PCA posts first membership loss
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald, The Layman, June 17, 2009
ORLANDO, Fla. – The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) lost members for the first time last year, prompting its newly-elected leader to issue a “wake-up call” to the 37th General Assembly as it convened June 16. PCA GA coverage
Check The Layman Online for additional coverage of the PCA’s General Assembly, which continues through June 19.
The PCA counted 340,852 members for 2008, according to a report from Stated Clerk Roy Taylor. That’s down from 345,582 in 2007, or a 1.37-percent decrease.
General Assembly Moderator Brad Bradley, elected Tuesday in what was described as a “close” vote, acknowledged “extenuating circumstances” had contributed to the first dip in membership in the denomination’s 36-year history. He noted a purging of membership rolls at one of the PCA’s biggest congregations, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
But other data in the report also pointed downward. Adult baptisms fell 6.4 percent in 2008 to 2,488. Sunday school attendance, measured at 110,652 for 2008, was off 1.1 percent from 2007. Infant baptisms were down 0.6 percent to 5,434.
Bradley, who founded the PCA’s Southwest Church Planting Network in 1998 in a bid to reach the fast-growing Sunbelt region, said church members need to focus on growing the denomination numerically.
“This might be a wake-up call for us,” Bradley said.
He urged every existing PCA church to plant a new one by 2020.
“That could easily equate to our total membership exceeding a half-million members by that date,” Bradley said.
Bradley delivered his remarks to a crowd including some 1,021 registered commissioners – enough for a quorum, but well below the 1,250 reportedly needed for the event to break even financially – in a 3,000-seat hall at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort Convention Center. He lamented that only half of the 154 eligible members of the Overtures Committee, which makes recommendations on proposed policy changes, had shown up.
The Overtures Committee “is the most important deliberative body that we have,” Bradley said. “My point is: We need to get engaged.”
Earlier in the day, the Overtures Committee had flexed its muscles. Panelists rejected overtures calling for a study group on women’s roles in congregational life and another one that would have urged President Barack Obama not to normalize gay relationships in the military.
Still, the committee’s votes, while influential, may not necessarily doom prospects for any overture on the General Assembly floor, according to PCA Business Administrator John Robertson.
The committee’s recommendation on an overture “has a lot of strength, unless there is a minority report,” Robertson said.
For the PCA, rapid growth has been a norm since the denomination formed in 1973 to pursue a more theologically-conservative path than those taken by other Presbyterian groups. But outgoing moderator Paul Kooistra warned in his sermon Tuesday night that the PCA now runs a risk of being weakened by prideful infighting.
“If we don’t learn how to love one another more than we love ourselves,” Kooistra said, “we are going to have a train wreck as a denomination.”
Kooistra compared the PCA to the immature Corinth church whom the Apostle Paul admonishes in 1 Corinthians. Kooistra urged members to be more accepting of one another’s views, especially in non-essential issues, such as how to interpret the six-day Creation described in Genesis 1.
“God brings a lot of people together, in His church, who are very different,” Kooistra said. “We have to decide: Are we willing to live with some of that difference? Or are we going to try to squeeze everybody in to exactly the same box? I’m not talking about unbelief – we left unbelief. We left liberalism. [Yet] to have a church of any size, we’re going to have differences.”
After the General Assembly adjourned its opening session, commissioners said they weren’t overly concerned with what they’d heard. Jerry Mead of Martinsburg, W.Va. said declining membership numbers was mostly due to roll-purging at Coral Ridge. At its height, Coral Ridge had 10,000 members but had declined to approximately 2,000 members. In May the congregation installed the Rev. Tullian Tchividjian, a grandson of Billy Graham, as its pastor.
Larry Elenbaum, of Beaver Falls, Pa., agrees that action must be taken to get the PCA back on track for growth.
“This has always been a fast-growing denomination, and now it doesn’t seem to be growing as fast, so we need to do more church planting,” he said.
As for infighting, Elenbaum isn’t worried.
“Every year, you hear ‘you’ve got to love each other’ at the beginning of General Assembly because General Assembly brings out people’s differences,” Elenbaum said. “I don’t think there’s any great danger that the PCA is splitting to pieces.”