Big Data in the UMC challenges the narrative of decline “due to progressive Christianity,” and shows what role each of us is to play to handle the coming winnowing of the church.
Measuring Fruits…or Failures.
Recently the data for 2014 came out on the United Methodist Church in America, showing a 1.6% drop in membership and 2.6% drop in attendance across the board. I’m thankful to be part of an organized church tradition that gathers and publishes data so geeks like me can read it.
The Good News Movement, a conservative advocacy group in the UMC, was first out of the gate with an analysis penned by Walter Fenton. The expressed reason given for this decline is, oddly enough, remedied by the goals of the advocacy organization:
A variety of reasons are given for the declines in membership and worship attendance. Aging church members and local churches located in sparsely populated areas are often cited.
While not dismissing these factors, conservatives maintain the declines can also be attributed to a church that has drifted from its core theological teachings, a lack of evangelical zeal, and the loss of members who have grown tired of the decades long debate over homosexuality. Some progressives counter that the church’s failure to liberalize its positions on the practice of homosexuality and same-sex marriage has repelled the youth and young adults necessary to replace aging members and worship attenders.
I feel for the renewal groups, I really do. Their task is tough. They have to show that returning the Methodist Church back to the expressed doctrine of pre-1956 will cause the church to grow again. That’s the narrative they use time and again in fundraising letters and online writings, and it’s repeated above.
However, the data doesn’t support the narrative. But it’s only by going beyond the commentary to the actual numbers that we can see it. Thankfully, you are reading this blog and can see for yourself what is going on.
Figures don’t lie, but…
One of the comments made by Good News was that the progressive Western Jurisdiction, as always, is dragging down the rest of the UMC:
The Western Jurisdiction continued leading the decline in U.S. membership with a 2.6 percent drop for a loss of 8,780 members. Two annual conferences, North Georgia (361,834 members) and Virginia (327,706 members) outnumber the eight annual conferences in the Western Jurisdiction where total membership now stands at 322,939.
The North Central Jurisdiction saw the largest drop among the five jurisdictions with a 3.7 percent decline. The Western Jurisdiction followed closely behind, where the decline in worship attendance was 3.4 percent.
The quote illustrates how percentages can hide the really important numbers, especially the ones that have a massive impact on the Church.
While the West percentage-wise is worst among the jurisdictions, they account for only 6% of United Methodism in America, so a percentage drop is not a large number. How about the jurisdictions that hold a larger number of Methodists? Let’s see:
Wow, so the North and South lost over 107,000 members in one year. And yet the Good News points fingers at the West for dragging down the rest of Methodism? tsk tsk
What about attendance?
Same. Though North Central is in pretty bad shape.
In summary, the raw numbers* tell a different story: there’s a massive loss of members and attendees in the South, which is traditionally seen as the bastion of conservatism (though that is slowly changing). When one’s narrative is that the more conservative Southern jurisdictions’ upholding of “core theological teachings” yields growth, it is hard to prop that up in the face of numbers. Percentages matter and tell a story, certainly; however, the raw numbers tell a very different story of the collapse of Christendom in the Bible Belt.
The fields are ripe!
Rev. Duane Anders, senior pastor of Cathedral of the Rockies in Boise, Idaho, was at Annual Conference 2014 with me in Oregon-Idaho. When the Board of Ordained Ministry indicated a low number of Ordinands that year, he tweeted the data with the comment “The Fields Are Ripe!” I’ve held his quote in my heart as Duane exhibited joy at the abundance of opportunity in the West.
I also see the abundance and, when percentages are used properly, can see successes in my region of the West. One measure of discipleship is traditionally how many members actually attend church. We can measure that, in part, by seeing what percentage of the members attend church on an average Sunday. When we break that down by jurisdiction (using the numbers above), we get:
- North Central: 46.5%
- Northeastern: 36.3%
- South Central: 35.4%
- Southeastern: 38.7%
- Western: 51.7% of the members attend church on an average Sunday.
