The numbers game
A column by Parker T. Williamson, The Layman, July 1, 2009
Obliged to report the denomination’s worst membership losses in 25 years, General Assembly Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons has given them a hefty spin. Like his predecessor Clifton Kirkpatrick, Parsons avoided the obvious. Record numbers of Presbyterians are choosing to leave the denomination for churches that are more closely aligned with Biblical convictions.
Parsons’ report acknowledges that 25 congregations have been dismissed to “other denominations.” (He chooses not to mention the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) although 23 of the churches on his list moved there.) But his number includes only those churches that asked permission for their departure.
Other churches, like the 2,665-member Kirk of the Hills Presbyterian Church in Tulsa or the 262-member First Presbyterian Church in Stow, Ohio or the 229-member Grace Chapel Church in Madison, Miss., simply walked away. Parsons’ office identifies those congregations that did not seek permission to leave as having been “dissolved.” But, of course, they are far from dissolved. They are vital EPC congregations.
‘True churches’
Nor do Parsons’ records account for churches like Covenant Presbyterian Church in Fort Myers, Fla., in which 1,300 members walked down the street and formed a new EPC church, leaving behind a remnant that PCUSA officials call “the true church.”
Several “true churches” appear on the stated clerk’s rolls as viable PCUSA congregations when, in fact, their membership is practically nil. One of those “true churches,” Faith Presbyterian Church in Findlay, Ohio, reported 32 members in 2008. Those who left that church in 2002 to form the Gateway EPC church comprise a rapidly growing congregation that numbers more than 1,200.
According to Parsons, 34,340 Presbyterians transferred their membership to other churches. That number almost equals the number of Presbyterians who died (34,101). But the big loss number, 104,428, is in a category that Parsons calls “other.” These are people whom local church sessions have written off their rolls because they no longer show up at church or contribute to the congregation’s annual budget.
The important thing to know about this number is that it is only a number. All that one can say is that it represents former Presbyterians who no longer associate with the PCUSA. Any statement about where they went or why they left is pure speculation.
Spindrift statistics
Judging from his calculation that 25 congregations were dismissed to other denominations, Parsons deduces that some of the 104,428 are now members elsewhere. But he suggests that most people in this group are drifters away from the Christian faith.
Parsons does not know this to be true because the numbers don’t reveal such information. All that they tell us is that these former Presbyterians are gone. Could it be that they chose other churches where God’s Word is faithfully preached and the sacraments and Biblical discipline are faithfully administered? That possibility is at least as plausible as Parsons’ drifter theory. In fact, it may be more plausible, given the fact that as the PCUSA shrinks, the EPC is growing exponentially, and many of its new members are identifying themselves as former PCUSA Presbyterians.
Parsons pumps his prognosis with a Pew Foundation study showing that an increasing number of church goers is defecting from religion entirely. But his data base contains nothing that would correlate PCUSA losses with Beelzebub’s gain. It may be true, but Parsons has no basis in fact on which to claim it.
Like his predecessor Kirkpatrick, what Parsons clearly does not want to do is cede any of the PCUSA’s turf to the EPC. Apparently, he’s more comfortable claiming that his members left the faith than that they – God forbid! – joined an evangelical denomination.
After a member of the national staff, the Rev. Eric Hoey, posted a statement on the Office of the General Assembly’s Web site admitting the denomination’s losses to the EPC, Louisville officials quickly and without public notice expunged his words as if he had never written them. For the record, The Layman archived a copy before the stated clerk’s editors hit the delete button.
Truth matters
Presbyterians are not well served by sleight of hand statistics. Surely, the stated clerk knows he is administering last rites over a dying denomination. The numbers, however inventively they may be spun, tell the tale.