In the first part of this discussion I gave a bit of my experience with responding to a remedial complaint that was filed after the Presbytery of San Gabriel dismissed two churches to ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.

With the mediated settlement of that complaint and dismissal of the case by the Synod Permanent Judicial Commission it opened the door for San Gabriel and other presbyteries in the synod to resume the process of working with churches that had requested dismissal. So what does the landscape look like now?

A Quantitative Analysis of Churches in the Dismissal Process
I scanned the web sites of all eight presbyteries in the synod and found three presbyteries that make their meeting minutes available on their website and in the minutes they listed churches that have requested beginning the dismissal process. Each presbytery has their own process so the lists are slightly different based upon the process. I may add to this analysis as I am able to get further information for other presbyteries. I do know that I am not missing much from past years because based on the Presbytery Summary Statistics reports through 2012 most presbyteries in the synod have not dismissed any churches and only a couple have dismissed at most one church.

Listed below are the churches that I found from the presbytery records and after them their status and reported membership for 2012 from the PC(USA) statistics.

For the Presbytery of San Gabriel there are two churches now dismissed and the presbytery has formed Pastoral Engagement Teams for three additional churches that have requested dismissal:

Glenkirk Presbyterian Church, Glendora – dismissed (1127 members)
First Presbyterian Church of Covina – dismissed (344 members)
First Presbyterian Church of Monrovia – engagement team (222 members)
San Gabriel Presbyterian Church of San Gabriel – engagement team (165 members)
Korean Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church of Rowland Heights (865 members)

For the Presbytery of Santa Barbara in reading Stated Clerk’s reports I found the following churches that have written to request dismissal. There is one more church, Emmanuel Presbyterian of Thousand Oaks, that first requested dismissal and then asked to have the request removed temporarily. These churches are listed as reported in the document and while the PC(USA) database name may be slightly different in general matching the church and the statistical report is not a problem. Here are the listed churches and sizes:

Malibu Presbyterian Church (303 members)
Orcutt Presbyterian Church (286 members)
Solvang (314 members)
Port Hueneme (192 members)
Templeton (178 members)
Morro Bay Presbyterian Church (159 members)
Community Presbyterian Church of Cambria (192 members)
Community Presbyterian Church, Ventura (387 members)
Trinity Presbyterian Church, Camarillo (269 members)
Cottonwood Community Fellowship, Los Alamos (20 members)
Orchard Community Church, Ventura (264 members)

Finally, the most recent Presbytery Council report from the Presbytery Los Ranchos has a complete list as of that date of the churches that have notified the presbytery that they have either entered discernment or are requesting dismissal:

Christ, Huntington Beach (enter discernment) (505 members)
First, Westminster (requests dismissal) (250 members)
St Paul’s, Anaheim (seek dismissal) (52 members)
Christ, Lakewood (seek dismissal) (152 members)
Community, Long Beach (included with Lakewood) (84 members)
Los Alamitos, Good Shepherd (seek dismissal) (617 members)
St. Andrew’s, Newport Beach (enter discernment) (3064 members)
Journey Evangelical, Westminster (seek dismissal) (243 members)
Trinity United, Santa Ana (enter discernment) (1556 members)
Wintersburg, Santa Ana (seek dismissal) (467 members)
Cornerstone (worshiping fellowship) (seek dismissal) (fellowship – not included)

So there is the data set. Let me add at this point that for both the churches requesting dismissal as well as the statistics for the presbyteries as a whole New Church Developments (NCD) and Fellowships have been excluded because statistics are not reported in the same way as chartered churches. It should also be remembered that this is a forward looking analysis as only two of the churches in the lists have actually been dismissed and three in Los Ranchos have only entered discernment. It also presumes that all of the members of a church are transferred with the dismissed congregation, a situation which is common but on occasion a continuing or remnant group may be identified.

For the analysis that follows you can see my spreadsheet showing all the churches in each of these presbyteries and the statistics I discuss.

For the Presbytery of San Gabriel if all five churches are ultimately dismissed the presbytery could lose 2710 of its 9429 members or 28.7% of its membership. These five churches have an average membership of 542.0 compared to the presbytery average of 214.9. Their median size is 344 while it is 89.5 for the whole presbytery.

For the Presbytery of Santa Barbara the departure of these eleven churches would reduce the presbytery size by 2564 or just a bit more than one-third (34.1%) from the current total membership of 7510. The mean size of the churches requesting dismissal is actually a bit less than for the presbytery now, 233.1 versus 242.2, and the median is slightly higher, 264 versus 220.

