Posted on 02/09/2016 8:15:17 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Presbyterian Church (USA) is expecting to see a loss of over 400,000 members between 2015 and 2020, according to a reported internal document.
PCUSA's Office of the General Assembly and Presbyterian Mission Agency Board Executive Committee held a meeting last Wednesday when projected losses were discussed, according to a recent account by the conservative Presbyterian publication The Layman.
"The slide [from the meeting] also showed that COGA is predicting membership losses of 100,000 for both 2015 and 2016," reported The Layman.
"Membership losses for 2017-2020 are projected to be 75,000 each year. That is more than the membership losses in both 2014 (-92,433) and 2013 (-89,296)."
The Layman is the publication for the Presbyterian Lay Committee, a group of theologically conservative Presbyterians whose founding predate the formation of PCUSA.
Presbyterian Lay Committee President Carmen Fowler LaBerge told The Christian Post that she believes the estimated losses for 2015 were "based on preliminary reporting by presbyteries to the Office of the General Assembly."
"We also assume that the 2016 projection of 100,000 is based on information that the OGA has about churches in the process of seeking to leave the PCUSA. So, those numbers are likely pretty good," said LaBerge.
"The 2018, 2019 and 2020 projections of year over year losses of 75,000 members are just that, projections. They are in line with the trend of the past 10 years and there is no reason to think that the trend will reverse itself."
Over the past several years, PCUSA has suffered decline in the number of affiliated congregations and membership counts.
According to the PCUSA's General Assembly Mission Council, in 2000 the denomination had more than 2.5 million members, or approximately 1 million more people than in 2014.
In 2011, membership in the denomination went below 2 million and in 2014 the number of member congregations dipped under the 10,000 mark.
One self-inflicted contribution to the decline has been the general theological direction of the General Assembly especially its growing acceptance of homosexuality.
For example, the 2010 General Assembly approved Amendment 10a, which allowed for local bodies, or presbyteries, to ordain non-celibate homosexuals.
As a result in 2012 a group of conservative Presbyterians founded the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians, which presently boasts more than 200 member congregations.
Regarding the impact of the projected decline noted at last week's meeting, LaBerge told CP that she thought the impact was "already being felt psychologically in terms of morale."
"No matter what industry you're in, if I told you that half of your franchises were going to close and half of your constituents were going to be gone by the end of 2020 you'd be devastated," said LaBerge.
"The projected membership decline is equivalent to the denomination closing 1,000 churches a year, every year, for five years. That would cut the number of PCUSA churches in the country literally in half."
The catholic churches her are getting more and more empty, except for the holidays.
I wonder if Christian churches will exist in 100 years here as American disinterest and muslim aggressiveness take hold.
At this point, I would be happy for Christians to go into any Christian church and try to find God again.
I have contacts in the local PCUSA congregation and they tell me it’s hard to get a replacement minister to replace those ministers who leave.
Yeah but they got have gays now
We have a big Korean community here in the Bay Area and they seem to be mostly Presbyterians. Does anyone know which side of the homosexual issue these guys line up on?
Korean Pres are not pRo homo. There are many conservative Presbyterian denominations and afaik the KPC is one of them.
When I saw “PCUSA” in the byline I thought it meant “Partido Communista, USA”.
Not too far off, IMO.
Fot those of you who really want to understand the roots of this nonsense, check out Machen's Christianity and Liberalism. (Free to read at the link)
He was the canary in the coalmine and chased out of the liberal Presbyterian Church. This should be required reading for all Christians, IMHO.
One weakness in her analysis:
“The projected membership decline is equivalent to the denomination closing 1,000 churches a year, every year, for five years. That would cut the number of PCUSA churches in the country literally in half.”
That would assume that all churches were the size of the average church - they aren’t. Tends to be the larger churches leaving. So 10,000 leaving may just represent a half dozen churches.
And on the other end of the scale, if 95% of the membership of a particular congregation departs, the denomination may designate the remaining 5% as the continuing church. A 1000 member church might become a 50 member church, with no decline in the number of churches.
So while the number of members to be lost sounds about right, she is grossly over-inflating the decrease to come in the number of churches.
Between the Yankees moving south and the Mexicans moving north, the Catholic churches around here are packed and having to constantly expand. There is such a shortage of priests, about half the clergy are permanent deacons, most of whom are married and either retired or working full time jobs.
Bye-Bye Presbyterian Church.
You don’t suppose that rabid support for disease-ridden illegal aliens and perverts have played a role in membership going over the cliff, do you?
I told my nephew when he moved to NC a few months ago:
Dont #### it up down there by voting left. You moved because of all the things you didn’t like about NJ and like about there.
If you think you’re better than them with ideals that didn’t work here, then move the #### back up here and leave them alone.
he’s my favorite nephew by far but i sense leftism in him and remind him alot that his deceased father, whom he loved so much and who was in Vietnam, was a patriotic conservative.
If that doesn’t work, I’ll put his head through sheetrock.
Like my italian uncles did to me when i got involved with a bad crowd.
While the Koreans tend to the conservative side of things, there are a affiliated with a range of denominations. KPCA, of course; the PCA has 9 exclusively Korean presbyteries and a few Korean churches in Anglophone presbyteries; PCUSA has some Korean churches (and any Korean church that is in the PCUSA can’t be considered conservative given the options available. Directory of PCUSA Korean churches here: https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/korean/pdf/directory.pdf ).
No, throwing out the Word of God sent them over the cliff. Don't confuse the symptom with the cause.
The PCUSA has been a bastion of blasphemy for a long long time, If you want to hear blasphemy ever weak from the pulpit, they are the place to be.
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