Good news is that PCUSA membership losses decline
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, May 20, 1999
LOUISVILLE – Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick is expressing relief over the fact that 1998 membership losses are not as bad as they have been in previous years.
He was responding to data released by the Office of the General Assembly that counted 2,587,674 Presbyterians at the end of 1998, a decline of 21,517 from 1997. For the second straight year, membership loss was under 23,000. The decline from 1967 to 1997 was more than 30,000 annually. Since the mid-1960s, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has lost more than 1 million members.
“Though I am disappointed that we continue to lose members, I am encouraged that the net loss is the lowest in probably two decades and lower than last year,” Kirkpatrick told the Presbyterian News Service. “I long for and pray for the day when we see gains, not losses.”
A coincidental trend?
The data on membership losses was released without interpretation. Presbyterian leaders have not explained why the annual membership losses tapered off in 1997 and 1998, but some observers believe that it is not mere coincidence that in those years the denomination began taking a more biblical stance on some issues.
In 1997, presbyteries voted to include in the PCUSA constitution a clause that requires candidates for deacon, elder and minister to limit their sexual activity to marriage. They reaffirmed that ordination standard in 1998 by voting two-to-one to reject a proposed amendment that would have rendered the standard unenforceable.
Also, a 1998 study by The Presbyterian Layman suggested that the conservative wing of the church was retaining members better than the liberal wing. Nationally, from 1990 through 1996, presbyteries that voted to allow ordination of self-affirming homosexuals lost 11.1 percent of their members. The corresponding loss for presbyteries that voted for the ordination standard was 3.9 percent.
Louisville had high loss
Some of the largest losses occurred in presbyteries that worked most aggressively for ordination of homosexuals, including the Presbytery of Louisville, which houses the headquarters of the PCUSA. From 1990 to 1996, Louisville lost 17.1 percent of its Presbyterian membership.
The Layman study also showed that per-capita giving nationally was 10 percent higher in the conservative presbyteries.
Continuing a longstanding trend, the highest number of membership losses was in the “dropout” category. Called “other” losses in the statistical report, they totaled 102,544, far more than deaths (40,115) and transfers (36,964) combined.
The number of churches in the denomination declined by 35 to 11,260. The number of ministers, however, increased by 82 to 20,940. The number of ordinations increased by one to 379, but the number of candidates for ordination declined by 42 to 937. The number of elders declined by 3,257 to 108,532. The number of deacons declined by 1,002 to 72,674.
Some contributions rise
With the exceptions of giving to presbytery and synod mission, PCUSA financial contributions rose in 1998. Total contributions rose more than $65 million to $1.8 billion. More than 85 percent of those funds were retained at the local level for congregational program (64 percent), local mission (5 percent) and capital expenditures (16 percent). Contributions to presbytery mission declined $553,000 to $39.6 million. Contributions to synod mission declined $162,000 to $10.3 million. Giving to General Assembly mission increased $1.5 million to $55.8 million.
Some of the material in this report was written by the Presbyterian News Service.