{"id":12088,"date":"2024-11-18T13:00:20","date_gmt":"2024-11-18T18:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=12088"},"modified":"2024-11-18T13:00:20","modified_gmt":"2024-11-18T18:00:20","slug":"worship-continues-to-grow-in-declining-episcopal-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/11\/worship-continues-to-grow-in-declining-episcopal-church.html","title":{"rendered":"Worship Continues to Grow in Declining Episcopal Church"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Episcopal Church is reporting growing numbers in worship despite the denomination losing 40,000 members last year. As of 2023, the denomination boasts 1.547 million people and accounted for 6,754 congregations. This number is down from 2022, which reported 1.584 million members and 6,789 congregations. However, the 2023 Parochial Report<\/a> stated that the number of in-person attendees on Sunday mornings had gone up for the second year in the row, with 411,000 attending in 2023, an increase from the 2022 number of 373,000 and 312,000 in 2021. This number, however, is still lower than pre-COVID numbers in 2019, which boasted 547,000.<\/p>\n

Regarding congregational size, most congregations were relatively small, with nearly 60 percent boasting 50 or less regular attendees. Only about eight percent had congregations greater than 150. None of the numbers reported those who view online, which has been a growing trend within churches since the 2020 COVID pandemic. The decline follows the growing decline of Christian denominations in general, though the church has seen some splits in recent years. In 2003, the church ordained its first openly gay pastor, which led to many conservative churches within the denomination leaving. The report did note that the closing of congregations began to slow in 2019, with 2006-2015 seeing the highest rate of closures. The report also noted that while the pandemic had seen the numbers of baptisms and confirmations decline, that appears to have stabilized in 2023.<\/p>\n

The church has chosen new leadership recently, with Reverend Sean Rowe being named the new presiding Bishop over the Episcopal Church, taking over the post from Reverend Michael Curry. Rowe championed unity during his ordination, saying, \u201cIn this badly hurting world, we need to become one church. We\u2019re not a collection of dioceses and institutions, a collection of the ways of doing things. We are one church, one church in Jesus Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Episcopal Church is reporting growing numbers in worship despite the denomination losing 40,000 members last year. As of 2023, the denomination boasts 1.547 million people and accounted for 6,754 congregations. This number is down from 2022, which reported 1.584 million members and 6,789 congregations. However, the 2023 Parochial Report stated that the number of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":12082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[141,140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america","category-church"],"yoast_head":"\nWorship Continues to Grow in Declining Episcopal Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/11\/worship-continues-to-grow-in-declining-episcopal-church.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Worship Continues to Grow in Declining Episcopal Church\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Episcopal Church is reporting growing numbers in worship despite the denomination losing 40,000 members last year. 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