{"id":497,"date":"2009-06-29T19:44:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-29T19:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/the-south-rising.html"},"modified":"2009-06-29T19:44:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-29T19:44:00","slug":"the-south-rising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/the-south-rising.html","title":{"rendered":"The South, rising"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conventional wisdom holds that the South is where Mother Church is growing and thriving — and these figures<\/a> out of Atlanta seem to bear that out: <\/p>\n

The fruit is considerable — in the heart of the Bible Belt, the North Georgia church has seen a more than fivefold increase in membership over the last two decades, exploding from 150,000 in 1990 to within striking distance of 800,000 today… and — as if that wasn’t enough — a concurrent increase by half of the diocesan presbyterate (121 in 1990 to 181 today), with eight more priests ordained last weekend… and, what’s more still, they can’t build or expand the schools quickly enough. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those are numbers any bishop would envy. (Left unmentioned, the more than 200 permanent deacons who also serve the archdiocese — a number that has more than doubled<\/i> since 1990.) <\/p>\n

Which leads me to wonder: what are they doing that other places aren’t?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conventional wisdom holds that the South is where Mother Church is growing and thriving — and these figures out of Atlanta seem to bear that out: The fruit is considerable — in the heart of the Bible Belt, the North Georgia church has seen a more than fivefold increase in membership over the last two…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us"],"yoast_head":"\nThe South, rising - The Deacon's Bench<\/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\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/the-south-rising.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The South, rising - 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