Liberal mainline church updates stats, studies one other yr in declining membership, church buildings: ‘Not shocked’
The most important Presbyterian denomination within the U.S. continued its downward pattern because it hemorrhaged greater than 100 church buildings and 53,000 members whereas dropping 285 ministers final yr, in line with statistics launched this week.
The liberal Presbyterian Church (USA) (PCUSA) went from roughly 1.193 million members to roughly 1.14 million members over the previous yr, whereas the variety of member church buildings declined from 8,813 in 2021 to eight,705, in line with the information.
The numbers mark a steep drop from when the denomination boasted practically 2.5 million members in 2000.
“We’re not shocked by the numbers we’re seeing,” the Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, II, the PCUSA’s said clerk, stated in an announcement Monday. “Whereas the pandemic could also be over, the impression on church membership remains to be being felt.”
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A Black Lives Matter flag adorns the headquarters of the Louisville, Kentucky-based Presbyterian Church (USA), which has misplaced roughly 700,000 members since 2012. (Credit score: Google Earth)
“Within the midst of the decrease numbers, we proceed to search out encouragement in that new worshiping communities are nonetheless on the rise. We have now added greater than 20 prior to now yr, bringing our complete to 267.”
“The problem for the PC(USA) stays the identical: Search for new methods to have interaction and welcome younger folks into the fold. These are dramatic and fast-changing occasions,” Nelson continued.
“Our world is altering, and the church wants to satisfy the rising wants of people who find themselves discovering themselves at a crossroads. We have to remind them that Jesus Christ remains to be in our midst and which means discovering new, revolutionary methods to be church.”
Neighborhood members rejoice the Supreme Court docket determination on marriage equality at an occasion hosted by Texas for Marriage on the Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Austin, Texas, on June 26, 2015. (Robert Daemmrich Pictures Inc/Corbis through Getty Photographs)
The statistics additionally tracked reported professions of religion made by younger folks, which rose from 5,708 in 2021 to 7,041 in 2022.
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Conservative Presbyterians who spoke to Alokito Mymensingh 24 Digital final fall laid partial blame for the mainline denomination’s decline on what they described as a departure from its historic biblical teachings.
Lake View Presbyterian Church hangs a pleasure flag in help of Homosexual Pleasure Week on June 23, 2020, in Chicago. (Timothy Hiatt/Getty Photographs)
The denomination made headlines in October when its Workplace of Basic Meeting introduced that it could be including a “nonbinary/genderqueer” choice to its official church statistics in a push to be “inclusive,” in line with a press launch.
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“I imagine that the lampstand has been eliminated, that Christ has eliminated his blessing from the PCUSA, and the tip results of that might be simply fading into oblivion,” Zachary Groff, a Presbyterian pastor in Greenville, South Carolina, informed Alokito Mymensingh 24 Digital, referencing the second chapter of Revelation.
