Posted on 06/02/2015 9:42:27 AM PDT by xzins
In a presentation that he acknowledged is “sobering,” Dr. Donald House Sr. warned that The United Methodist Church has only 15 years to reverse its decline in the United States. This week’s presentation from House – a life-long United Methodist and trained economist – came to church leaders at the Connectional Table and General Council on Finance and Administration joint meeting held in Nashville, Tennessee. (See the UM News Service article for additional information.)
“By 2030, the denomination in the United States will either have found a way to turn around, meaning it is growing, or its turnaround in the United States is not possible. By 2050, the connection will have collapsed,” House concluded.
House based his conclusions on a comprehensive study of denominational statistics that included mapping the location of every local church and studying population trends within a 3-mile radius of each congregation. Historical trends dating back to 1974 gave a contextual picture for this study.
Worship attendance at United Methodist churches in the U.S. remained relatively stable from 1974 through 2001, with even a period of sustained growth from 1993 to 2001. Beginning in 2002, however, attendance has shown a straight-line decline for over ten years. “If this were a three-year trend,” said House, “one could chalk it up as an aberration. But you can’t ignore a ten-year pattern.”
“For the last ten years, the U.S. church has lost an average of 52,383 in worship attendance each year,” House reported. Actually, his numbers only ran through 2011. In 2012 the church lost 49,202, but in 2013 the loss caromed to 62,592. In other words, the trend is not getting any better, despite the efforts of the Vital Church Initiative, but may in fact be getting worse.
Along with the loss in attendance, House pointed out that the number of U.S. congregations shrank by 16 percent, the number of conferences by 19 percent, and the number of districts by 21 percent. “What we are doing is disassembling our infrastructure faster than we are experiencing decline in the U.S.,” he said. “If this were a business model, I’d say you were gracefully closing your doors.”
House pointed out that the number of churches per district has gone from 68 in 1990 to 72 in 2010, but is projected to rise to 90 in 2030. That means that each district superintendent’s workload will increase by 25 percent over the next 15 years. This raises the question of whether superintendents can give adequate supervision and leadership to all the clergy and congregations under their responsibility.
In addition, House reported, the church faces a coming shortage of ordained elders. Currently, the rate of decline among elders serving churches has nearly matched the number of churches that are being closed. However, by 2030 House projects that the church will be short by about 2,500 to 5,000 ordained clergy, as the Baby Boomer generation hits full retirement.
House projects that worship attendance that was 3 million in 2010 (down from 3.5 million in 1990) will decline to 2 million in 2030 and under 1 million by 2050. The current 59 annual conferences will reduce to 37 annual conferences in 2030 and only 17 conferences in 2050. Declines in attendance will be matched with declines in giving, which will make the denominational structure financially unsustainable.
One part of the solution is to start new churches. We are currently starting about 300 new churches a year, but the goal is to more than double that to over 700 new churches a year by 2020. Still, 700 new churches a year for four years would only represent a 9 percent increase in congregations, even if no current congregations went out of existence. “You can’t new-church-start your way out of this existing crisis,” House said.
That means a program must be developed to turn around existing congregations with primarily existing clergy. We are only replacing current clergy at the rate of about 750 to 1,000 per year, which means that it will take more than 15 years to replace half of our current clergy. Whatever programs are developed to revitalize existing congregations must be nationally scalable, House said. He is currently developing and testing such a strategy, but it may take another four to eight years before it is ready to implement nationally. Such a timeline would leave only six to ten years to effect the turnaround.
“There is no question that our church is in trouble,” said the Rev. Thomas Lambrecht, vice president of Good News and an observer at the meeting. “What I fail to understand is why church leaders are not considering that the theological shift among many of our clergy in a more progressive direction could account for a significant part of the decline. The Connectional Table reveals a schizophrenic approach when it acknowledges our crisis of decline and at the same time proposes a ‘Third Way’ on marriage and homosexuality that will drive many traditionalists and evangelicals out of the UM Church. If their plan is adopted, it will only accelerate the decline of the U.S. church, as we learn from the experience of The Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran, and Presbyterian Church (USA).”
The church leaders took no action at their meeting in response to the report. Many leaders feel helpless to do anything about the decline - See more at: http://goodnewsmag.org/2015/05/economist-warns-church-is-in-crisis/#sthash.5kOhAfbs.dpuf
Old line holiness doctrine was about a 2nd work of grace that they referred to as ‘entire sanctification’. I haven’t heard ANYONE preaching or teaching it since I left seminary.
It no longer exists as a denomination. There are individual churches where it continues, but they are few and far between.
This reminds me of Gamaliel's advice to the Jewish counsel with regard to the teaching of the Apostles in the book of Acts. He warned them that if the Apostles teach was not from God it would come to nothing and if it came from God they would not be able to overthrow it and could find themselves fighting against God himself. The teaching of the progressive apostate Churches is not from God and those Churches are rapidly coming to nothing. ie. They will soon be shuttered. Just like the Gnostics, the Marcionites, the Pelagians, the Antinomians, the Donatists, etc. etc.
It is good news when these progressive churches see major declines in attendance and membership. It means that people are starting to wake up and realize that malevolent forces such as the state are overwhelming the institutional churches. These are the type of churches that will be used by the state to enable the submission of the public to the almighty state.
It’s not apostasy to reject an apostate church.
Thanks for the clarification. But you are correct in that “it is the rebellion against the rules without consequence.” The policy is basically what is allow now with impunity.
The church leaders took no action at their meeting in response to the report. Many leaders feel helpless to do anything about the decline
Ironic, isn't it? The "Good News" magazine is a place of despair. And truth be told, they've never been able to pursue the great commission. They've always had to be fully engaged in beating back the forces of evil. There've been some mighty fine Christians associated with the Good News magazine of the Methodist movement over the years, and all of them haven't had the joy of being "for" anything their entire lives. They've always been "against" the encroaching darkness.
I hope God has a great reward in store for them, but I wish now that I'd changed denominations 4 decades ago.
Impunity is exactly the word, fwdude. And the sinister side is that the leadership is behind the scenes encouraging that rebellion and promising impunity.
I agree with that grumpy. I think we've lost the UMC in the USA, because I have every reason to think the 'millennials' in the nation at large have swallowed progressivism and homosexualism hook, line, and sinker.
The UMC will fall in the USA.
But the millennial generation portends darkness for all denominations, including so-called independent churches.
Agreed.
The UMC has being dying for years. It is in its post mortem now. recently in the county I live in the UP of MI, the only methodist church has closed is doors, there was a recent rummage sale of books, dishes and etc, for a donation of $ to purchase the items. the building is up for sale too!
It’ll go cheap...the building. What else do you do with an old church building? Anything business related will have to bring it up to code. Anything residential will have to do massive renovation.
The best that can happen is some church movement buys it to start a new church.
That’s certainly why
I made my exit from the Methodist church many years ago.
Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.
Considering the “Work” that they do I suspect the government will start supporting them.
The government already supports them. Hillary, GW, and Warren are all Methodists.
To bad we can’t hook him up to a generator and power a city.
So if I live to be slightly past 90, I’ll see the end of what was once the largest Protestant denomination in the country.
This is true.
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