The United Church of Christ misplaced greater than 286,000 members from 2012 to 2022, in keeping with a brand new report from the UCC Heart for Evaluation, Analysis, Growth and Information.
Between that decade, the theologically liberal mainline Protestant denomination noticed a web lack of 286,610 members and 551 congregations.
As he states The Christian Put upThe UCC noticed a decline in congratulation, starting from 4,794 to 4,603 congregations, and misplaced membership from about 773,000 to about 712,000.
As well as, the 2022 membership additionally represented a big decline from 1960, when the denomination reportedly had roughly 2.24 million members, greater than triple the present quantity.
The reporter additionally discovered that the UCC eliminated 128 congregations from its data in 2022, a rise of fifty.6 % in comparison with 2021, when 85 congregations have been eliminated.
The report stated the rise within the variety of eliminated congregations “is expounded to a brand new UCC board coverage that removes church buildings from data after two years of being designated inactive except the convention requests an extension or in any other case updates the inactive designation.”
“As this was the primary yr the coverage was enacted, the variety of inactive church buildings eliminated just isn’t anticipated to be as excessive in subsequent years; future years of information assortment will present whether or not removals return to earlier ranges,” the report stated.
One other important decline within the UCC occurred between 2005 and 2007, when “the UKC noticed the lack of nearly three congregations per week on common” in gentle of its 2005 Normal Synod passing a decision supporting same-sex marriage.
CARDD Director Erica Dollhopf stated in a press release final week that she hopes the report highlighting tendencies within the UCC may also help native congregations “determine the place their church may need explicit strengths and discover inspiration for the way their church would possibly discover new methods to flourish. .”
Dollhopf additionally identified how the stories discovered that smaller UCC congregations have the very best proportion of volunteer involvement of their numerous initiatives and providers.
“This discovering highlights the particular items of smaller church buildings—they are typically tight-knit, extremely concerned communities,” she continued. “The smallest church buildings by membership dimension are inclined to have the most individuals attending in-person providers relative to membership.”
“Whereas not everybody who attends a service is essentially a church member, this calculation is one other solution to approximate engagement, which is mostly highest in smaller church buildings.”
One other discovering within the report confirmed that 83.1 % of UCCs are white, whereas 4.8 % are African American, 4 % are Asian or Pacific Islander, and fewer than 1 % are Hispanic.
Final July, through the 2023 Normal Synod session, the UCC elected the Rev. Karen Georgia Thompson as its first president and basic minister.
In a nomination speech earlier than final yr's basic synod, Thompson stated “hope springs up” within the UCC, with the denomination being “a spot the place we now have seen the Spirit of God poured out amongst us in some ways.”
“Right here we honor the resilience of those that got here earlier than us, took dangers and sometimes did extra with lower than we now have right now. And right here is the place we determine as now as we take into account God's calling to be salt and light-weight to the world,” Thompson stated.
Picture credit score: ©Getty Photos/KL Yuen
Milton Quintanilla is a contract author and content material creator. He’s a contributor to Christian Headlines and host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast dedicated to sound doctrine and biblical fact. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
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