) from Table 2 from 1995 to 2009 into another spreadsheet and looking at the top category we can see that the number of large churches held fairly steady from 1995 to 2003 (in the range of 113 to 124 churches) and then from 2003 has steadily declined to 91 churches in 2009.

Looking at all the data ranges we see that only the lowest two ranges, churches with memberships of 0-50 and 51-100 have increased over the range of the chart.

Because of the large scale differences between the lower ranges and the largest ranges I also plotted the distributions normalized to their size in 1995.

Now it is easier to see that the number of churches with memberships of 50 or less increased almost 30% and the next higher range (51-100 members) increased slightly (5%). All other ranges showed a decrease of between 13% and 36%. And while the largest churches showed significant decrease in numbers, the greatest percentage decrease was with the slightly smaller churches in the range of 301-1200 members.

Clearly what is happening is that as members have left the PC(USA) individual congregations have remained active and the churches have been slipping from the larger size ranges to the smaller ranges. This is not an unexpected conclusion since membership has declined 22.1% in this time period, but the number of churches has only declined 6.2%. With this change the mean size of congregations has dropped from 235 to 195 and the median size has gone from 128 to 97. This increasing concentration in the lower size ranges is a reflection of the Presbyterian tendency to let a congregation continue until the membership drops to a point where the members themselves realize that the church can no longer sustain itself.

That is probably enough data for today and by now you have probably come up with some of your own applications from this exercise. Let me mention two of concern to me:

1) Are we training our seminary students for this world of lots and lots of very small churches? If more than one-quarter are 50 members or less and half have less than 100 members what should seminary students know about the world they will be stepping into. Taking this a step further, what are the best models for a pastor in small churches? Yoked ministry? Tent-making? Commissioned Lay Pastor? House churches? Something else? If the future is full of lots of very-small churches what should pastoral leadership look like?

2) Should the future be full of lots of very small churches? Should presbyteries be considering what is the best model for congregations? Should the number of congregations decrease in proportion to the decrease in total membership? Should governing bodies at all levels be more aggressive about counseling and shepherding congregations into a new reality? I don’t know, but these are questions Presbyterians around the world are asking.

So two ends of the size spectra – two differing behaviors in membership variation. But what does each suggest to us about ministry at that end of the distribution?

Thoughts On Modeling The Future Of The Mainline Churches

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It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. — Alfred North Whitehead

In a couple of weeks I will be taking my annual vacation and this year I will have to pack light. No thick volumes on the ecumenical movement or church history this year. After looking around and thinking about this I decided to take along for reading several of the articles in a collection on the Patheos web site on The Future of Mainline Protestantism. This is an interesting collection of opinions coming almost completely from progressive authors. I know several of the authors, have heard several more speak, and have read other works by most of the rest. And based on the skimming I have done so far, they all see a positive future for the mainline. So check back at the end of the month when I’ll post my thoughts on what I have read from there.

But in preparation for that I have started going through a series of purely mathematical thought exercises about possible numerical futures for the mainline, and specifically the PC(USA). For the most part these are intended to be disconnected from theological, institutional or political specifics, although the more detailed model at the end does use some of that. They are also intended to be general concept models that represent particular cases, not specific predictions of the size of the church in fifty years. On the one hand, I will be making specific calculations based on the numbers for the PC(USA). On the other hand, these cases apply to more than one of the mainline churches and can probably be applied to other denominations as well. So here is what I have thought about.

Case 1 – Status quo
At the present time the mainline denominations are all declining in membership at the rate of a few percent per year. Clearly if this continues into the future each will reach a point where that church will not be viable.

For example, for 2009 the PC(USA) reported a total membership of 2,077,138, a net loss of 63,027 from the year before. A quick calculation shows that with a constant loss of this many members the denomination would reach zero in 33 years in 2042.

As you can probably figure out this is not realistic for a number of reasons, some of which I’ll talk about in the last, and most complex, model. A better way to look at the status quo is to consider a constant rate of loss. In 2008 the rate was 3% and in 2009 it was 2.9% so if we look at three different constant rates – 2.5%, 3.0% and 3.5% – this is what we get for the PC(USA).

PC(USA) Membership for Constant Decline Model

Year	Constant Number	Constant Rate
	63,027/yr	2.5%/yr	3.0%/yr	3.5%/yr
2010	2,014,011	2,025,210	2,014,824	2,004,438
2020	1,383,841	1,572,230	1,485,780	1,403,673
2030	753,571	1,220,569	1,095,650	982,967
2040	123,301	947,564	807,959	688,354
2042	0	900,778	760,208	641,013
2050		735,622	595,808	482,042
2060		571,085	439,363	337,566

Case 2 – Renewed Growth
I saw you roll your eyes at this one. Yes, there is a case to be made that the mainline represents an out-dated model that will not survive but rather decay into oblivion as outlined in Case 1.

But remember that this is only a thought experiment. Furthermore, while there is a denomination-wide decline in church membership, on a congregation-by-congregation level this is not necessarily so. Several congregations in my presbytery have shown stable membership over the last ten years (example 1, example 2, example 3 ). (And I will note that this crosses theological lines.) In addition, every so often a national entity issues a list of growing PC(USA) churches and there is a general document abut the characteristics of the fastest growing churches. I could not quickly find that list (I’ll update here if I do) but checking three high-profile congregations I found recent (5-10 year) growth rates of 11.0%, 3.5%, and 2.6%. This is not a scientific sample of growing churches, only a few that I checked. The point is that the decline is not uniform across all the congregations in the PC(USA) and that is probably true of other mainline churches as well. In fact, there is a book out there (that I have not read) that looks at 15 growing Presbyterian churches and why they are growing.

Now, without my actually saying what needs to be done to reverse the decline and begin growing, let me present the model for this case that would propose that a mainline church can get itself organized and take steps to help enough congregations reverse their decline and begin growing in the next decade so that beginning in 2020 the denomination as a whole can begin growing at 1% per year.

(The disclaimers: I am not advocating anything specific at this time, and especially not advocating a cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all franchise scheme for the mainline denominations that would produce a business plan for homogenous churches that are all the same. And I do know that the PC(USA) has been working on doing this one way or another, with out a reversal of the membership decline, for years now. I am also well aware of some of the other complexities of church growth these days, such as the argument that when churches grow all they are really doing is attracting members that are leaving other churches so church growth in many cases is competition for a limited, and declining, resource. Remember, this is just a thought experiment.)

So here is what the reversal model looks like:

PC(USA) Membership For The Reversal Model

Year	Annual Growth Rate	Membership
2009		2,077,138
2010	-3.0%	2,014,824
2011	-2.6%	1,962,438
2012	-2.2%	1,919,265
2013	-1.8%	1,884,718
2014	-1.4%	1,858,332
2015	-1.0%	1,839,749
2016	-0.6%	1,828,710
2017	-0.2%	1,825,053
2018	0.2%	1,828,703
2019	0.6%	1,839,675
2020	1.0%	1,858,072
2030	1.0%	2,052,467
2040	1.0%	2,267,201
2050	1.0%	2,504,400
2060	1.0%	2,766,416

Case 3 – Partitioning or Pruning Model
What if, to use the cliche, we are “right-sizing” the mainline. Consider that the decline in the churches will continue until the target size is reached and then the membership will reach a stable equilibrium.

