Posted on 05/18/2015 5:50:38 PM PDT by ReformationFan
Presbyterians Collapsing, or “Settling Into The New Thing God is Creating”?
The 2014 numbers reveal the PCUSA's largest statistical decline to date.
A slimmed-down Presbyterian Church (USA) is apparently getting ready for beach season after shedding unwanted excess members, according to a cheery report by the denomination’s top official.
“The PC(USA) is a church made up of vibrant congregations doing their best to live out the gospel of Jesus Christ in their communities and in the world,” an apparently unfazed Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the PCUSA, soothed. “Membership declines continue, but on a whole the denomination is settling into the new thing God is creating.”
In case Presbyterians are wondering what the “new thing” looks like, the PCUSA’s Office of the General Assembly revealed today a loss of 92,433 members (down 5.54 percent) to a total membership of 1,667,767 in 2014. The Presbyterian Layman has a thorough write-upon the increasingly negative trajectory that the liberalizing denomination finds itself locked into. (Incidentally, the Layman’s Carmen Fowler LaBerge notes a count of former PCUSA churches that joined the Evangelical Presbyterian Church or Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians (ECO) in 2014. It exceeds the 101 churches officially listed as dismissed from the PCUSA in 2014, making us wonder if the congregation losses are in fact underreported).
The 2014 numbers reveal the church’s largest statistical decline to date. Last year, Parsons offered equally silly commentary on the losses.
“Yes, the numbers reflect a decrease in active members in the denomination,” Parsons acknowledged of the 2013 figures. “But the numbers also illustrate fewer losses than the previous year. The membership declined by 89,296 in 2013, compared to 102,791 in 2012.”
Now that the number of persons departing the denomination has increased from 89,296 to 92,433, and the statistical rate of decline has bumped from 4.83 percent to 5.54 percent, Parsons can no longer soothe fellow church bureaucrats in Louisville that decline is somehow slowing – it isn’t. For those keeping track, the PCUSA has lost a staggering 645,895 members since 2005, 28 percent of the denomination’s members having vanished. The PCUSA and its two predecessor bodies have been in decline since 1965.
The PCUSA’s rate of decline is now exceeding all of its Oldline Protestant peers. As IRD’s Alex Griswold wrote last August in the Federalist, every major American church that has taken steps towards liberalization of sexual issues has seen a steep decline in membership.
why would anyone waste their time belonging to a ‘church’ that is so clearly off the rails of Christian faith
this entire situation of mainline denominations losing membership is not confined to Presbyterians...the meteoric rise of mega churches that trumpet the benefits of free form worship makes the loss inevitable, across all of the older denominations from Catholic to Protestant...a trend first noted in the early sixties, and thought to be remediable by less rigorous worship and yielding to trendy praxis that the pew sitters supposedly clamored for...
the Catholic Church went particularly overboard in this...just check out the sartorial splendor of the typical Novus Ordo service and you’ll see the result of childish practices bearing its rotten fruit...
“Remember, marriage on earth is to reflect our understanding of God’s marriage to the Church. God is the groom and, His bride, is the Church.
The Kingdom of God, only occurs with both, God and the Church.
It doesn’t occur, one, without the other.
Two men coming together in a ‘marriage’ suggests that God will be with Himself and doesn’t need the church.
Two women coming together in a ‘marriage’ implies that the church only needs the church and doesn’t need God.
Since marriage is such a powerful symbol from heaven, it is no wonder that Satan works so hard to distort this symbol on earth.
Not once in Scripture, does the man symbolize the church, nor does the woman ever symbolize God.”
Excellent post, captaincaveman. By the way, where are the teen angels? ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCr3ZVZZjYA
Good question. In the minds of leftists, no.
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