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PCUSA membership decline continued in 2001
From 22.3 to 8.6 Presbyterians per 1000 Americans since 1965
Presbyweb--In the year 2001 the PC(USA) lost 31,549 members, or 1.2%, some 600 members per week. Total losses of 178,363 were only partially offset by the gains of 146,814. At the end of 2001 the membership was 2,493,781. The number of congregations declined by 36 to 11,142. The church had 31 New Church Developments.
These figures are based on end-of year-reports of the congregations, and were released by Research Services in its report Comparative Statistics 2001.
Decline over time
Since 1965 the membership of the PC(USA) and its predecessor denominations has shown a decline every year, for a total of over 1,7 million members, or 41.4%.
In that same period the US population grew by some 50%. In 1965 Presbyterians accounted for 2.23% of the US population. That percentage had dropped to 0.86 by the end of 2001. In other words, 22.3 of every 1,000 Americans were Presbyterians in 1965, but in 2001 that number had gone down to just 8.6 Presbyterians per 1,000 Americans.
Growth and decline in Synods and Presbyteries
In 2001 the Synod of the Altantic was the only Synod that posted a net gain in members, of just 0.07% (208 members). The Synod of the Trinity experienced the greatest decline with a membership loss of 6,411, or 2.18%.
138 presbyteries lost members, and of the 35 that posted growth, only 14 grew by more than 1%. The largest increase was experienced by Eastern Korean Presbytery (11.02%), followed by Northern New England (8.9%), and Atlantic Korean-American (5.71%)
Ministers
The number of ministers grew in 2001 by 86, to 21,151, of whom one fifth were women (4,015). The number of active ministers declined by 64 (to 13,935; 3,677 were women); retired were 7,216 ministers. The number of ordinations grew by 27 to 394 compared to the previous year. This was the second largest number of ordinations in 10 years. More than half of all "candidates under care" were women (650 of 1215)
In 2001, slightly less than half of all active ministers were pastors or co-pastors (6,468). Associate pastors numbered 1,470. The church had 568 supply pastors, 609 interim pastors and 633 chaplains. 50 ordained pastors were "tent-makers", and only 7 of them were women. 514 of the ministers were executives, close to one-third of them women.
Contributions
Contributions to the PC(USA) in 2001 (not including capital fund contributions) were almost two billion dollars. The average Presbyterian gave $783.59 to the church, up 1.28% compared to the previous year. The membership loss means a decline in such contributions of over $24.65 million. Another one billion dollars was received by congregations for capital and building funds, as investment income, bequests and other income.
Attendance, size, churches without pastors
The mean number of members per congregation was 276, and the median number was 117. Over one third of the churches, a total of 3,974, had no installed pastor. One fourth of Presbyterian congregations (2,555) had 50 or fewer members, and just one out of four of them had an installed pastor. 500 congregations counted 800 or more members, and 13 had more than 4,000 members. The largest is Peachtree Presbyterian Church, in Atlanta, Georgia, with 9,386 members; followed by Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kansas with 6,005; and First in Orlando, Florida with 5,497.
The average worship attendance in 2001 in all congregations was 52.4%. The smaller the congregation the higher the attendance - ranging from 76.5% in churches of 50 or fewer members, to 43.3% in churches with a membership of 1,601 or more.
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