Well, that is the idea in the abstract but to actually crank out some numbers here I will have to propose certain conditions that I can model. Taking the conventional wisdom that the mainline is becoming more liberal or progressive, why don’t we set as a target size the number of liberals in the church suggesting that all the conservatives will eventually be departing one way or another.

For the PC(USA) I have previously commented on the changes seen in the Presbyterian Panel surveys. (Sorry with the change in the PC(USA) web site links in that post to some of those data sources are now broken and I am trying to restore them.) By one measure, in 2008 34% of the PC(USA) considered itself theologically conservative, 41% moderate, and 25% liberal. Another measure is the question of whether “Only followers of Jesus Christ can be saved” where 39% agreed, 25% were not sure, and 36% disagreed.

Now, as a simple first-order model what if we say the evangelicals leave, the progressives say and the moderates split. There is some symmetry in the survey results so for the sake of argument let’s say that the denomination’s target size is 50% of the 2009 membership and that the total membership loss rate of 3% per year comes completely from the half that is experiencing the departures so we reduce the size of those in the group that remain by 6% per year. This is then constant rate of decline for part of the church and no decline for the other with the total size slowly approaching the target size. Numerically this wold look like:

PC(USA) Membership for Partition Model

Year	Membership
2009	2,077,138
2010	2,014,824
2020	1,564,395
2030	1,321,787
2040	1,191,114
2050	1,120,732
2060	1,082,823
Target	1,038,569

Case 3a – Complex Partitioning or Multiple Effect
OK, as a final model let us leave the realm of first-order models and consider something with two levels of complexity. As those that have looked at membership statistics know, there are many different factors involved in the mainline decline. For this model let us take the 3% decline of the Partition Model and say that 2.5% of that is theology-based departures and it gets applied fully to the declining group. Let us also say that there is a 0.5% decrease for other reasons – cultural, political, social – all lumped into that one decline. This decline is applied uniformly to both groups. (I arrived at this 0.5% number from looking at general rates of decline of Protestant denominations in the American Religious Identification Survey.) So now, instead of “right-sizing” the denomination to a fixed target size we have a model where the membership is rapidly declining towards a target size that is declining itself, but at a much slower rate.

PC(USA) Membership for Multiple Effect Model

Year	Membership
2009	2,077,138
2010	2,014,824
2020	1,540,278
2030	1,251,397
2040	1,068,914
2050	947,759
2060	862,294

Putting it all together
Here is a chart showing the five different models for direct comparison.

Closing words and Commentary
As I wrap this up I should probably repeat again that these are mostly first-order models that use constant or smooth variations in the constants. Other cases could be developed for the rapid departure of particular groups or for the outright division of the church. And while I have modeled the partitioning into two groups you could also imagine the case where it is best modeled as three groups – conservatives, moderates and liberals each in their own partition, or maybe conservatives, emergents, and everyone else.

Having put all of these forward I will state that my own leaning at the present time is to view the future of the PC(USA), and probably some other mainline churches, as following a hybrid model where the church experiences a partition decline coupled with a general decline model. But I think at some time, and maybe not in the next 50 years, the church will reach a “right-size” or equilibrium state where membership will hold fairly steady. But based on these models I will say that the current PC(USA), and similar churches, will not look anything like the present church in size or structure. Time will tell if this is right and what the church will actually look like.

But having said what I expect to happen, let me also say that I am praying for the reversal model. I look to God to find a way for the PC(USA) and other churches to move beyond the current divisions and find a way to bring the Gospel to the world in such a way that people are attracted to the church and the numbers grow again. It does occur to me that maybe this would require partition in order for the witness to begin again and the churches to grow. I don’t know what the answer is but I pray we are attentive to God’s leading as we honestly and prayerfully discern together where we are going.

Now on to another general look at this sort of thing from a different angle, coming up in two or three days.

The 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) — Candidates For Moderator And… (1) Social Media

As I have been analyzing the nominees standing for Moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) I have noticed a number of interesting things. I’ll do an analysis of their statements and positions in the next post, but in compiling this information I noticed a wide range of approaches to their use of social media in connecting with the church.

Before I begin, let me acknowledge that in addition to the usual search engines, including Facebook search and Twitter search, I have to thank Robert Austell and his GAhelp.net Moderators page as well as the information from the “In their own words” feature published by the Layman. And for comments on the role of the Moderator and the election of the Moderator you can check out my GA 101 article “The Moderator — All Things In Moderation.”

Before I launch into this let me answer the legitimate question “Why does this matter?” I would say that it matters because individuals on the national level of the PC(USA) have now bought into the idea that the world has changed and that new technology is the way to go. After all, the 219th is supposed to be the first paper-free Assembly. At the 218th GA the election of Bruce Reyes-Chow as the Moderator was supposed to herald a new day and the church was now adopting technology and moving into the ~~20^th~~ 21^st Century. Now I think that we can all agree on two things: 1) Bruce’s use of social media is exceptional and 2) Vice-Moderator Byron Wade did an admirable job trying to keep up with Bruce. For the record you can follow Bruce on his personal blog, Moderator’s blog, church blog, Facebook , Twitter, and podcast , to name only some of his social media connections. And in my opinion, Byron has really held his own to Bruce by writing a really excellent blog (think quality not quantity), as well as his Facebook and Twitter presence.

The other thing I am trying to figure out for this analysis is what are typical “Moderator campaign” numbers for social media followers. At the present time Bruce has 4996 Facebook friends (there is a limit of 5000) and 2688 Twitter followers. Byron has 1881 Facebook friends and 519 Twitter followers. But their numbers increased dramatically after they were elected and I don’t know what their stats were during the campaign. Maybe a good comparison would be the Rev. Bill Teng, who I would judge as the second-most social media savvy nominee for the 218th. He currently has 531 Facebook friends. Interestingly, the current nominee I would judge most social media connected in the pool for the 219th GA is Vice-Mod nominee Landon Whitsitt who has 596 Facebook friends and 184 Twitter followers. So about the 500-600 range for a well-connected nominee before election? What about the rest of this year’s pool…

Web page
This is technically old-school Web 1.0 and even Bruce has not had one of these. These are sites with static web pages that do not include interaction through comments.

Moderator nominee Rev. James Belle/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Wonjae Choi – No Moderator specific site I could find.

Moderator nominee Elder Cynthia Bolbach/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Landon Whitsitt – No Moderator specific site I could find.

Moderator nominee Rev. Jin S. Kim/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Matt Johnson – No Moderator specific site I could find.

