New facts and figures about membership in the Episcopal Church have been posted on the Research page: www.episcopalchurch.org/research
Among the facts:
– Membership in the Episcopal Church is 2,125,012, with 1,951,907 in the domestic dioceses and 173,105 in the non-domestic dioceses.
– Sixteen domestic dioceses showed growth in the past year: Alabama, Arkansas, Atlanta, Central Gulf Coast, East Carolina, Iowa, Kentucky, Montana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Navajoland, North Dakota, Northwest Texas, Oklahoma, Pittsburgh, Wyoming.
– In the non-domestic dioceses, growth was marked in eight dioceses: Churches in Europe, Dominican Republic, Ecuador-Central, Haiti, Honduras, Micronesia, Puerto Rico, Taiwan.
– The ASA chart shows a total of 657,831 domestically and 40,049 non-domestic.
– The largest active congregational membership is St Martin’s, Houston with 8,406.
“These statistics reveal something very important about the challenges we face as a Church,” observed Bishop Stacy Sauls, Chief Operating Officer. “One of those is that we cannot allow statistics like this to make us anxious about our survival. Earthly survival is not much a value of the Gospel. Striving for the kingdom and righteous of God is. Concentrating on the latter is likely to yield more abundant life than the former (Mt. 6:31-33).”
He continued, “Another is that we cannot continue to pretend we are the Church of the establishment entitled to the power, prestige, and privilege that comes with that. Right now, I think the cross calls us to die to those trappings of our old establishment life, and that means turning our attention single mindedly to God’s mission and our participation in it, which means that we are going to have to restructure and reform ourselves accordingly. Churches that turn inward will die. Churches that turn outward will not only live, but thrive. The numbers call us to strengthen our commitment to turn outward.”
The Episcopal Church: www.episcopalchurch.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/episcopalian
Twitter: twitter.com/iamepiscopalian
YouTube: