Posted on 02/19/2020 9:42:57 AM PST by SeekAndFind
A seminary president has warned The Episcopal Church's leadership that with the current rate of decline, they will cease to have any Sunday worship attendance in 30 years.
Kristine Stache, interim president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America-affiliated Wartburg Theological Seminary, gave a presentation Friday before the denomination's Executive Council.
Stache drew from the most recent parochial report data which found that, from 2008 to 2018, the denomination experienced a 24.9 percent decline in average Sunday attendance and a 17.5 percent decline in baptized members.
“It depicts a church that appears to be dying,” said Stache, as reported by Egan Millard of Episcopal News Service, labeling the statistics “very sobering.”
At the current rate of decline, according to Stache, the denomination will have no Sunday attendance in 30 years and no baptized members in 47 years.
Despite the somber report on statistics, Stache also said that the decline might be less showing a dying church and more one that is becoming “something we have yet to imagine.”
“This kind of thinking looks nothing like we’ve ever done before. We don’t have the current knowledge or solutions to address this work,” she said.
“In fact, we can’t even define the problem. But that’s the point. Living in this space is about a mental shift to a focus on questions instead of answers.”
As with most religious groups in the United States, the Episcopal Church has experienced a considerable decline in membership over the past several years.
Last year, the Episcopal Church’s Office of the General Convention reported that in 2018, membership in the denomination had dropped to 1.676 million.
The 2018 total was less than half of the peak membership numbers for the denomination in 1966, when approximately 3.6 million Americans identified as Episcopalian.
One factor in the decline has been the increasingly progressive theological direction of the mainline denomination, especially regarding LGBT issues.
For example, the 2003 consecration of the Rev. Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in the denomination’s history prompted many conservative congregations to leave in protest.
Stache’s presentation before the Executive Council resembles a presentation the Rev. Canon Neil Elliot gave to the leadership of The Anglican Church of Canada last November.
Presented before the ACC Council of General Synod, Elliot concluded that the Canadian denomination would effectively cease to exist by the year 2040.
ACC Archbishop Linda Nicholls said in a statement last year that Elliot's report was a “wake-up call” for the denomination.
“We’re called to do and be God’s people in a particular place, for the purpose of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, and the only question is, ‘How do we need to share it, so that it might be heard by those around us?’” Nicholls said.
The left destroys everything. The Catholic Church has similar problems.
When people realize that the morality of the church is the same as the morality of a bar—they tend to go to the bar because the fellowship is better.
But how can your clergy stay in that denomination? They are forced to promote homosexuality?
My former church (PCUSA) felt they had to leave the denomination because among other things the only clergy they would be able to recruit in the future would be required to be pro-sodomy.
Only nine people in the pews.
Guess it was 10 people in the pews.
5/29/2019: Prager University - The Left Ruins Everything
Video run time = 00:05:44 minutes
Have they said “We don’t believe in zombies.”? Deny the resurrection.
I left the Episcopal Church in 1991. The parish and other congregation in my town are wonderful people and the clergy are good shepards for God. But, all of them are enabling a church that has lost its way. I could no longer abide it and I believe that it is much worse than I saw 30 years ago. It is a dying demonination for good reason. The same thing happened in England when the Romans left and our faith had to be replanted by the Irish.
Sadly, the LCMS is declining also.
Also there are population shifts in many of states and big cities. But, the anti-Christian rhetoric has been going on for a long time.
Hollyweird has ALWAYS represented the very worst of morality with its pornographic movies, daily parading of married and divorced people comporting with each other,
No criticism of THEM is allowed because of the financial power of Hollywood.
Anti Christian secularism has bee a way of life for movie and television people on both coasts.
maybe in membership but it has not compromised on doctrine
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