Moderator nominee Rev. Maggie Lauterer/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Theresa Cho – Moderator specific site

Moderator nominee Rev. Julia Leeth/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Hector Reynoso – Dynamic (music, scripting) site but no interaction

Moderator nominee Rev. Eric Nielsen/Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Marilyn Gamm – Moderator specific site

Blog/Web 2.0 Site
This is like a traditional web site but new articles are easily posted in sequence, there is interaction through comments and the content can be tracked through a “feed” using RSS or Atom.

Belle/ Choi -No blog I could find.

Bolbach/ Whitsitt – Food for Thought (11 entries, all posts closed for commenting) (Landon also has a personal blog with occasional Mod comments.)

Kim/ Johnson –New Church Rising/GA Moderatorial (The main blog has been active as the church blog since October 2009. The GA Moderatorial specific section has two posts.)

Lauterer/ Cho – Finding Our Voice (Brand new this week, one post)

Leeth/ Reynoso- None I could find

Nielsen/Gamm -The website has a blog page but it appears to only be used to comment to the Rev. Nielsen. No postings

Facebook
It appears that most nominees have personal Facebook pages but since they are not Moderator related and have privacy set to keep the general public out I won’t link to them. Here are the Moderator-related pages I found:

Bolbach/Whitsitt
Lauterer/Cho
Nielson/Gamm

Twitter
Most of the nominees have Twitter accounts. While Cynthia Bolbach has one listed in the Mod lists, it is private so not Moderator related and not listed here. Here are the others I know of and their statistics:

	Twitter name	Followers	Following	Tweets
Theresa Cho	@theresaecho	73	103	132
Maggie Lauterer	@maggielauterer	16	13	9
Julia Leeth	@julia_leeth	10	0	10
Hector Reynoso	@elvicemoderator	5	16	7
Landon Whitsitt	@landonw	184	171	7155

Other
I was very impressed that two of the nominees also have items up on YouTube:

Bolbach
Lauterer
Nielsen

That is what I and other web sites know about. If I have missed anything or something new is launched let me know and I’ll update the article.

Analysis and Conclusion
As I look at these statistics I have a hard time seeing any of these candidates stepping up to anywhere near the social media connectedness that Bruce and Byron established right from the start, with the obvious exception of Landon. For the other candidates the level of connectedness so far gives the impression that they are either just getting their feet wet in this sphere or are not placing a major emphasis upon it.

So the question is, does it matter? If you are of the opinion that the world has not changed then all this is probably interesting but not important. Or, with the stereotype of the typical Presbyterian being of the “greatest” or “boomer” generation that does not heavily invest their connectedness in social media, this lower penetration into Web 2.0 may be perfectly reasonable since few of the commissioners, whose votes count, would be influenced.

But I think that this does make a difference at two levels. The first is that the YADs, now YAADs, have traditionally predicted the outcome of the Moderator election on their first advisory vote. One has to ask if their enthusiasm for a nominee has a conscious or unconscious influence on the commissioners in their voting. If so, connecting with the YAADs in their native media would be helpful to a nominee.

The second place that I think it makes a difference is connecting with the larger church. While I don’t know for certain, I have to think that a Moderator nominee who shows they can connect with the younger members, and potential members, of the denomination would be viewed favorably by commissioners when they make their decisions, especially if they are thinking about the graying of the church. But the other half of the battle is for the successful nominee to actually be connected after they are elected.

As I look through all these media statistics I have trouble seeing any of the Moderator nominees with a strong social media presence or potential. Conventional wisdom is that a Vice-Moderator choice has little, if any, affect on the Moderator voting so I don’t know if Landon’s strong on-line presence would be any substantial support to Cynthia Bolbach. But looking through this data that is the only real strength I see at the moment.

Finally, this post is not intended to pressure any of the nominees into redesigning their campaigns to have a more substantial Web 2.0 component. On the one hand I think it is a little too late for that and on the other I think what is more dangerous than not having a social media connection is one that is forced and unauthentic. Web 2.0 is, after all, about being yourself and being transparent, right? My advice is to be yourself, but try to have your on-line presence reflect who you are.

With 17 days left before the election I would not expect a change in presentation now to make a difference in the Moderator election. So maybe this is more an argument for the successful nominee to figure out how to integrate more social media into their time as Moderator. Do we expect a repeat of Bruce and Byron’s presence — probably not. But by the same token we would expect the Moderatorial term to reflect that the world has changed, at least if we believe that it has. Stay tuned to see how they do.

Following The FIFA World Cup – Or – As A G.A. Junkie What I Like About Association Football

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For me it is a very unfortunate coincidence that the FIFA World Cup falls at the peak of General Assembly Season. I must confess that my GA tracking has gotten a bit distracted by following the beautiful game. Sometime I will blog about how being a soccer referee has informed my theology and how I turned that into a children’s sermon – but that is not today. Right now I wanted to give a few more general thoughts about the game and, hold on, Presbyterian polity.

To give a brief background I grew up in a city known for its support of soccer with an NALS team and now a team in the “revived” NASL. As a youth we played pick-up games, a couple of which resulted in injuries requiring significant medical treatment to friends of mine. While I only played organized soccer one year on a Jr. High team I have followed local teams, college and professional, where I have lived. I am a trained soccer coach and referee. It is the latter that connects with my passion for Presbyterian polity.

The first point I want to touch on is the origin of the “organized” game. While the exact origins of the game are debated, and many cultures seem to have similar style games, the rules that the present game derives from come from a series of rules developed between British public schools who played similar style games but each with their own specific differences. (See where I’m going with this about different Presbyterian branches?) The rules of what we now recognize as Association Football and the predecessor to the modern Laws of the Game were agreed upon in 1863 with the formation of the Football Association. Some of the schools’ versions of the games involved the use of the hands and an alternate game, based on the game played at Rugby School , was codified in 1870 as rugby football. (Note the not-so-subtle inclusion of the rugby goal in the banner picture on the Rugby School web site.) So bottom line for polity: rules were agreed by collections of individuals representing the different schools and where different rules were favored different branches of the sport developed.

Association Football is sometimes referred to as The Simplest Game because the objective and core rules are easy to explain. As one colleague of mine puts it, you could give the whistle to someone who has never seen the game before and tell them to blow it when they see something wrong and they would get 90% of the fouls and restarts. (But they would not know what to do after they blow the whistle.) There are 17 Laws of the Game which take 47 pages to explain in the official, nicely illustrated, rulebook . And yes, there are also pages and pages of interpretation and other stuff that go with it. But, it takes Major League Baseball 12 pages just to explain the Objective of the Game and the equipment. Or, compare the rules for a soccer kickoff versus an NFL kickoff:

Soccer	Football
Kick-off A kick-off is a way of starting or restarting play: • at the start of the match • after a goal has been scored • at the start of the second half of the match • at the start of each period of extra time, where applicable A goal may be scored directly from the kick-off. Procedure • all players are in their own half of the field • the opponents of the team taking the kick-off are at least 9.15 m (10 yds) from the ball until it is in play • the ball is stationary on the centre mark • the referee gives a signal • the ball is in play when it is kicked and moves forward • the kicker does not touch the ball a second time until it has touched another player After a team scores a goal, the kick-off is taken by the other team. Infringements/Sanctions If the kicker touches the ball a second time before it has touched another player: • an indirect free kick is awarded to the opposing team to be taken from the place where the infringement occurred * (see page 3) For any other infringement of the kick-off procedure: • the kick-off is retaken	Kickoff In addition to a kickoff, the other free kick is a kick after a safety (safety kick). A punt may be used (a punt may not be used on a kickoff). On a safety kick, the team scored upon puts ball in play by a punt, dropkick, or placekick without tee. No score can be made on a free kick following a safety, even if a series of penalties places team in position. (A field goal can be scored only on a play from scrimmage or a free kick after a fair catch.) A kickoff may not score a field goal. A kickoff is illegal unless it travels 10 yards OR is touched by the receiving team. Once the ball is touched by the receiving team or has gone 10 yards, it is a free ball. Receivers may recover and advance. Kicking team may recover but NOT advance UNLESS receiver had possession and lost the ball. When a kickoff goes out of bounds between the goal lines without being touched by the receiving team, the ball belongs to the receivers 30 yards from the spot of the kick or at the out-of-bounds spot unless the ball went out-of-bounds the first time an onside kick was attempted. In this case, the kicking team is penalized five yards and the ball must be kicked again. When a kickoff goes out of bounds between the goal lines and is touched last by receiving team, it is receiver’s ball at out-of-bounds spot. If the kicking team either illegally kicks off out of bounds or is guilty of a short free kick on two or more consecutive onside kicks, receivers may take possession of the ball at the dead ball spot, out-of-bounds spot, or spot of illegal touch.

Soccer

Football

Kick-off

A kick-off is a way of starting or restarting play:
    • at the start of the match
    • after a goal has been scored
    • at the start of the second half of the match
    • at the start of each period of extra time, where applicable
A goal may be scored directly from the kick-off.

Procedure
   • all players are in their own half of the field
    • the opponents of the team taking the kick-off are at least 9.15 m (10 yds) from the ball until it is in play
   • the ball is stationary on the centre mark
   • the referee gives a signal
    • the ball is in play when it is kicked and moves forward
   • the kicker does not touch the ball a second time until it has touched another player
After a team scores a goal, the kick-off is taken by the other team.

Infringements/Sanctions
If the kicker touches the ball a second time before it has touched another player:
• an indirect free kick is awarded to the opposing team to be taken from the place where the infringement occurred * (see page 3)
For any other infringement of the kick-off procedure:
• the kick-off is retaken

Kickoff

In addition to a kickoff, the other free kick is a kick after a safety (safety kick). A punt may be used (a punt may not be used on a kickoff).
On a safety kick, the team scored upon puts ball in play by a punt, dropkick, or placekick without tee. No score can be made on a free kick following a safety, even if a series of penalties places team in position. (A field goal can be scored only on a play from scrimmage or a free kick after a fair catch.)
A kickoff may not score a field goal.
A kickoff is illegal unless it travels 10 yards OR is touched by the receiving team. Once the ball is touched by the receiving team or has gone 10 yards, it is a free ball. Receivers may recover and advance. Kicking team may recover but NOT advance UNLESS receiver had possession and lost the ball.
When a kickoff goes out of bounds between the goal lines without being touched by the receiving team, the ball belongs to the receivers 30 yards from the spot of the kick or at the out-of-bounds spot unless the ball went out-of-bounds the first time an onside kick was attempted. In this case, the kicking team is penalized five yards and the ball must be kicked again.
When a kickoff goes out of bounds between the goal lines and is touched last by receiving team, it is receiver’s ball at out-of-bounds spot.
If the kicking team either illegally kicks off out of bounds or is guilty of a short free kick on two or more consecutive onside kicks, receivers may take possession of the ball at the dead ball spot, out-of-bounds spot, or spot of illegal touch.

As a soccer referee I find the soccer rules simpler and shorter than other sports’ rulebooks. And taking this one step further, you could almost consider the FIFA Laws of the Game as a confessional standard since that basic rulebook is applicable from the Jr. High games I referee to the World Cup. An amazing continuity throughout the game as the Westminster Standards provide a document many Presbyterian branches look to.

The other thing about the soccer rules is their flexibility, intended like the new revised Form of Government for the PC(USA). While certain things are hard and fast, like the procedure above for the kick off, other things are left up to the particular situation. For example, in the Laws of the Game there is no specified size of field, only a range: 90-120 meters long and 45-90 meters wide. The only requirement is that the field must be longer than wide. Yes, for international matches there is a smaller range, at the larger end, and individual tournaments, like the World Cup, can specify exact field dimension. Also, the referee is not to stop play for a foul if stopping the game would cause the fouled team to lose an advantage (unlike basketball which always stops for a foul which drives me crazy). And the famous (at least in the soccer world) Advice to Referees 5.5 says:

5.5 TRIFLING INFRACTIONS
“The Laws of the Game are intended to provide that games should beplayed with as little interference as possible, and in this view it isthe duty of referees to penalize only deliberate breaches of the Law.Constant whistling for trifling and doubtful breaches produces badfeeling and loss of temper on the part of the players and spoils thepleasure of spectators.”

There is a degree on interpretation, like AI’s or PJC decisions, that a referee makes to strike a balance between flow and control of the game. One would hope that our application polity would be similar.

Which brings me to my final point and that is to point out that in soccer a nil-nil draw is a perfectly acceptable outcome to a game. A soccer game does not require a winner. The exception is tournament situations where after the extra time (over time) we have the shootout which most soccer fans, players, coaches and referees consider a dreadful way to determine a winner — but nothing better has been worked out yet. The reason that many find it dreadful gets back to the philosophy that the game does not require a winner. It is among the lowest scoring of sports and the play for the 90 minutes as the players work to put the ball in the back of the net is just as important as actually putting the ball in the back of the net. Like Presbyterian assemblies, the process is as important as the outcome. How we discern the will of God together is important to our life together.

There is one more similarity between the two disciplines which is unfortunate. The intent is that an Assembly is one team working together but with different members with different understandings that help inform the process. It is unfortunate when an Assembly or Synod takes on the feel of a soccer match with two different teams on the pitch (field) each trying to push the ball over opposite goal lines.

I do not intend to argue an analogy between the two areas but only to point out a few of the parallels. Something to ponder as I keep #ga219, #30ga and #pcaga on my Twitter feed while live streaming Brazil v. PRK over lunch. Your milage may vary. Play on!

The PCA Strategic Plan — How Do You Grow Larger?

