Surely we could do better! Louie, thanks for printing the information.
Rather than rank diocese by the % increase, I would suggest a more telling
formula. Divide the average Sunday attendance by the number of
congregations and get the average attendance per congregation in each
diocese.
This will highlight the now over 20 year trend that large churches are
getting larger and small ones smaller. This is one of the acute crisis of
mainline denominations such as ours.
You present chart highlights smallness since a small diocese with a
numerical increase represents a good looking statistical increase, but it
may mean little in actual numbers. Or as I tell clergy, if your church is
small always report increases in numbers by percentages. So the church with
average attendance of 20 goes up in one year to 24, that is 20%. Large
churches should just report the number which will empress everybody. For
example several of our large churches have added over 200 in attendance in
one year. This new body of 200 people represents a church larger than 80%
of Episcopal congregations. The percentage of growth for this large church
may actually only be 5%. Or as an accountant once told me, "large numbers
add up faster than small ones!"
My point, and I do have one here, is that the statistical increases reported
by some of our small congregations look good and made diocesan people feel
good, but they do little to actually increase the number of people
worshiping in the Episcopal Church on any given Sunday.
Hope you find this interesting.
Canon Kevin Martin