There’s a difference between quantitative and qualitative church growth. I know the North and South are bigger quantitatively, but as I’ve shown before, the West might be stronger qualitatively. In the West, we’ve hit on at least one success: how to have a higher percentage of our members actually attend church. And that’s a joy that could be shared with other jurisdictions, and it must: Every challenge we overcome in the West is one less that the South will have to deal with when the collapse of Christendom comes to their doorstep.
Better Together
In Scripture, we ask “what good thing can come from Nazareth?” until Jesus comes from the poorest part of the Galilee area. In Star Wars, we wonder what good will be found in the “wretched hive of scum and villainy” until Han Solo and Chewbacca save the day. In Harry Potter, we wonder how a mudblood could be a better wizard than a pureblood until we meet Hermione. In Selma, we wonder how African-Americans could make a difference to a dominant white culture until we meet Martin Luther King, Jr. In Tiananmen Square, we wonder who could stop a tank until someone does by standing in front of it.
The joy for the Church is that the South has the West and North, and we are all in this together, and even the smallest most-picked-on Western Jurisdiction has something to give. This wave of secularization began in our regions and is creeping towards the Bible Belt. In the coming years, the Bible Belt will look to the lessons learned by the North and West to help them ride the wave better than we did. Efforts to eradicate the Western Jurisdiction would be cutting off this testing-bed of ideas and approaches in the future of the whole Church–and should be roundly opposed at General Conference 2016.
My hope is that we take an honest look at the data and see what role each jurisdiction plays in the whole of the United Methodist Church, and instead of picking on each other, lift each other up to play those roles the best we can, for God’s Reign on earth to be made real.
Thoughts?
Notes
* There’s a slight difference between the 2013 numbers then and the 2013 numbers now. The final numbers show a decrease of 98 members and an increase of 252 worshippers from the 2013 numbers used above. However, the corrected numbers are not broken down by conference or jurisdiction (at least in my GCFA-provided files). Given that, and since they are statistically insignificant, the correction was not included in the above numbers.
“The statistical data included herein were provided at no charge by the General Council on Finance and Administration of The United Methodist Church (GCFA) and may be obtained directly from GCFA, PO Box 340020, Nashville, TN 37203-0029. This data is proprietary and is owned by GCFA and may not be used in any commercial or exploitative way, to make a financial profit, or in a manner that defames the United Methodist denomination or its agencies or organizations. GCFA does not endorse any particular use of the data or accept responsibility for its interpretation or analysis by another.”
This is incredibly helpful analysis, as usual, Jeremy.
I would put a nuance to both what you say here, and what Good News has said about the decline.
The facts are that over the past thirty years, the United Methodist Church has become quantitatively more *conservative* on issues of LGBT inclusion. No need to delineate the changes at General Conference that have very clear led to a more conservative polity.
By the Good News’ own logic, then, membership growth should be exploding throughout the UMC. But, as we know, they’d quickly crow that the Western Jurisdiction, and progressives in general, are our problem.
But, as you’ve shown here, the raw numbers of people leaving are far more extreme in the CENTER of the country. This clearly shows that, factually, their assertion that “only conservative churches grow” is false.
My own assertion is that because we have *never* (not in the lifetime of my ministry) been a truly “big tent” denomination with respect to LGBT issues, the losses we experience are more extreme on the progressive side. And, they will most certainly get worse over time, especially in the center of the country, should nothing change.
The UMC, at heart, believes itself to be a “big tent” denomination where conservatives, moderates, and progressives are all welcome. Our polity changes over the past 30 years put a lie to that belief. And, the numbers clearly show losses everywhere.
So…what’s the one thing we have yet to try?
Actually *changing* the polity….full inclusion for LGBT folks….same sex marriage. We have *not* tried that.
Everything else, we’ve tried and failed….
And yet, moderate leader after moderate leader that I hear speaking continues to act as if “Well, that can’t be the solution… no, it must be something else?”
Dear Lord..why not TRY it for once….
At this point, it certainly couldn’t hurt…
I’m no fan of conservative theology but isn’t the whole point of doing a percentage to allow for differences in sample size? Yes the percentages and the raw numbers tell different stories so the question is which one is right? If student handed me a paper about population decline and only gave me raw numbers I would hand it back with an F. The only way to actually compare loss or gain in populations that are different sizes is with percentages. Are you seriously suggesting that a church that ‘only’ loses 100 people out of 200 is in better shape than a church that loses 500 out of 100,000 because they lost fewer people?