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The 38th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America will be considering the new Strategic Plan for the PCA. The church is putting significant effort into presenting and interpreting the Plan including the main report with the narrative of the Plan, an executive summary dealing mainly with the funding proposals contained in the Plan as well as a slightly longer detailed description of the funding formula, and a concise summary of the changes to the Book of Church Order that would be necessary to implement one part of the Plan. On the interpretation side, there is a five part video on the Plan web page that I think does a good job explaining the situation and what the Plan includes to address those issues. There is also an FAQ and a page of comments about the Plan from “PCA leaders” (a note that all the comments are positive, a fact noted in the file name which contains the word “endorsements”). The PCA publication byFaith has articles about the committee approving the Plan, reaction to the Plan (again positive) from pastors, and responses to questions/criticisms that have been raised. Speaking of criticisms, the PCA blogosphere has been buzzing about the Plan and from what I have read it has generally been doubtful or critical of the plan. For a collected list of all these responses keep an eye on the blog Johannes Weslianus where Wes White has been keeping track of all this. He posted his latest list yesterday where it is instructive to note that there are no unofficial positive responses to the Plan but 10 (some in multiple parts) “cautious/skeptical” responses and two “opposed” — But that is the nature of the blogosphere which, interestingly, is something the Plan comments on ( pg. 13 ). Wes also includes his picks for “Best Concise Summary” of the Plan.

I have made selective general comments about the Plan twice now, but before I launch into my more detailed analysis I think it is important to remind you of the lens that I read the Plan through. On the one hand I am a ruling elder in a denomination other than the PCA so as I read the report I can miss some of the history, nuances and subtleties that it contains, references, or includes implicitly from the ethos of the denomination. On the other hand, I am an observer and student of “big picture” Presbyterianism and some of the conclusions I have drawn from the report are similarly big picture and I have not seen them mentioned in the comments on other blogs (although I have fallen behind in my reading so if this is bringing the observation to the party late I apologize).

Let me begin with my two general observations about the Strategic Plan. The first is that it does a very good job of describing the situation and circumstances that the PCA finds itself in today. In fact, the point of my first post was that the insight of the report is so good that their observations and isolation of the issues can be applied to not just the PCA but to may of the Presbyterian and Reformed branches at this time. While I previously highlighted the opening section of Identifying Our Challenges (p. 7) I found the whole section, including the North American and European Challenges, Global Challenges, and Internal Challenges to be comprehensive and useful. I also found the sections on Identifying Opportunities and Identifying Strengths to be good. More on some of those specifics in a moment.

The other thing that struck me was that as I read through the report, and especially the recommendations, I kept thinking “that is something a ‘large denomination’ does.” After thinking that enough times it struck me that what the report seems to be proposing, intentionally or not, are ways for the PCA to make the structural leap from a medium sized denomination to a large denomination. Let me explain…

There are widely recognized and described styles of congregations based upon their size — one of the most widely used, the Rothauge system, has Family, Pastoral, Program, and Corporate churches from smallest to largest in size. While the styles and boundaries between them are not hard and fast (I would say that my own congregation well into the Program size still has strong characteristics of the Pastoral style) it is a useful general scheme for understanding congregational dynamics. A similar system could probably be developed based on denomination size although I am not aware of one. And while the congregation size system has some variability, I would expect the denomination system to be even more variable depending on where a particular church falls in the congregational-hierarchical polity spectrum. But having said that, the PCA is one of a few Presbyterian branches in the vicinity of 300,000 members and I have suspected that for Presbyterian branches there may be a transition point there. One indication of this may be the slowing growth the PCA has seen recently (although there are numerous other possible explanations as well).

Why is there a transition point? As the Report itself identifies (p. 13) “Our organizational cohesion has not primarily been achieved by shared mission goals, ministry practice, organizational support, worship style, ethnicity, political perspectives or economic status – but by doctrinal agreement.” To go forward the Report describes the evolution of the denomination in this way:

Our values are well identified in the “motto” of the PCA: Faithful to Scripture, True to the Reformed Faith, and Obedient to the Great Commission.

The phrases of this motto also provide insight into the missional development of the PCA. It is fair to say that commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture was the driving force of our founding and that the churches who initially came into the PCA immediately united in this value. Determining what it meant to be true to the Reformed faith was not as unifying, and created significant debates among us for the next 30 years. These debates both clouded understanding of our mission and inhibited cooperative participation in it. While progress has been made in defining how we will hold each other accountable for being true to the Reformed faith, relational tensions wax and wane around this issue. Thus, the next stage of PCA development likely relates to the last phrase of our motto. How we do mission together, and whether we can do mission together, is the key to our future. If we are able to unite in missional purpose, we have much to contribute to the future of the Kingdom; if we cannot, then our future is likely incessant, inward-focused pettiness.

To put it into general terms – when small a branch can be held together by a strong common tie, probably historical or doctrinal, but as it grows the increase in size creates enough diversity that at a certain point a “critical mass” is reached where well-intentioned and sincerely held doctrinal differences threaten the cohesion of the group and unity needs to be found in something other than shared history or doctrinal conformity. At least that is my perspective on denominational size and where I see the PCA as I read this report.

So as I read through the report I saw several items that I would identify with a “large denomination.” These proposals include advisory delegates, representation/quotas/places at the table, pro rated and progressive assessments for Administrative work, and “safe places” to talk. And when I say “large denomination” I’m sure that many in the PCA would rightly think PC(USA) , but I would also include the few other large Reformed branches, like the RCA and the Church of Scotland as well. Therefore, to emphasize the generality of my argument I use the generic label rather than a specific denomination.

Now, let me also say that in a general sense the proposals for growth are in and of themselves neutral. It will be how they are implemented and used that determines their usefulness and missional applicability and validity.

One final comment about the report in general: As I read it I had to agree with many of the other commentators that when it got to the actual plan portion it got very specific and business-like and it was tough to tell that this had anything to do with a church. Taking from one of Wes White’s Best Concise Summaries, David A. Booth says this:

Addressing specific details in the PCA’s proposed strategic plan that one Elder or another objects to still leaves the denomination approaching Christ’s Church like a non-profit organization that simply needs to be managed better. This is not to imply that the men involved in crafting the PCA’s proposed strategic plan have anything other than good motives. Furthermore, some of the problems that the report is wrestling with are very real problems for the PCA. What should be called into question is the very idea of grand strategic planning within the Church of Jesus Christ. We cannot manage-in the Kingdom of God.

There is a tension in how we use human means to organize ourselves to do God’s work.

As something of a counter argument I would recommend watching the five part video posted on the web page. It not only adds substantial and much-needed theological depth that the printed report itself lacks, but provides an interesting commentary on the challenges the church in general faces and the changes in society. Even non-PCA members might find the first three segments of this presentation interesting where the general challenges are discussed. (It is about the first 30 minutes of this 49 minute presentation.)

Having now expended a substantial number of words on my general observations I will only briefly touch on just a few of the specifics of the report.

In the report it talks about “animating values” (what gets us interested) and “formal values” (stated standards of the church). There is a list of 27 animating values of local churches (p. 5) and I did not see where those came from and whether there was a particular order to them. I must admit that if ordered I would have “Right administration of the Sacraments” and “Good Bible preaching” higher than their respective 8 and 10 on the published list. I was also a little surprised for a Reformed branch to include “Revival thru viral repentance and faith” in the list but maybe I’m not interpreting that correctly. (Or maybe I’m too T.R. for my own good.)

