Surprising Annual Conference Data
March 30, 2009
I’m working frantically to finish my senior honors thesis on leadership and annual conferences, but in getting together data for my project I noticed tremendous variation in worship attendance among annual conferences. I wondered what would happen if I divided average weekly worship attendance by lay membership in annual conferences. If you assume that the vast majority of attenders are members, the results are interesting and not what I expected.
Whole United States (Average Worship Attendance / Lay Membership): 0.413
Ten Eleven (since there is now only one Indiana Conference) highest annual conferences:
1. North Indiana: 0.661
2. Desert Southwest: 0.660
3. Alaska Missionary: 0.615
4. California Pacific: 0.603
5. West Michigan: 0.599
6. Greater New Jersey: 0.548
7. South Indiana: 0.548
8. West Ohio: 0.541
9. Dakotas: 0.524
10. Yellowstone: 0.520
11. Oregon-Idaho: 0.499
Ten Thirteen (they’re monkeying with boundaries in New York too) lowest annual conferences:
1. Oklahoma: 0.242
2. Wyoming (NY and PA): 0.257
3. Central Texas: 0.287
4. North Central New York: 0.298
5. New York: 0.310
6. Troy (NY): 0.318
7. OIMC: 0.330
8. Rio Grande: 0.335
9. Northwest Texas: 0.337
10. Iowa: 0.337
11. Western Pennsylvania: 0.344
12: New England: 0.353
13: Virginia: 0.354
Jurisdictions (in order):
1. Western: 0.515
2. North Central: 0.477
3. Southeastern: 0.409
4. Northeastern: 0.385
5. South Central: 0.368
There are many more statistics that should be looked at, but this seems to be a valid one. It kind of blows my mind. The mission of the United Methodist Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. If anything, I would call church attendance a measure of discipleship. The subtext in a lot of discussion is that the UMC in the southern US is thriving and in the West and Northeast it is declining. This is true when it comes to membership numbers, but what about worship attendance? The fractions above are clearly not even close to a perfect measure of discipleship, but it gives one pause. There are clearly other factors to look at (and I may get to them at some point). Still, wow.
You can see the data here: http://www.gcfa.org/Data_Resources/excel/US_Annual_Conference_Membership_Summary.xls
Luke
March 30, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Another factor could be the formula by which apportionments are calculated. In my conference (one of those low ones) there is no membership factor for apportionments, therefore, the incentive is to keep members on the roll so the church/conference looks like it is continually growing. Some conferences have a membership factor which gives the incentive to having “clean” rolls, removing those who are no longer active in the church. fwiw
March 30, 2009 at 10:32 pm
That could be. Looking at everything together would be helpful. You could take into account rate of removal by charge conference action. Still, that is a remarkable range.
August 11, 2009 at 10:56 am
Also,
Attendance numbers are notoriously mis-represented. I knew of one church where a new pastor began preaching, the building was filling up like never before, and yet the numbers they were reporting authentically were still as much as 10% below the previous pastors report. I think the most unbiased way of accessing discipleship would probably be giving/member. You can get that data as well.