Posted on 06/23/2008 4:10:06 PM PDT by PAR35
The Presbyterian Church (USA) lost 57,572 members in 2007, the worst decline in decades, according to the official statistics released by Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick on Saturday.
That leaves the denomination with 2,209,546 members, 2 million fewer than the number of Presbyterians who were members of the predecessor denominations in 1965 that merged in 1983 to form the PCUSA.
Kirkpatrick's office projects even higher losses in 2008 and 2009.
(Excerpt) Read more at layman.org ...
In possibly related news:
Gay marriage celebrated
at General Assembly event
http://www.layman.org/layman/news/2008-general-assembly/gay-marriage-celebrated.htm
I presume, that not only are we off the rolls of our former church, we are also off the Presbyter. rolls as well as we no longer get any mailings but I shall check and make absolutely sure that they do NOT list us as members.
Let's see. Gay marriage, victim disarmament, worship of pagan deities (Sophia). How many more hits do we need?
I don't expect I'll be back there for anything other than funerals (though I hope to be buried with my ancestors in that churchyard, someday).
I wonder what the PCA’s membership numbers looked like in 2007? I wouldn’t be surprised if they were growing rather quickly.
}:-)4
Christians who want to hear the words of Jesus from their ministers instead of the man’s political ideas should get out of their liberal churches.
If all such Christians voted with their feet, they could reclaim Christianity for Christ in this nation. Sadly, more preachers are excited about Obama than Jesus.
I left PCUSA about 8 years ago after being an elder. This stuff was coming and folks were not interested in what the bible said, more in what the popular culture said.
Essentially flat. Most of the folks leaving the PCUSA these days are going to the EPC (some directly, most to the 'transitional presbytery' since no one is positive that it's going to be a good fit).
Here are the numbers for the PCA:
"The PCA has grown to a reported membership of 342,041, with 1,666 churches (including mission churches) in seventy-six Presbyteries. Eighteen churches were added to the denomination in 2007. Over 10,200 professions of faith were reported. MTW has 594 long-term missionaries, 136 two-year missionaries, 342 interns, and sent out 6,006 people on short-term mission trips in 2007. MTW now works with 584 national partners. MNA reported that the PCA placed 53 church planters in 2007. There are now 172 PCA-endorsed chaplains, many of whom served in the Iraq-Afghanistan war zones in 2007. Reformed University Ministries (RUM) now works on 117 campuses in the USA. Seven new campus ministries were added in 2007; seven more are slated for 2008. "
Compare to 2006: 338,873 members, 1639 churches.
Not Likely. The EPC only has 80,000 members. If at its inception in 1980, it had zero members, it’s only growing at a rate of 3000 per year, which isn’t terribly significant to the loss rates of 30-50,000 per year during that time by the PCUSA.
Don’t forget the Taco Bell boycott, the pickle boycott, the Israel boycott, the Burger King boycott....
The EPC added 47 churches in the last year and a half, to a total of 229.
They added 11,403 members. (17.2% growth).
(EPC numbers don’t appear to include mission works.)
As to numbers, remember, the PCUSA is an aging denomination, and the decrease number includes losses to death.
I look in over there a couple of times a week. Looks like he had more trouble coming up with PCA numbers than I did.
In more possibly related news:
Cross-less Christianity promoted
http://layman.org/layman/news/2008-general-assembly/cross-less-christianity.htm
Christ’s death on the cross has no place in authentic Christianity said Rita Nakashima Brock, a featured speaker at the Witherspoon Society’s pre-General Assembly gathering. Brock said that when church leaders in the 10th century began celebrating bread and wine communion, they instituted “ritualized murder, sacred murder … salvation that is achieved by violence.”
Brock teaches theology in Berkley, Calif. (excerpt)
So where do you think they will attend church now?
**folks were not interested in what the bible said, more in what the popular culture said.**
That is truly sad.
So the “elected” have been de-selected? ( -;
>> The EPC added 47 churches in the last year and a half, to a total of 229. <<
Impressive... These are mostly PCUSA “dissident” congregations, I take it?