There is a great list on page 6 related to the animating values of groups that I think does an good job of classifying the various identities within the PCA and how they are viewed by others. One thought that crossed my mind as I read the report, and that seems to be a sub-text in some of the discussions in the PCA, is how the churches from the former RPCES are, or are not, part of this group identity? While “Southern Presbyterianism” seems to be a factor in places in the report, the RPCES heritage is not.

Another great list is that of Internal Challenges (p. 12-14) which, as I noted above, transcends the PCA. I was particularly interested to see item 6 on the list:

6. Pervasive Disregard for Eph. 4:15 and Matthew 18 in Discussions of Differences
Our organizational cohesion has not primarily been achieved by shared mission goals, ministry practice, organizational support, worship style, ethnicity, political perspectives or economic status – but by doctrinal agreement. The downside of so valuing doctrine is that we have little tolerance within or without the church for theological variance. Our tendency is not simply to consider those who differ with us wrong – but to consider them bad (because they are obviously “compromisers” or “unbiblical”). It is easy for us to give moral status to our theological perspective – even on secondary issues, and thus rationalize uncharitable characterizations of those who differ (esp. on blogs)

I think this is an issue that has not been vocalized enough but will have to be in the future as more of our interaction goes into the virtual world. A topic for another time and nice to see listed, but we must be careful not to uniformly demonize the web.

On that same list item 18 had me scratching my head a little bit: “Lack of Desire among Young Leaders to Assume Positions with PCA’s Most Significant Pulpits and Organizations (perception that they are moribund and dangerous for families)” If read at face value this is interesting because the “clergy crunch” currently is typically described as small rural churches, not flagship or tall steeple. But maybe with my lack of connection to the PCA I am missing something here.

Let me move on to the specific recommendations.

Theme 1. Safe Places – This would provide open forums for expressing any opinions regarding the selected topic at GA meetings and encourage similar forums in a presbytery context. The goal is to provide a safe, non-judgmental environment for bringing up differing viewpoints on Biblical Belief, Ministry and Mission.

Theme 2. More Seats – These recommendations relate to getting representatives at the table from currently unrepresented groups: younger generation, women, ethnic leaders, global church representatives. Some of this involves participation on committees, in forums, and mentoring. This theme also includes identifying, credentialling, and encouraging non-ordained vocational ministries.

Theme 3. Global Mission – This is more of a mixed bag and more controversial.

Means 1 – I would describe this as being more intentional about working in Gospel outreach outside the PCA.

Means 2 – “Develop a unifying funding means” – This is the revision of the funding model for the Administrative Committee and the only part of the report that requires a change to the Book of Church Order. For the details here see the Rules Changes document, but the change to BCO 14-1 would empower the GA to collect the mandatory assessment, and the change to 14-2 specifies that TE and RE commissioners to the Assembly are only in good standing if their congregations have paid the fees. Otherwise they have voice but not vote. The last action would change the Rules of Assembly Operations 14-11 to describe the fee, proposed to be capped at 0.4% “of local church Tithes and Offerings.”

Means 3 – To develop a method to evaluate GA level ministry to support only those “critical to our calling.”

Means 4 – “Partner with national & international ministries with whom we can most effectively participate in God’s global mission.” This would have the church be selective in who they partner with and withdraw from organizations with whom they do not share “ministry priorities,” and NAPARC is mentioned by name to withdraw from. In other words, put resources of gifts and talents towards ministry and not doctrine.

Well, that is a summary of the document. There is plenty of reading there for you as well as in all the various responses. At great risk of being too selective I am going to highlight one particular response that seems to have gotten referenced around the blogosphere as much as any of them have…

On the Aquila Report William M. Schweitzer has a commentary titled “Thoughts on the PCA Strategic Plan: Is It Presbyterian?” In this article he highlights three areas where the Strategic Plan would compromise ecclesiastical standards as Presbyterians understand them. First, the provisions for future planning and implementation decision making shifts power from the presbyteries to the Cooperative Ministries Committee. Second, the use of non-ordained vocational ministries would circumvent the process of call, exploration, and response understood in our process of certification and ordination and derived from the Pastoral Epistles. And finally, the idea of more “seats at the table” compromises the role of “biblically qualified and ordained elders” and shifts power from elders to advisory delegates.

Well, as I said, the on-line response has been very concerned to negative but what will ultimately matter is the discernment of the body through the debate and vote on the floor of the Assembly. Is the question whether the PCA has reached a point in their size where structural changes are needed to grow? Or does the church go back to “being the church” and concentrate on spreading the Gospel. (Which is one of the theme of the Plan.) There are well known names on both sides of this issue at the moment and it will be interesting to hear from the broad range of commissioners as they discuss this. I’m sure there are a lot more viewpoints out there that have not been expressed yet. Stay tuned.

Liturgy — Don’t Deny It, You Probably Have It

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One of the things I regularly hear from people who attend contemporary worship services is that they like the fact that there is no liturgy. Now, it may not be “high church,” it may not have a printed order of worship, it may not have unison prayers or much congregational participation beyond the singing of the contemporary Christian music. But at the heart there is an unwritten order of worship that these services follow whether anyone wants to admit it or not. I have been to enough of these services to know, there is a very specific order to them that in my understanding of worship qualifies as its own particular liturgy.

And now, the folks at North Point Media have NAILED IT! Have a look at their video parody movie trailer “Sunday’s Coming.”

Presbyterians — Owning The Label

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An interesting little news article flashed across my news alerts this morning. If I am not reading too much into the story it is not only interesting but fascinating.

The news site NorthFulton.com reports that “Church of the Hills Changes names.” The story lede says:

JOHNS CREEK – The Church of the Hills officially changed its name to Johns Creek Presbyterian Church effective Easter Sunday, April 4.

If you read this the same way that I did the first thing that jumps to mind is that a church with a name that evokes the generic community church concept, maybe one that is trying to be “seeker sensitive,” has changed course and is now embracing its Presbyterian roots and membership. At the present time that seems to be the exception and not the rule.

Now I may be reading way too much into this news story. But here is a quick run down of what I have found out. (And since they are changing their name their web site may be changing as well so some of these links might be broken shortly.) They are a relatively new church in the growing suburbs north of Atlanta and part of the Greater Atlanta Presbytery, PC(USA). The news story says that the church “follows many local area businesses in adopting the young city’s name” suggesting recent incorporation of Johns Creek. The story also quotes the interim pastor, The Rev. Chris Price:

“Our new name better assists newcomers and families who are seeking a Presbyterian church in the Johns Creek area and reinforces our commitment to the Johns Creek community,” explains Johns Creek Presbyterian Church’s interim pastor, the Rev. Chris Price. “Our name has changed, but our philosophy has not. We’re looking forward to strengthening our presence in the city of Johns Creek by continuing to offer residents a strong and balanced community-based, spiritual home that provides fellowship, worship, and extensive outreach programs.”

