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A UMNS Report
By Barbara Dunlap-Berg*
5:00 P.M. EST Feb. 23, 2011
Congregants in Bo, Sierra Leone, worship joyfully. The United Methodist
Church is growing in Africa but continues to shrink in the U.S.
A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.
View in Photo Gallery
While The United Methodist Church’s U.S. membership has continued to
shrink, its growth elsewhere in the world has put it over the 12
million-member mark for the first time, newly released statistics show.
The church’s membership in Africa, Europe and Asia grew from 3.5
million to 4.4 million in the five years ending in 2009, according to
the United Methodist Council on Finance and Administration.
In that time, worldwide membership increased from almost 11.6 million to nearly 12.1 million.
“The major growth has been in Africa and the Philippines,” said
Scott Brewer, connectional services director for the finance council.
The Rev. John H. Southwick, research director at the United
Methodist Board of Global Ministries, asked an African colleague her
take on the rapid growth. She told him the people in Africa are looking
for hope. “Most have very challenging life circumstances, and anything
they can grab onto has appeal.”
That growth has occurred despite further slippage in U.S.
membership. U.S. professing membership in 2009 was down 1.22 percent
from 2008, to a 7.8 million members, according to new data from the
council.
The United Methodist Church remains the third-largest religious
group in the United States, and its membership trends — decreases in
the United States and increases in other countries — have mirrored
those of other mainline denominations.
“There is no future for The United Methodist Church in the U.S.
unless it can demonstrate that it can reach more people, younger people
and more diverse people,” declared the Rev. Lovett H. Weems Jr.,
professor at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C.
The decline did not start yesterday.
Other denominations reflect similar trends
Weems, who also directs the Lewis Center for Church Leadership, said
the denomination’s membership decline tracks with that of other
mainline denominations since 1966.
Mainlines include the American Baptist Church, the Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ), the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United
Church of Christ.
Children and teens at Grace United Methodist Church
in Mount Juliet, Tenn., spend a Sunday morning packing
health kits for Haiti. Photo courtesy of Dale Klaus Photo.
View in Photo Gallery
Weems attributed United Methodist losses in part to the U.S. population’s migration from the denomination’s traditional rural base to more metropolitan areas where the church has been weaker.
Other factors, he said, include “the retreat for many years from
starting new churches where the people were moving and the failure to
reach the emerging younger and more diverse population.”
The trend of emptier pews is not limited to mainline Protestants.
Most Protestant denominations reported declining U.S. membership between 2008 and 2009, according to the 2011 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches.
For example, the evangelical Southern Baptist Convention, the
nation’s second largest religious group, reported a 0.4 percent decline
to about 16.1 million members. The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod,
another evangelical denomination, reported a 1.08 percent decrease to
about 2.3 million.
According to the yearbook, The United Methodist Church saw the smallest declines of any mainline denomination.
The Roman Catholic Church, the nation’s largest religious group, is
an exception to the shrinking trend, reporting nearly 0.6 percent
growth to 68.5 million members. Likewise, the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Seventh-Day Adventists and
two Pentecostal denominations — the Assemblies of God and the Church
of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) — also saw their numbers climb.
Church thrives in Africa, the Philippines
Meanwhile, United Methodism outside the United States continues to
thrive, led by the Congo Central Conference during the 2005-09 period,
according to the Council on Finance and Administration.
Weems likened church growth in Africa and the Philippines to that of
American Methodism in the early 19th century “when the Methodists went
from being the smallest religious group in the country to the largest.
“While United Methodism in the U.S. shows signs of a mature and
struggling denomination,” he added, “many central conferences outside
the U.S. reflect something more like the early stages of a movement.”
From 2008 to 2009, average U.S. worship attendance decreased 1.85
percent, to nearly 3.2 million. The figures are based on records from
local churches and annual (regional) conferences.
But the Council on Finance and Administration sees signs of hope.
U.S. congregations reported nearly 280,000 people enrolled in covenant
discipleship groups, more than 1 million children participating in
vacation Bible schools, more than 800,000 people served by church
daycares or community-education ministries, and more than 15 million
people nurtured by community ministries for outreach, justice or mercy.
“This data tells an exciting and compelling story about the impact
our churches are making in the world,” said the finance council’s
Brewer. “In the church, as with many organizations, we struggle with
how to make our administrative structures and processes truly support
our mission. I hope this new data can help support that mission more
effectively.”