>> As to numbers, remember, the PCUSA is an aging denomination, and the decrease number includes losses to death. <<
And 40 year old usually don’t just quit membership in their churches.. The indicator of a crisis, though, is that they don’t have any youth replacing their aging members. In the Episcopal church, for instance, the youth either grow up unchurched or join another more vibrant church. And so many of the adults aren’t “breeders.”
What’s remarkable in the case of the PCUSA is that their membership is dropping SO fast. That’s about 1 in 35 members. Even with NO new members — even kids — it’d be a remarkable death rate if 1 in 35 adults die.
>> Christ’s death on the cross has no place in authentic Christianity said Rita Nakashima Brock, a featured speaker at the Witherspoon Society’s pre-General Assembly gathering. Brock said that when church leaders in the 10th century began celebrating bread and wine communion, they instituted “ritualized murder, sacred murder … salvation that is achieved by violence.” <<
TENTH Century? That’s what I hate about heretics... they just say whatever stupid thing crosses their mind, no matter how preposterous.
Just for fairness sake:
Sophia isn’t necessarily pagan. The word means “wisdom.” The Greeks did create a goddess of wisdom, which they also named “Sophia.” But Proverbs, Psalms, and the Catholic books of Wisdom and Sirach personify wisdom (”sophia”) also. The Church Fathers regarded this as referring to the Holy Spirit, not a pagan deity.
That said, modern, so-called Christian worship of Sophia is often undefensible along such lines of reason. Many Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, and even dying orders of Catholic nuns have introduced much that has no Christian basis, but rather comes from New Age mysticism, Greek pagan worship, or just their own pshychobabble. IMHO, given that we don’t speak Greek, the very use of “Sophia” seems more likely to risk pagan syncretism than serve any valid Christian purpose.
In that page she opines we obsess on Jesus too much. She talks about Sophia in ways that make me think it's more pagan than personified wisdom.
PCUSA congregations cannot pick up and leave. Usually, people leave in a clump and start a new church.
A conversation I once had with a missionary.
Missionary: I am going to a foreign land to preach the Gospel to an unSaved and Godless people.
Me: You could do the same thing and save a lot of money by just moving your membership to a Methodist church.
I was kidding of course but people frequently ask me why I belong to a UMC congregation. We have a lot of liberals but we also have a lot of conservatives. I have access to a lot of people(2000 students) who claim to be Methodist but are not active in church. It’s a fertile field.
Me: You could do the same thing and save a lot of money by just moving your membership to a Methodist church.
OK, but where's the collection money going? There's some things the PCUSA does that are deal breakers for me.
We give them enough money to keep the lights on. Our donations go elsewhere.
As to the 47 churches - most of those are recent arrivals from the PCUSA. A handful are mission churches that have been particularized, and one may be a PCA church (I’d have to dig pretty far to come up with that).
I don’t disagree with your reasoning on the membership. I remember, years ago, at a PCUSA church, the pastor said from the pulpit that children who grow up in a liberal church tend to either not attend, or to move to a conservative church when they grow up.
Through the inexplicable and always-surprising grace of God, not to mention the posts of many Catholic Freepers on many subjects over the years, I decided about a year ago to abandon the PCUSA after many decades and enter the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church this past Easter Vigil. This post reminds me of some of the reasons why.
It depends on the state, the paperwork, and the lawyers. First Presbyterian in Baton Rouge, for example, managed to walk away with everything. Kirk of the Hills, Tulsa, is still in the courts, but still in their building. There was a recent win in NE Ohio, and several in Mississippi (although the Presbytery there took a dive).
Looking at the numbers for the other Reformed bodies, most of them aren't ending up there. A lot are probably unchurched, some probably have moved to program oriented mega churches or other Evangelical groups, some to other NCC churches.
I don't think many end up with Rome; I think you all probably have more ex-PCA preachers than PCUSA.
Salvation, ping to one for you.
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