That quote sure seems to indicate they want to increase their brand as being Presbyterian.

From the history of the church on the web site we find out that it was chartered in 1995 with 100 charter members. The congregational statistics from the PC(USA) show fairly steady growth from 1998 (about 390 members) to 2008 (855 members). Worship attendance has not grown as much going from 250 to 390 in the same time period. Nevertheless, it is a growing congregation in the PC(USA).

At the present time the web site is still under the old name and on the web site the church neither promotes nor runs from the “Presbyterian USA” label, as they use it. As you can see in the church logo to the right the Presbyterian label is smaller but present. (I don’t normally insert a graphic like this in my articles but with the name change I expect any links to break so I’ve included it this time.) Reading through the web site references to the PC(USA) by that name are present but scattered and the presbytery involvement in the planting of the church is acknowledged.

In short, I am left to conclude that the while the congregation and/or leadership was previously accepting of the Presbyterian label it appears that they have decided to now raise its visibility in the community. And this is based on what I could find quickly and read into it, a somewhat dangerous thing to do. The Presbyterian affiliation may have been more or less visible than I estimate before this. The affiliation may be more or less than before with the name change.

[This is about to get a bit off-topic but one thing that did strike me is that there may be a bit of a back story to all this. You thought I was out on a limb so far, let me put one more item on the table. In another article in NorthFulton.com from almost exactly two years ago there is the announcement that a new pastor had been called to become a co-pastor with the founding pastor of the congregation. The article also says that the founding pastor is getting ready to retire so it appears they tried to do the “co-pastor pastoral transition” strategy to get around the vacant pulpit and interim like they have now. Anyway, two years later neither the name of the called pastor nor the name of the founding pastor are now seen in the staff list, and in fact from comparing the pictures it appears that the pastor they called has now landed in Vicksburg. This is not to cast any aspersions on what may have caused this turnover — I have chaired COM, I know that things like this happen for good reasons. But I bring this up only to ask, but not answer, the question of whether the name change may also have been directly or indirectly influenced by the staff changes?]

This story is an interesting contrast to another item today, a post by Dave Sarafolean on Joshua Judges Ruth. That post reminded us of a post by Darryl Hart on his blog Old Life Theological Society about a year ago titled “Too Cool For You? Wither The PCA.” In that piece Mr. Hart talks about the reasons that one conservative Presbyterian branch might have a church plant near an existing church in another conservative branch. He suggests:

One possible reason for the inability of PCA Philadelphians to recommendCalvary OPC to Presbyterian communicants in the area is that the PCA,even in some of its more traditional sectors, like Tenth, no longercultivates a sense of being Presbyterian. Instead, what appears to drivethe PCA, and has been doing so since roughly 1995 when Tim Keller andRedeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City became such a phenomenon,is exegeting, engaging, and redeeming the culture. (emphasis added)

And another recent example that I have cited is the Oakfield, NY, church. What began as the First Presbyterian Church of Oakfield became the Oakfield Independent Presbyterian Church and then the congregation reorganized again as the Oakfield Community Bible Church losing its Presbyterian identity.

So in these days of churches downplaying their denominational affiliations if not distancing themselves from them (remember in my neck of the woods the Crystal Cathedral is Reformed Church in America and Saddleback Community Church is Southern Baptist) it is fascinating to see Johns Creek re-engaging the Presbyterian title.

Seminaries Supporting The PC(USA) – How Are They Represented In The Congregations

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Yesterday I finished up a look at the numbers of students that attend seminaries associated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and noted that in the wider universe of seminaries there is one that actually has more Presbyterian students than any of the PC(USA) seminaries.

This is an interesting situation that has sometimes led to questions about a student’s preparation for ministry, perspectives on theology, and in some cases their loyalty to the denomination. I could tell you stories but that is for another time. The topic for today is how this statistical profile from the seminaries gets reflected in the congregations.

I now return to the Presbyterian Panel and their 2009-2011 Panel Profile. Actually, I am going to look at the last five panel profiles.

One of the questions the Teaching Elders on the Panel (Research Services calls them clergy) are asked is:

From what school and in what year did you receive your M.Div. or B.D. degree?

Before breaking this down by school consider the groupings of PC(USA) seminaries versus non-PC(USA).

	Panel Profile 1997-1999		Panel Profile 2000-2002		Panel Profile 2003-2005		Panel Profile 2006-2008		Panel Profile 2009-2011
	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.
PC(USA) seminary	69%	66%	70%	68%	68%	65%	69%	70%	66%	65%
non-PC(USA) seminary	31%	34%	30%	32%	32%	35%	31%	30%	34%	35%

Let me also remind you that the margin of error is +4% and “Spec.” is short for “Specialized Clergy” which are active Teaching Elders serving in a ministry other than in a congregation.

Looking at this table we can say (1) that the percentages of specialized clergy and the percentages of pastors from PC(USA) schools are statistically the same for each panel, and (2) that over the five panels there is no statistically significant variation with time although there might be a suggestion in the most recent panel that more pastors are coming from non-PC(USA) schools.

Now, let’s break it down by the individually seminaries:

	Panel Profile 1997-1999		Panel Profile 2000-2002		Panel Profile 2003-2005		Panel Profile 2006-2008		Panel Profile 2009-2011
	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.
Austin	4%	3%	5%	4%	4%	4%	5%	4%	6%	3%
Columbia	8%	8%	10%	8%	9%	5%	8%	8%	10%	7%
Dubuque	4%	3%	3%	2%	4%	3%	3%	3%	2%	2%
JCS/ITC	1%	1%	1%	0%	NR	NR	*	1%	1%	1%
Louisville	8%	6%	7%	6%	8%	8%	8%	7%	7%	7%
McCormick	5%	8%	5%	7%	6%	7%	5%	6%	4%	5%
Pittsburgh	7%	7%	6%	10%	6%	6%	8%	5%	5%	5%
Princeton	18%	17%	19%	17%	16%	18%	19%	20%	20%	20%
San Fran.	6%	6%	5%	6%	6%	9%	5%	10%	4%	9%
Union (VA)	8%	7%	9%	8%	9%	5%	8%	6%	7%	5%
Evangelical	NR	NR	NR	NR	NR	NR	*	*	*	*
Fuller	7%	5%	9%	4%	7%	6%	10%	6%	9%	5%
Gordon Conwell	4%	1%	3%	3%	5%	3%	4%	3%	4%	3%
Union-Auburn	2%	5%	NR	NR	NR	NR	NR	NR	NR	NR
Yale	1%	4%	NR	NR	NR	NR	NR	NR	NR	NR
Other	17%	19%	19%	26%	20%	25%	16%	21%	20%	26%

Notes: 1) Evangelical is Evangelical in Puerto Rico, (2) JCS/ITC is Johnson C. Smith at the Interdenominational Theological Center, (3) NR is not reported on that panel so is included in “Other”, (4) * is less than 0.5% and is rounded to zero, (5) the PC(USA) seminaries are the first ten listed.