For the Presbytery of Los Ranchos the potential membership shifts are significantly larger. Membership could drop by 37.4% with a loss of 6990 members from the current total of 18,699. The churches that may depart have an average size of 699 members which is almost twice the average size of churches currently, 381.6. Similarly, the median would be 358.5 versus the current median of 216.

Looking at the largest churches, in San Gabriel the Glenkirk church is one of three similar sized large churches in the presbytery. In Santa Barbara the largest church on the dismissal list is only the fifth-largest in the presbytery. However, those familiar with PC(USA) churches will quickly recognize the presence of St. Andrew’s of Newport Beach on the Los Ranchos list. At 3064 members it is one of the largest churches in the PC(USA) missing the 15th place on the 2012 annual list of large churches by 20 members. It is almost twice as large the second largest church on the possible dismissal list and a bit more than twice the size of the largest church on the remaining list. It accounts for 16.6% of the possible membership loss and without it in the list the average size of possible departing churches drops to 436.2 and the median to 250. Each of these is now much closer to the current average (381.6) and median (216) of the presbytery.

For all these statistics I have been comparing the descriptive statistics with the set of churches currently in each presbytery. For comparison purposes the denomination wide numbers have a mean church size of 180 and a median size of 89. Los Ranchos and Santa Barbara are both above those sizes for the current presbytery, the group of possible departing churches and the remaining presbytery after departures.  San Gabriel before dismissals has a slightly larger mean and is right even with the median. After these possible departures the first two would remain above but San Gabriel’s mean and median would drop below the national numbers for 2012. However, with both the departures from the PC(USA) and the ongoing general declining trend it would seem likely that San Gabriel’s future size would still mirror the denomination as a whole.

So what does all this mean and should we care?

To begin with, the pattern seen in these three presbyteries is similar in magnitude and statistics to that seen previously in the presbyteries of Mississippi, Tropical Florida and Central Florida, but not in the Presbytery of Alaska. It looks like we can statistically verify the conventional wisdom that in the great majority of cases the PC(USA) is preferentially losing larger churches to dismissals to more conservative or evangelical reformed bodies.

The clearest implication, at least in my mind, is that the preferential departure of larger churches will have a non-proportional impact on governing body finances. Governing body financial needs don’t scale linearly with membership or number of churches but their income generally does. (And yes, for the moment let us presume that these congregations were at least paying something in per capita and mission giving although I am aware that there was a trend among some of these churches not to.) There are a lot of fixed costs in staff and administration that will be there whether there are 50 churches or 75 churches. To lose generally about one-third of revenue, particularly from the larger sources, will have a major impact on budgets because there will not be proportionally lower expenses to the governing body.

From a polity and theological point of view, the implication is that initiatives by those with a progressive viewpoint in the PC(USA) to change the Book of Order will have a greater chance of passing GA and the presbyteries. Changes in voting patterns can be attributed to a number of factors including individuals having a new perspective, the replacement of older elders, teaching and ruling, with younger ones, the attrition due to members leaving individually as well as departures of churches as a unit. At some point an analysis of all this would be worthwhile.

It is tempting to conclude from this analysis that conservative churches in the PC(USA), as represented by those seeking departure, are in general larger than moderate or progressive churches. This does not immediately follow since it can be argued that larger churches would leave preferentially because they are in a position to better support themselves in a fledgling body like ECO while smaller churches are more dependent on financial, administrative and spiritual support that governing bodies of an established church, like the PC(USA) are able to offer.

Returning to the 2012 list of the 15 largest churches in the PC(USA) there is a strong suggestion that larger churches are more likely to be conservative. Of the 15 churches on the list six of them (Peachtree, Christ, Highland Park, Memorial Drive, Bel Air and First Bellevue) also appear on the membership list of the Fellowship of Presbyterians. While not half, the question is raised whether that is proportionally more than moderate and progressive churches that make up the remaining nine spots. This is reinforced by checking the list of member churches of the Covenant Network and there are only two (Fourth, Village) that appear on the list. I have another analysis in progress where preliminary results show that conservative churches, departing or staying, are more likely to be larger than their progressive counterparts. Hope to get that finished and posted later this week.

So the data on dismissals in the PC(USA) gro
ws. It will be interesting to see how each of these requested dismissals progresses and I have other information that there could be some interesting developments in a couple of cases. We will see what happens.