Don't look back.
Luke 17:32
Posted on 12/10/2024 6:09:15 AM PST by Morgana
Membership in the Presbyterian Church (USA) fell further in 2023, according to statistics released last week by the denomination’s Interim Unified Agency, which succeeds the former Office of the General Assembly.
Total membership declined by 45,932, or 4%, to 1,094,733 in the most recent reporting year. Presbyterians are older and more likely to be white than the overall U.S. population, with the denomination listing 87.85% as white and 33.46% as over the age of 70. Nationally, 61.6% of the U.S. population counted in the 2020 U.S. Census was white, while 17.3% of those counted were aged 65 and over.
The average annual PCUSA membership loss reported across the past decade is 4%. The denomination in 2023 reported 195 fewer ministers and a net 133 churches were dissolved or dismissed. The PCUSA lists a total of 8,572 churches. Total baptisms nudged up to 10,922, an increase of 607 from the prior year but still 21 percent below the pre-COVID level of 13,835 reported in 2019.
Presbyterians did have at least one rising data point, however: a 17% jump in the number of members who identify as “genderqueer” or “nonbinary,” increasing by 230 in 2023 to 1,547, comprising 0.17% of all members and noted as an increase in the Presbyterian News Service coverage. The denomination ordained its first nonbinary Minister of the Word and Sacrament in June of 2019 and began tracking the number of nonbinary or genderqueer members in 2022.
“I think it can be easy for us to see the decline in numbers and lose hope. We are certainly facing challenges, and we are trying to address those in various expressions of the denomination,” Stated Clerk The Rev. Jihyun Oh, the denomination’s top executive, told Presbyterian News Service, the denomination’s official mouthpiece, about the statistical release.
Earlier this year, Oh signalled what was ahead while announcing changes to achieve a balanced 2025–26 budget, including $5 million in cuts that will result in further staff reductions.
“We shared information with World Mission staff as well as partners around the world that we anticipate significant changes to how we engage our partners in the future, and we are in the process of examining how our organization will be structured in 2025,” Oh disclosed in November. “We anticipate that there will also be reductions in 2025, once that process is completed.”
“The gravity of the church worldwide has shifted to the global South,” Oh stated. “We are at most half the size compared to when the current structures were set up.”
Presbyterians have been in the news this year: the PCUSA Office of Public Witness, which serves as the denomination’s Capitol Hill lobby office, is among a host of liberal church groups that offered support to anti-Israel student protests at college campuses. The PCUSA office has accelerated its aggressive anti-Israel policies and charged the Middle East democracy as an “Apartheid” state.
The PCUSA’s biennial General Assembly met June 25 – July 4 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Ahead of the gathering, some General Assembly commissioners and attendees fretted about a Utah law that requires people to only use those restrooms in schools and government buildings that correspond to their biological sex. Airport restrooms were identified by General Assembly planners as an area of concern, convention center restrooms were unaffected.
Among the legislation considered and approved at the governing convention was an overture barring ordination of candidates who are not LGBTQ-affirming. That overture goes to local presbyteries, a majority of which must ratify the change before it can take effect. At least eight presbyteries concurred with the overture.
Earlier this past summer, officials from the Presbyterian Mission Agency, the Office of the General Assembly and the Administrative Services Group approved a reduced proposed budget for the three church entities that expects a continued 4.5% rate of membership decline. According to the Presbyterian News Service, the three governing boards also approved proposed per capita rates (a set apportionment per member that congregations pay to the PCUSA) for 2025 ($10.20) and 2026 ($10.62). Those rates have increased 44% across the past decade from $7.07 in 2015.
I was baptized Presbyterian 45 years ago. I’m glad I left.
I left PCUSA years ago; it was not the church I grew up in. My theory is that it became infested by VN draft dodgers beginning 50 years ago; when the war ended, they found that they had cushy jobs due primarily to endowed funds granted by older parishoners in their wills so they stayed on to become senior pastors. Thus, the talk turned from the Gospel to social goals, and the people going into the ministry primarily follow this
This church is losing members faster than Sam Elliot lost pioneers in “1883”.
It is Sodomy versus non-Sodomy.
I spell Sodomy with a capital-S because it is the name of a religion.
I too grew up in the Presbyterian church. But in the late 60’s our family realized the church was moving away from biblical truths. We joined in the split off when the conservative PCA left the liberal PCUSA. Very happy in the PCA now.
i left that church 40 years ago but it cost me condo’s worth of beer to figure out that the pastors didn’t actually believe that Jesus rose from the dead in the flesh—nor did they believe in miracles. rather they thought Jesus was a very good man. But not God.
You say that like it's a bad thing. To me this means those that have ears CAN hear. Those still there have ears that CAN'T hear.
. Jesus spelled it out to his disciples. Only his sheep hear his voice.
“Presbyterians did have at least one rising data point, however: a 17% jump in the number of members who identify as “genderqueer” or “nonbinary,”
Oh!
There are 11 kinds of people:
Those who understand binary.
Those who don't.
And the truly confused who think "non-binary" is a thing.
Genderqueer begets more genderqueers begets more genderqueers.
Don't look back.
Luke 17:32
I left the PCUSA 18 years ago, but still keep my FR name.
I looked at the most recent PCUSA stats. Here are some findings-—
1. Churches by size-—Only growth has been in churches with zero to 50 members.
2. Number of ministers-—There 18,000 ministers for 8,500 churches. About 70% of the PCUSA churches have fewer than 100 members. I will let someone else compute what the salary is for those ministers serving in 70% of the churches.
3. My speculation-—A whole bunch of PCUSA ministers are getting paid through grants to NGO’s from the US Government mainly to assist in trafficking illegals into the USA.
That and endowments from dead parishioners who must be rolling in their graves. But I hope you're right, and that the DOGE effort destroys this unwarranted and anti-American sinecure.
I'm honestly surprised that 2/3 of their members are still under 70. That will shift pretty rapidly though.
Back in the early 2000’s my wife was hired to be the Director of Children and Family ministries at a Presbyterian church.
Back then the church was primarily old people and/or gay people. They wanted to bring families in. My wife got a couple dozen families to join in a year.
She was also working as a teacher at the pre-school on the church premises. Making about $24K at the time for that job.
When she took the Director position they upped her to $30K total.
She then found out that the church got a $20K grant from the Presbytery to fund her position. She should have been making $44K, but it seems they lowered her pre-school pay to $10K, making her total compensation $30K and pocketed the extra $14K.
She was not happy. When she questioned it, she was told they couldn’t afford her at all. She was offered to keep her teaching position, full time, for the $10K they were now paying her, which was less than minimum wage.
She left. Went on to make decent money designing web pages for a wholesale travel agency.
The church decided to double down on gay. They actually had a booth at the local Stonewall Festival. It is now called “The Sanctuary” and is pretty much an exclusively gay church.
I left the Presbyterian Church in 2011 and went to the Methodist Church. I left the Methodist Church this year and went to my local Calvary Baptist Church. If the Baptist Church goes progressive, I’m abandoning organized religion altogether.
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