Looking at this table for trends what we can say is that statistically speaking each of the seminaries shows constant representation in the workforce over these twelve years. There is the suggestion of a decrease in McCormick and maybe also Dubuque and Pittsburgh, and the slight suggestion of an increase in Princeton, Fuller and Other. Again, while never present in statistically significant amounts, it is interesting to note that it is more likely for graduates of McCormick, San Francisco and Other to be in the Specialized Clergy, while grads of Union (VA), Fuller, and maybe Austin, Columbia and Gordon Conwell are more likely to be Pastors.

What really surprised me about these tables, and the prime motivator for my quest for numbers yesterday, is the paradox that if Fuller has more Presbyterian students than any other school, why does it always have only half as many Teaching Elders in the workforce than Princeton grads? One possibility is that while Princeton and Fuller consolidate all their Presbyterian students into the general category Presbyterian, there may be signifigantly different representation from the PC(USA). It may be that Princeton has more PC(USA) students while Fuller’s Presbyterian students include more from Korean churches. But I also have to wonder if fewer Fuller students from the PC(USA) enter the workforce as Teaching Elders in the PC(USA). Do they go to other denominations? Do they go into the workforce in non-ordained congregational or parachurch ministry? Is the high number of Fuller students, while pretty constant across these reports, still a more recent development and its impact will be seen in the future? More numbers and analysis are needed.

OK, next question: How does the pastoral workforce from PC(USA) schools correspond to their enrollment size as reported by the PC(USA)?

	Panel Profile 2009-2011		Panel Profile Normalized to PC(USA) schools		PC(USA) reported enrollment (number)	PC(USA) reported enrollment (percent of total)
	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.
Austin	6%	3%	9%	5%	273	8%
Columbia	10%	7%	15%	11%	428	13%
Dubuque	2%	2%	3%	3%	177	5%
JCS/ITC	1%	1%	2%	2%	21	0.6%
Louisville	7%	7%	11%	11%	217	6%
McCormick	4%	5%	6%	8%	340	10%
Pittsburgh	5%	6%	8%	9%	370	11%
Princeton	20%	20%	30%	31%	703	21%
San Fran.	4%	9%	6%	14%	459	14%
Union (VA)	7%	5%	11%	8%	365	11%

Notes: (1) Due to rounding totals may not add up to exactly 100%.

There is clearly a considerable risk in comparing the numbers from the Panel with the total enrollment in the seminaries. That is why I went on the unsuccessful quest I wrote about yesterday — to get more specific numbers. In doing this comparison I assume that each seminary has the same proportions of M.Div. students and the same proportions of PC(USA) students in their total enrollment. The indication from this table is that this assumption holds pretty well. Within the confidence limits all that we can conclusively say is that there are more Princeton grads out in congregations than their proportional enrollment would predict. There is the suggestion that Louisville is also over-represented and that Dubuque, McCormick and Pittsburgh are under-represented.

For comparison purposes, based on these numbers there are 3353 students at PC(USA) seminaries. The PC(USA) statistical summary for 2008 lists 1164 candidates. While it is a bit of a rough calculation, candidacy is usually the last of the three years at seminary, suggesting at least 3492 PC(USA) seminary students. (On the one hand, since the care process is one of exploration of call we would expect candidates, the last stage, to be fewer than the other years so the number may represent a lower limit. On the other hand, since
an individual would remain a candidate after graduation until they find a call the number might be pulled up by that. I wonder how much those two effects balance out?) Anyway, if 2/3 of students are at PC(USA) seminaries, that would give us a rough figure of 2328 PC(USA) students in M.Div. programs at PC(USA) seminaries or 69% of the total enrollment. Seems a bit high from the numbers I wrote about yesterday so the pool of candidates may include a greater number seeking a call.

Finally, are there any trends seen in the year of graduation?

	Panel Profile 1997-1999		Panel Profile 2000-2002		Panel Profile 2003-2005		Panel Profile 2006-2008		Panel Profile 2009-2011
	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.	Pastors	Spec.
Prior to 1960	5%	19%	2%	8%	1%	2%	*	2%
1960-1969	20%	25%	16%	25%	11%	18%	6%	13%	3% #	10% #
1970-1970	25%	23%	24%	26%	24%	28%	23%	24%	20%	23%
1980-1989	31%	24%	32%	27%	32%	33%	32%	34%	30%	30%
1990-1999	17%	7%	25%	13%	27%	19%	27%	23%	24%	26%
2000-2009					4%	1%	11%	4%	22%	10%
do not have degree	2%	2%	1%	1%	NR	NR	NR	NR	NR	NR

Notes: * – less than 0.5% and rounds to zero; # – number is for prior to 1970; survey is taken at the beginning of the panel time span.

The year grouping make these numbers a bit harder to track but accounting for that it is interesting to see the general distribution of graduation dates track across the panel surveys with little variation. I don’t think that it is unexpected to see more recent grads in the pastor category and more older grads in the specialized ministry category where experience and flexibility are to be found. It is interesting that this variation is in the tails of the distribution while in the center of the two distributions the shape is very similar.

So, looking at all of these number it raises the question of why we should care about them. Reason number one is that they show a significant stability in the pastoral training in the PC(USA). Yes, these are percentages of the number of graduates in the work force so it does not say anything about absolute numbers or changes in the quality or content of the education they are receiving. In some respects this stability shows up in the PC(USA) annual membership numbers where the total membership is steadily declining but the number of Teaching Elders show little or no decline.

Another reason for having an interest in this is the question of PC(USA) seminaries versus non-PC(USA) seminaries. This is the question that led me to have a closer look because I was trying to understand why Fuller did not appear stronger in the number of graduates. I still don’t have a good answer for that but it is important to note that within the time range covered by these surveys there is no statistically discernable trend in graduates from Fuller, Gordon Conwell, or non-PC(USA) seminaries as a group. These grads have been with us in fairly stable numbers so if you worry about how non-PC(USA) graduates impact the denomination we can’t say from this what the impact is but we can say that based upon the flat trend the effect should be constant with neither an increasing nor decreasing impact.

Well, I’m sure that is plenty of numbers for one day. And hopefully in entering these tables I did not put in too many typos. I’ll give the panel data a rest for a little bit as there is a bunch of other General Assembly related news to be found circulating right now. And as always, if you see something in here that I missed I’m sure you’ll let me know.

The GA Junkie

The Politics of Presbyterianism

Category Archives: Analysis

Digging Into Presbyterian Statistics — PC(USA) Presbytery Growth Rates

Young People And The Church — Another Interesting And Informative Study

All Churches Great And Small — Congregation Size Distribution And Changes In The PC(USA)

Thoughts On Modeling The Future Of The Mainline Churches

Following The FIFA World Cup – Or – As A G.A. Junkie What I Like About Association Football

The PCA Strategic Plan — How Do You Grow Larger?

Liturgy — Don’t Deny It, You Probably Have It

Presbyterians — Owning The Label

Seminaries Supporting The PC(USA) – How Are They Represented In The Congregations