making a commitment, or keeping it? Elizabeth Keaton at Telling Secrets thinks it’s the former.
“Membership is VERY different from attendance, Kendall.
Or, perhaps, for your purposes, it isn’t.
This would certainly help explain the fact that when splinter groups like AAC or CANA or AMiA or, for that matter, Mr. Akinola or Mr. Kolini talk about the millions of MEMBERS in their various churches, they are “apparently” talking about ATTENDANCE.
That distinction makes things a great deal more apparent - which is that there is a great deal of difference between the long term commitment of baptism (MEMBERSHIP) and the religious fervor of an evangelical service (ATTENDANCE).
I would agree with her distinction between “membership” and “attendance” if there were more attendees than members. If that were the case, then logically the members are those attendees that are committed enough to officially associate themselves. It could be generalized as “all members are attendees, but not all attendees are members.”
But, according to the numbers, the opposite is true. There are nearly three times as many members as attendees (787,000 attendees of 2.3 million members). What that tells me is that, logically, the attendees are the members who are committed enough to show up. It could be generalized as “all attendees are members, but not all members are attendees.”
Of course there will always be exceptions: nonmembers who attend, members who stay home, etc. But what is the over arching trend? At my ELCA church (in full communion with the ECUSA) we have just shy of 1000 members. But our average Sunday attendance hovers around 425. Out of that 425 we have 6-10 one time visitors, and 5-7 families that regularly attend, but aren’t members. That means there are only about 385 members in regular attendance out of 1000.
Her description is lacking, because, according to those statistics, nearly two thirds of those who have made the “long term commitment” she mentioned aren’t showing up. Her phrase “the religious fervor of an evangelical service” implies that showing up regularly is no indicator of your commitment, while showing up on one special day is.
Would that fly with a marriage? “Honey, I may not come home every night, but you know I love you…I did marry you.”
Elizabeth thinks my logic is “deeply, deeply flawed.” My comment was worded slightly different, but with the same meaning as this post. She says:
It is based on assumption - “the truth is the opposite,” and not substantiated fact “nearly three times as many members as attendees” - which is never the basis for a logical arument
I posted a response, which she chose to delete in moderation. It’s probably because her attack on my logic was unfounded. The “assumption” she refers to is no assumption at all, but a deduction based on what she calls the “not substantiated fact”. My math says that 787,000 is 34% of 2.3 million…so she’s right, I miscalculated…it’s just barely less than three times as many. So, the truth of the situation is the opposite of my original statement about attendance being higher than membership.
Some churches have higher membership than attendance. Some have higher attendance than membership. The number that’s most important is the smaller one. That’s because the better judge of the life of a church than membership or attendance is the number of members who participate in the continuing life of the church and are moved by the Gospel.
Related: Episcopal Church loses 42,000 in 2005; The Episcopal Majority Trumpets “vitality”
Technorati Tags: attendance, Church, ECUSA, elca, elizabeth_keaton, Episcopal, Episcopalian, lutheran, membership, telling_secrets
Blogs4God
I don’t belong to the same church to which you belong, I am a Baptist.
I once heard someone say that the people who attend the service on Wednesday night are the “bones” of the church. I think there is some truth in that. The members who attend on Wednesday night are fewer but they are the decision makers in a Baptist church. The ones who attend the business meetings, the ones who are most likely giving of themselves (actually providing some service outside of themselves to the church family).
Of course that’s a generalization but for the sake of *argument,* who doesn’t generalize to some extent these days?