A story of our Diocese that needs to be heard
Above is a chart of the past ten years of membership, attendance and giving for the Diocese of Georgia. It looks relatively flat and honestly it looks better than data from many parts of The Episcopal Church. But when we zoom in on the data, we see that we lost nearly 1,500 worshipers on a typical Sunday across the decade. We dropped from an Average Sunday Attendance of 7,577 to 6,109, from 67 adult baptisms to 44, and from 461 to 260 confirmations.
But don’t lose hope. There is another story and we all need to hear it. Episcopal churches still grow in south Georgia. Our congregations grow in our cities and in our small towns and they grow when they lean a bit liberal and when they lean conservative. Though everything I just said is true, we have examples in our midst of healthy congregations growing in a variety of ways in diverse places. In fact, growth is more common than decline in our churches at present. For the two years in which we have the most recent data, more than half of our churches remained steady or grew. And nine of our congregations posted growth of more than 20% in attendance as they posted two years in a row of increasing attendance from 2009 to 2010 and on into 2011. These churches all grew more than 20% across those 24 months: All Saints Tybee Island (pictured above), Christ Church St. Marys, Christ Church, Savannah, St. Andrews Douglas, St. Anne’s Tifton, St. Elizabeths Richmond Hill, St. Luke’s Rincon, St. Patrick’s Albany, and St. Thomas, Thomasville.
A prime example is Christ Church Savannah which has grown in attendance by 162% from 2007 to 2012 with average Sunday attendance climbing from 75 to 199. Now, of course, their story is unique, but don’t dismiss their growth too quickly as they gained momentum while worshiping on Sunday evenings in another church and so had no signs by the road or ongoing space. And yes, they have grown forty percent while back in their historic home on Johnson Square, but lots of downtown churches would find that growth something to envy and it simply can not be explained by the building alone. It can better be explained by the joy found in the community that gathers there. Joy that built when their future was uncertain and has been sustained in a new setting.
A second key example is our host congregation of St. Anne’s here in Tifton is also a place of great energy and joy and they grew fifty-five percent as attendance went from 98 to 151 from 2008 to 2011.
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Do not hear me saying that Sunday attendance is the only sign of health or that if your church is not gaining members that you are not being faithful. But I do hope that you will see plainly that Episcopal Churches can and do grow in our diocese right now from Tybee to Thomasville and Augusta to St. Marys. Our churches grow in the discipleship of their members and they grow numerically in attendance and in financial giving and most importantly in sharing the faith with people who didn’t know that Christianity really does live up to its promise and potential when we live out our faith in community.
Your diocesan staff travels a lot. Bishop Benhase is not the only one out in the byways. I have been in most of your churches and Canon Willoughby and I have been in every region talking with leaders. We do see the problems. We know how clergy compensation is a challenge and how benefits are even more difficult as insurance prices rise. Thanks to Mary’s hard work, we’ve actually seen our insurance prices drop, but they are still a challenge. We know the anxiety of a congregation with less than 25 people of Sunday that is one uninsured major building issue away from going under and the congregations under 50 people on Sunday working to figure out how to arrange a priest so they can have the sacraments reliably when there is no way to pay a full-time priest. Then there are the congregations under 120 on Sunday who are in varying ways struggling with keeping a full time priest, a part-time organist and secretary and a barely functioning copier. As our churches get larger there are problems in providing the programs people expect without the staffing that the Baptist and Methodist churches nearby can afford and then the issues with connecting with people meaningfully so that they don’t wander out the back door of the church without anyone noticing. There are issues with pledge drives and fewer people willing to commit to the pledge and fewer still who give like their parents and grandparents did.
This Loose Canon is a portion of the Opening Presentation I made to the 192nd Convention, the full text is online here: Convention 2013 Opening Presentation in which I name some of what we are doing to help congregations to be more vital.
The Rev. Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary
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