Membership in the Episcopal Church fell further in 2023, but attendance partly rebounded post-COVID, according to statistics released today by the denomination’s Office of the General Convention at the autumn meeting of the church’s Executive Council in New Jersey.
Total membership declined by 37,313 or 2.61 percent, in the most recent reporting year. Total attendance rose by 37,311, or 10.69 percent, while plate-and-pledge, the denomination’s metric for tracking giving, rose $48,579,607 (3.64%) to $1,384,929,410. The plate-and-pledge figure is undercut by a 4.1 percent rate of inflation across the same year.
The membership loss reported across the past decade continues at 23 percent, while the decline in attendance reported across that period is 32 percent.
The Episcopal Church’s triennial General Convention met June 23 – 28 in Louisville, Kentucky where Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania (Erie) and Western New York (Buffalo) Bishop Sean W. Rowe was elected as the denomination’s 28th Presiding Bishop with a promise of change and reorganization.
“All trends point to a smaller church, at least in the next decade,” Rowe told The Living Church in a July interview following his election. “I think my particular role is to help us reposition.”
Among Rowe’s early decisions has been to conduct his November 2 investiture as Presiding Bishop in a scaled-back event broadcast from the chapel at the Episcopal Church Center in New York, rather than the larger service of his predecessors at the Washington National Cathedral. The move allowed large-scale remote participation, but was a nod to the tight financial position that many Episcopal parishes and dioceses face.
Rowe indicated before the Episcopal Church Executive Council Joint Budget Committee on September 23 that he intends to move fast in the General Convention’s call for a “structural realignment” in the 2025-27 budget plan approved in June. Episcopal News Service coverage of Rowe’s Executive Council remarks said that the incoming Presiding Bishop is planning to enact organizational change in the Episcopal Church to support the church’s priorities.
Note: Diocesan-level numbers, as well as leading indicator metrics including baptisms and weddings, are examined here.
More: Read about the previous year’s Episcopal Church numbers here. Browse IRD’s archive of Episcopal Church coverage here. Access the full Summary of Statistics from the Episcopal Church here.
Comment by FNT Delta Diamond on November 8, 2024 at 8:08 pm
Nothing like a Friday news drop by TEC.
Comment by Jeffrey Walton on November 12, 2024 at 10:42 am
While I predicted that this data would be released during Executive Council, I was (kind of) surprised that this was dumped at 6:30 p.m. on the Friday before a holiday weekend, because the news wasn’t actually all that bad. The membership slide continues uninterrupted, but I’ve long maintained that attendance is the far more important metric, and a 10 percent recovery in a single year is good news for Episcopalians. There’s no reason to minimize it by burying it on a Friday evening.
Comment by Tim Ware on November 8, 2024 at 9:59 pm
This is the denomination I came from. But we left almost 20 years ago. My wife and I still reflect back occasionally about how sad it is that that particular church where so much good was once happening is now a shell of its former self. The building still stands, but where hundreds used to worship on Sundays, there are maybe 40 on a good Sunday. If not for a very wealthy woman who died and left a sizable bequest, it would be closed. So very sad. It was a huge factor in our lives, so sad that it imploded.
Comment by Palamas on November 9, 2024 at 1:35 pm
“Episcopal News Service coverage of Rowe’s Executive Council remarks said that the incoming Presiding Bishop is planning to enact organizational change in The Episcopal Church to support the church’s priorities.”
Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic is so much fun!
Comment by 9ine on November 9, 2024 at 6:42 pm
faster, please!
Comment by Mark Siegman on November 11, 2024 at 8:27 am
No surprise that the decline continues, as it has in the other “Mainline” denominations.
Notably – the PCUSA, which for decades reliably reported membership and contribution data every spring until this year, likely fell below 1 million and has not reported numbers. They had 3.1 million members in 1983 and were expected to dip below 1 million this year.
Last year they stopped reporting “5 years at a glance” for each congregation (I assume because so many had dropped significantly over the previous 5 years). Now they’re not reporting data at all!
Comment by Different Steve on November 12, 2024 at 3:41 pm
Anglican Church of Canada predicted to collapse by 2029
Revenue, she said, is declining $200,000 to $250,000 per year, and if she were to provide forecasts based on this and estimated expenses for 2026 through 2029, she would be “painting a gloomy, gloomy picture.
“I [would be] basically telling you guys we would not be here in 2029,” she said.
https://anglicanjournal.com/at-a-crossroads-national-churchs-gloomy-financial-prospects-take-centre-stage-on-first-day-of-cogs/
Comment by Loren J Golden on November 16, 2024 at 2:01 am
Mark,
Between the end of 2018 and the end of 2022, the annual net membership loss in the Presbyterian Church (USA) averaged 53,003. Given that the active membership at the end of 2022 was 1,140,665, I project that the active membership at the end of 2023 was between 1,085,000 and 1,091,000, and the active membership at the end of this year will be between 1,029,000 and 1,041,000. By the end of next year, it will fall below the 1,000,000 mark. By the end of the decade, it will have fallen below 814,931, the active membership of the (southern) Presbyterian Church in the United States in 1982, the year before that denomination merged with the larger (northern) United Presbyterian Church in the USA. I predict that the PC(USA) will merge sometime in the 2030s with other failing “mainline” denominations, to pool diminishing resources.
Comment by Colin Ross on December 4, 2024 at 12:05 am
Honestly I don’t buy the numbers. 380k Asa across 6300 denominations is around 60 people attending every Sunday. Maybe I’m weird but I peak at tons of different EC livestreams and only at the biggest ones are close to 60 people. I know they say they are counting unique viewers on the live stream but i wouldn’t trust these numbers with a ten foot pole.