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Episcopal Membership Drips as Attendance Rebounds
By Jeffrey Walton
JUICY ECUMENISM
November 8, 2024
Membership in the Episcopal Church fell further in 2023, but attendance partly rebounded post-COVID, according to statistics released today by the denomination's Office of the General Convention at the autumn meeting of the church's Executive Council in New Jersey.
Total membership declined by 37,313 or 2.61 percent, in the most recent reporting year. Total attendance rose by 37,311, or 10.69 percent, while plate-and-pledge, the denomination's metric for tracking giving, rose $48,579,607 (3.64%) to $1,384,929,410. The plate-and-pledge figure is undercut by a 4.1 percent rate of inflation across the same year.
The membership loss reported across the past decade continues at 23 percent, while the decline in attendance reported across that period is 32 percent.
The Episcopal Church's triennial General Convention met June 23 -- 28 in Louisville, Kentucky where Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania (Erie) and Western New York (Buffalo) Bishop Sean W. Rowe was elected as the denomination's 28th Presiding Bishop with a promise of change and reorganization.
"All trends point to a smaller church, at least in the next decade," Rowe told The Living Church in a July interview following his election. "I think my particular role is to help us reposition."
Among Rowe's early decisions has been to conduct his November 2 investiture as Presiding Bishop in a scaled-back event broadcast from the chapel at the Episcopal Church Center in New York, rather than the larger service of his predecessors at the Washington National Cathedral. The move allowed large-scale remote participation, but was a nod to the tight financial position that many Episcopal parishes and dioceses face.
Rowe indicated before the Episcopal Church Executive Council Joint Budget Committee on September 23 that he intends to move fast in the General Convention's call for a "structural realignment" in the 2025-27 budget plan approved in June. Episcopal News Service coverage of Rowe's Executive Council remarks said that the incoming Presiding Bishop is planning to enact organizational change in The Episcopal Church to support the church's priorities.