Young United Methodist volunteers from the Church of
St. Paul and St. Andrew in New York help expand the Methodist Church in
Guanabacoa, Cuba, in this 2009 photo. A UMNS file photo by James
Melchiorre.
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Although membership was down for the U.S. church at large, five
conferences reported membership increases, and eight reported growth in
worship attendance.
The conferences reporting membership growth in 2009 included
Central Texas, North Georgia, Red Bird Missionary, Tennessee and
Virginia. Those with attendance increases were Alabama-West Florida,
Detroit, North Carolina, Pacific Northwest, Red Bird Missionary, Rocky
Mountain, Rio Grande and Yellowstone.
Conferences with the largest membership declines were Alaska
Missionary, Troy, West Ohio, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Those showing the
biggest decreases in attendance were Iowa, Northern Illinois,
Peninsula-Delaware, West Michigan and West Virginia.
Congregations use new data in to support mission
“Some of the acceleration in declining membership could be a result
of changes in the statistical forms,” Brewer said. “These changes
allowed churches more easily (to) reconcile their statistical reports
with their membership records and may have contributed to the greater
decrease.”
Deb Smith, best practices director at the United Methodist Board of
Discipleship, said the denomination loses most members by death and
removal by charge conference. However, she added, the denomination is
receiving more new members from other denominations than it is losing.
Between 2008 and 2009, The United Methodist Church received 56,000
members through transfer, while about half that number transferred to
other denominations.
“We added by profession of faith almost one and one-half times those who withdrew,” Smith said.
“We have to always ask ourselves if the things we count and the
frequency by which we count them meets the missional needs of our
church,” Brewer said. “A lot of changes were made to the statistical
forms this quadrennium to provide a more complete picture of
congregational ministry. I expect we’ll have a number of changes in the
next quadrennium as well.”
Brewer has been excited and gratified to see how conferences are
using their data in new and creative ways to support their mission.
“The statistical data of the church gives us a wealth of historical
data going back, in some cases, as far as the late 1700s,” he said.
Brewer pointed out, however, that the role and meaning of many of these
measures — and membership in particular — have changed over time.
“We must continue to change and adapt our statistics while balancing
the need to measure what we do with the time and effort that pastors,
staff and volunteers spend reporting the information.”
The racial/ethnic breakdown for U.S. United Methodist membership
indicates 91.2 percent white, 5.9 percent African American/black, 1.1
percent Asian, 0.9 percent Hispanic/Latino, 0.4 percent multi-racial,
0.3 percent Native American and 0.2 percent Pacific Islander.
Relationships attract seekers
As U.S. demographics continue to change, immigration will continue
to encourage congregations “to be in mission and ministry with those
who live in and around their communities,” said Samuel Rodriguez,
director of Hispanic/Latino New Church Starts for the Board of
Discipleship.
In Tagaytay City, Philippines, Lizette Tapia Raquel sings a musical
version of the United Methodist Social Creed. A UMNS Photo by Kathy L.
Gilbert.
View in Photo Gallery
“Areas where the presence is new can learn from conferences (that)
have been in this type of ministry for decades. Providing places where
immigrants can worship in their native tongue is yet another
opportunity for our conferences to share the good news of our Risen
Savior, Jesus Christ.”
Often, the best way to draw people, especially young adults, to the church is not by inviting them to worship.
“The increasing ranks of the unchurched will very likely not
encounter the congregation first in worship because that is the last
place they would want to go on their own, no matter how ‘cool’ it is,”
said the Rev. Taylor Burton-Edwards, director of worship resources at
the Board of Discipleship.
“They will encounter Christians they know through relationships with
them and perhaps through groups or mission efforts they become
involved in outside the congregation. They may eventually be invited to
worship and, maybe, over time, grow to be disciples. But most of that
actual growth remains more likely to happen outside the congregation
proper rather than within it.”
He often asks people to describe a time in their life when their
discipleship to Jesus radically deepened. Most describe something that
happened outside, rather than inside, a congregation.
“The assumption that congregations are primary venues for
discipleship seems unsupported by what I'm hearing,” Burton-Edwards
said.
“John Wesley planted exactly zero congregations. The Methodist
societies were not congregations, nor were class meetings, bands or
field preaching. They were para-congregational groups that helped
disciple people, send them in mission and connect them to
congregations.”
*Dunlap-Berg is internal content editor for United Methodist Communications.
News media contact: Barbara Dunlap-Berg, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5489 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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