[Claud]

You’re in New York, you know what’s going on the Northeastern cities. Those beautiful churches in the cities were built from the pennies of immigrants—first Germans and Irish, then Italian, Polish, etc. They rose up right in the middle of strong ethnic neighborhoods.

Then everybody in these ethnic communities started moving out to the burbs. Lots of these churches found themselves without a parish anymore.

So what you’re seeing with closings in Northeastern cities is a local phenomenon that’s not reflected in the national numbers. I believe the Church grew nationally in 2010.

[Cronos]

Nah, what's getting the PCA membership's goat is 2011 Church Membership: Southern Baptists Decline; Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons Increase which said that The Church posted a .57 growth at 68.5 million members.

And this interesting bit of information:

	2009 membership	2010 membership	Lost	Gained
PCUSA	2,934,952	2,844,952	90,000
PCA	2,934,952	340,000		5,500
		Disappearing Presbyerians	84,500

84,500 Presbyterians leave Presbyterianism for good. The PCA may say it's growing at 1.5%, but that's only 5,500 persons -- the rest of the Presbyterians leave forever, many leaving Christianity. So, even if the PCA keeps growing, the number of Presbyterians will drop

And the PCA will head for it's split soon -- it's inevitable in the Presbyterian world.