Earlier today the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) released their annual statistics in the form of the comparative statistics summary, a statement from the Office of the General Assembly, and the miscellaneous information which gives some demographic breakdowns.  On the one hand it is temping to say “there it is – nothing new” and move on to other business.  The magnitude of the numbers and the trends seen are generally in line with the trends over the previous decade.  But there are a couple of interesting numbers in the statistics I would like to bring out.

First, for the geeks in the crowd here are the background details.  I will look at the numbers from the statistical summaries for 2001 to 2009.  These can be compiled from the 2004, 2006 and 2009 reports.  (Warning: The PC(USA) has said they will roll out a new web site at the GA next week and I don’t know how many of these links will break.)  More complete statistics covering a greater time period can be found with the full Comparative Statistics but the 2009 report will not be available until the Fall and certain numbers don’t correspond between the two reports so I have limited myself to the summaries.  My compilation and calculations are available from a sheet on Google Docs .

The first number everyone looks at is the total membership of the PC(USA).  That has declined from 2,140,165 in 2008 to 2,077,138 in 2009, a loss of 63,027 members or 2.9%.  On a percentage basis, this is on the high side, only a bit lower than the 3.14% decline seen last year and well above the smallest decline of 1.68% in 2002.  Looking at the gains in membership over the last eight years, the number of youth under 18 has been a very steady percentage of the total at about 20%.  Interestingly, the number joining by certificate has declined from 31% in 2001 to 26% in 2009.  Most of this is offset by the “other” and adult profession of faith categories.

Looking at the losses, it is fairly impressive how steady each of those categories is on a percentage basis over the last eight years – by certificate 17-18% of the loss, transfer to the Church Triumphant (death) 20-21% of the loss, and the remainder, about 62%, in the “other” category which means they resigned their membership without transfer or stopped coming and were dropped from the rolls.

Considering the congregations, on a percentage basis the decline this past year marks a new high with the net loss of 94 churches translating into a 0.87% decline.  However, as you would expect, with the rate of decline of churches being less than one third the rate of decline of membership, the ratio of members per church has steadily dropped from 224/church in 2001 to 195 in 2009.  Another new high was the number of churches dissolved at 88, the previous high being 71 in 2007.

One of the numbers to keep in mind is the number of churches dismissed, 15 this year down from last year’s high of 25.  The conventional wisdom is that these churches are going to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and in fact their Stated Clerk’s report lists 22 churches received from the PC(USA).  This is not an exact comparison since the clerk’s report is for the year since the last GA and the statistical report is for calendar year 2009.  Of those 22 congregations, the EPC report lists two new mission churches, or church plants, that were “constituted” in 2009 and “came from the PCUSA [sic]” not being “received.”  These churches probably fall into the category of dissolved on the PC(USA) books.  It would be nice to know how many of the dissolved churches were due to the presbytery closing down the church for low membership numbers, and how many were churches that ceased to be viable after a group left en mass to realign between branches without being formally dismissed by the presbytery.  I think the churches dissolved category has some more stories to tell.

We now come to one of my favorite, and maybe most enigmatic, categories, the Ministers.  First let me say that I wish we had a breakdown here between active and honorably retired ministers.  I do realize that the some honorably retired ministers are serving churches.  That breakdown will be contained in the full comparative statistics in the Fall.  Overall, the number of ministers continued the downward trend begun last year — in 2008 the church had a net loss of 82 ministers and in 2009 the net loss was 51.  But with 21,235 ministers at the end of 2009 that decline represents a small one-quarter of one percent.  The PC(USA) has just about two ministers for every church.  The numbers have gone from 1.90 ministers/church and 118 members/minister in 2001 to 1.99 ministers/church and 98 members/minister in 2009.  Lest you think this will change any time soon, the number of candidates for ministry has increased substantially from 892 in 2001 to 1182 in 2009.  That is now more than one candidate for every ten churches in the denomination.  For reference, there were only 351 ordinations in 2009, about one-third of the number of candidates.  Is it a paradox that the PC(USA) is good at developing and retaining pastoral leadership but has been loosing members for years?  (For reference, the 2008 full report listed 13,462 activeministers of which 8457 were in parish ministry.  That means that in 2008 there was less than one parish clergy per church, and that includes the associate ministers, and slightly more than one-third of the active ministers were doing something else.)

Finally, the giving.  For the first time both the total contributions and the per member contributions declined in 2009.  Total contributions were down $37 million or 3.4% while on a per member basis giving declined slightly by $4.42 to $1011.35, which is 0.4%.

Having crunched the numbers let me comment briefly on two comments the Rev. Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the PC(USA) General Assembly, is quoted as making in the OGA statement.  The first is his encouragement at the increase in the number of adult baptisms in 2009.  This is clearly a cause for celebration and I in no way want to negate the importance of this number climbing from 6296 in 2008 to 6820 in 2009.  But allow me to put this in perspective over the last eight years.  Back in 2001 and 2002 there were reported 3.9 adult baptisms per 1000 members.  The ratio peaked in 2004 with 4.4 adult baptisms per 1000 members and has generally declined since then.  The ratio of 3.3 adult baptisms per 1000 members for 2009 is an improvement over both 2008 and 2007, but is still below the numbers of 6-8 years ago.

The other point the Rev. Parsons made was “the overall number in membership losses was the lowest it has been inthe last decade.”  Please allow me to go into mathematician mode and point out that this is not necessarily the good news it may appear.  Consider the PC(USA) with a steady decline, let us say 3% annually.  If it begins at some point in time with 2.1 million members this rate of decline means that in the first year it will have a net loss of 63,000 members.  In the next year the starting number is 3% smaller so the net loss is 3% smaller — 61110 members.  Similarly, the next year the net loss is 59,277 members.  In other words, with a constant rate of decline in total membership there will also be a corresponding decrease in the net loss of members when considering the actual numbers.  Even though you are losing less members on a net basis the rate of decrease remains constant.  Hopefully that makes sense.

So statistically the PC(USA) remains where it has been.  Most numbers continue the trends of the past few years and are in the ranges we have seen most of the last decade.  What this means for the future of the denomination is left as an exercise for the reader… And the GA commissioners next week.