My comment comes 3 years later but here are the trends in membership:
North Central: 30061/1245619 = 2.41% decline
Northeastern: 22861/1233815 = 1.85% decline
South Central: 27032/1694538 = 1.56% decline
Southeastern: 27818/2794512 = 1.00% decline
Western: 8780/331719 = 2.65% decline
Thanks for this in depth work Jeremy! I appreciate your detailed look at both raw data and what that data means. I agree with you that the number are probably indicative of much deeper realities than Good News wants to address. I think we have to put these numbers into context of what is going on in the larger culture in the US, and also the larger church culture.
I don’t have any data, just anecdotes,but coming from one of the largest UMC congregations in the US (when I was growing up I think we were like 17th largest in the US [First Arlington, TX]), what I have seen is that most of those involved in youth with me are still active in church. At least the ones I keep up with. Over half of these are involved in churches still as well. But they are no longer in the UMC, most are in Bible churches. I wonder what the sheep migrating effects are having on the UMC as well.
Jeremy:
I’d ask a different question. Why are the Western numbers so low. There was a time when the Pacific Northwest was the least churched part of the country. That distinction now belongs to the New England states. On the whole, church attendance has been on the rise in the west, just not in the United Methodist Church. Isn’t a more appropriate question, why aren’t we growing as opposed to trying to distinguish who is shrinking fastest?
What are the membership/attendance figures for the African United Methodist churches?
In Christ,
The enemy hates clarity
Dear Jeremy,
Thank you for this article . . . you always do such a great job with numbers and discussion! I too (even as an evangelical) am tired of the narrative “only the liberals are losing members.” It simply isn’t true statistically. However, I think you may be reading into Mr. Fenton’s article a little much. I thought the biggest indictment and criticism came to us in the Midwest, not y’all in the West.
I would share some of the same concerns as Paul above. Are you saying these losses (percentile and aggregate) aren’t important and should not warrant investigation and introspection? My Indiana Conference and the West Ohio Annual Conference (two of the largest Conferences in the North Central Jurisdiction and country) have high attendance ratios (53% and 59% respectively). They surely have some great stories to tell the connection about attendance percentage and qualitative church membership. However, the losses coming from those Annual Conferences and the North Central Jurisdiction are still troublesome to me.
Another troubling aspect is these losses are happening all along Mainline Protestantism in America. I know we believe it is happening to everyone, because of recent Southern Baptist losses. Yet, across the whole of evangelicalism in America, the numbers are staying the same, or slowly growing (as with our evangelical Wesleyan/Methodist sisters and brothers), and becoming more ethnically diverse. However, we as Mainline Protestants are not. And it is not simply because most evangelical churches are in the cultural Christendom South. Many evangelical churches are thriving in the West, Midwest, and Northeast. I have some theories about these differences, but no factual answers.
I think your article is helpful and gives context, but it seems to me it downplays the fact that we are not asking ourselves (all Mainliners- evangelical, moderate, and liberal) hard questions about how we are contributing to these losses. Instead of nit-picking at each other about whose losses are most egregious or qualitatively worse than another’s, maybe we should all ask ourselves how we can be more faithful together? Maybe, even learn from our sisters and brothers outside the United States or in the evangelical world in the United States?
I don’t debate much of what you say, Jeremy. Failure to make disciples isn’t a jurisdictional problem or an ideological problem – it is a total failure of the Great Commission and our own denominational mission. In the UMC, it seems to be more of a United States and European problem. I pray that generative discipleship – and our failure to do it – gets as least as much time and effort at General Conference as other issues. If we aren’t making disciples, we’re just another organization that happens to have a cross as its logo.
Appreciating the time and energy you put into
your blog and detailed information you provide. It’s great to come
across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the same outdated rehashed material.
Great read! I’ve bookmarked your site and I’m adding your RSS feeds to my Google account.