ADOM stats article by Jenny

[jwhkuan]

Hello all

This is my attempt to get us to engage with Jenny's article on the site.  Firstly, thanks Jenny for your hard work and all the number crunching and data entry!  I've done a speed read and I think the paper raises more questions than answers, which is a good thing.

1. Is there a breakdown by region; and would this help us understand the socio-economic factors better?

2. The majority of our churches are still in decline (p7), which is a very bad sign.  This follows the general NCLS trend for mainline denominations, which is quite in contrast with the Pentecostals.  It seems to me that we have lots of vicars out there (of whatever theological or liturgical persuasion) who are struggling to know how to grow churches.  Did anyone else see this article about a leaked COE report?  The title says it all:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2059038/Church-of-England-Bishops-concern-over-quality-of-vicars.html

3. What does this paper tell us about the short and medium term priorities for the ADOM?  I've worked in organisations for which this sort of data would be a clarion call to arms!  (Note, past tense.)


WH

[Jenny George-2]

Hi Wei-Han

1. I have regions and am starting some work on breaking down key results by region. I'll publish these when I get them finished. I'm not sure whether that would help with socio-economic factors. I used average household income because there are both low and high income areas in every region (though the Northwest definitely has a higher proportion of the lower income areas).

2. Yes - there is no getting around the broad story here. A few churches have grown substantially (usually off a pretty low base), some churches are holding reasonably steady but the majority are in decline. The other thing that I am kind of shocked by every time I think about it is that about half the parishes in Melbourne have less than about 75 people coming each Sunday. About 75 is an OK number to sustain and grow from, but much less and it's a really hard job to have the critical mass to springboard into new mission initiatives I would have thought.

3. Yes. Losing 10% of people in 10 years is not a good sign.

Jenny

[edited slightly for clarity and grammar]

[Tim Patrick]

wei-han kuan wrote:

It seems to me that we have lots of vicars out there (of whatever theological or liturgical persuasion) who are struggling to know how to grow churches.

To me, this is an absolutely critical obervation. Although many of us are trained to think about Anglican leaders in categories such as 'evangelical', 'anglo-catholic', 'liberal', etc, etc, I've recently started wondering about much simpler categories too: 'competent' and 'incompetent'.

Please don't misunderstand me to be saying that I think some ministers are completely incompetent while others are omnicompetent - we all have our strengths and shortcomings - but nonetheless I do think it's worth asking questions like Can Rev X actually grow this parish? Can Rev Y actually speak the truth in love? Does Rev Z actually have a healthy, working knowledge of essential Christian theology? I don't want to get too pragmatic, but if we want to arrest the decline in the Anglican Church, we really must have competent people leading in our parishes.

As a good friend once put it to me 'There's only one kind of failure: a failure of leadership.' On the one hand, this means our bishops, the Director of Theological Education, our Examining Chaplains, training colleges and curate supervisors must all own their share in the responsibilty to welcome and develop the right people in the ministry (which I'm sure they all do). But it also means that those of us in Anglican leadership mustn't fail to undertake some humble self-assessment too. Can I actually grow this parish? Can I actually speak the truth in love? Do I actually have a healthy, working knowledge of essential Christian theology? These can be confronting questions for us to face, but if we care more about the church than our own positions, we need to be brave enough to ask them.

Tim

[Jereth]

Great work Jenny. Look forward to seeing the next paper abuot synod representation.

2 comments/questions:
- If my reading of your stats and graphs is correct, about 1/3 of evangelical Melbourne Anglicans (3500 or so people) attend the 8 biggest parishes. Is that true? That would mean evangelicals for one reason or another tend to flock to mega-sized churches.
- Of the 20 biggest parishes you've listed, how many are "non-evangelical" vs. "evangelical"? Would I be correct in assuming that most of the top 10 in size are evangelical?

Why do evangelicals like big churches?

cheers
Jereth

[Andrew Bowles]

Interesting to think in the light of this what our current growth potential is. Do we have a breakdown of how frequently people attend church? I know a lot of people don't attend church weekly (a particularly Anglican trend!), so the total no. of Anglican church attendees over a month or so is probably a lot higher, maybe 30-40 000. Someone can probably point me to the study that concludes that your 'extended congregation' in terms of your member's direct influence and witness is ten times larger than your visible congregation. So Anglicans have a direct potential to witness to between 200-400 000 people in Melbourne (up to 10% of the city's population!). That's before we even think about intentional mission and outreach to people who have no contact with the Anglican church or people in it. So equipping existing parishes for evangelism may be a good start for a mission-shaped church to 'get the ball rolling'.

[Andrew Stagg]

If you look at the graphs for the very large churches (page 11) most have roughly held their numbers and a few have increased. But the largest Kew North Balwyn (aka St Hilary’s – my old church) has lost 14%. This is despite the growth campaign they ran around 2000 that they would plan to have 2000 members by 2010.

It might be interesting to learn what percentage of growth in other large churches was at the expense of Kew and what percentage were completely new converts. It is the latter figure that is the most important to us.

[Jenny George-2]

Jereth wrote:

Great work Jenny. Look forward to seeing the next paper abuot synod representation.

2 comments/questions:
- If my reading of your stats and graphs is correct, about 1/3 of evangelical Melbourne Anglicans (3500 or so people) attend the 8 biggest parishes. Is that true? That would mean evangelicals for one reason or another tend to flock to mega-sized churches.
- Of the 20 biggest parishes you've listed, how many are "non-evangelical" vs. "evangelical"? Would I be correct in assuming that most of the top 10 in size are evangelical?

Why do evangelicals like big churches?

cheers
Jereth

1. yes it is true that about a third of evangelical Melbourne Anglicans attend the eight biggest parishes.
2. Nine of the top 10 are evangelical (Footscray is an interesting case since it probably wouldn't consider itself evangelical and I have not counted it as such. However they have a growing Sudanese ministry that may be part of their growth in numbers. This ministry may consider itself evangelical. I don't know enough to know the ins and outs). Of the top 20, 15 are evangelical.

As to why... that's a great question and one for ongoing debate here.

[Luke Isham]

Hi Jenny,

1. Are you able to include a map of the top twenty Parishes?  (Maps of the Diocesan boundaries are available on the web but I wonder if maps of Parish boundaries are available?)

2. Maybe a breakdown of the top twenty parishes into evangelical and non-evangelical would be good.  

Thanks for the great work, keep it up.

[Gordon Cheng]

Jenny George wrote:

 Losing 10% of people in 10 years is not a good sign.

I'm wondering why not?

Doesn't it depend on the reason?

[Jereth]

I have looked at the second paper by Jenny (again, well done on the hard work)

The obvious point being made here is that the current system of synod representation leaves evangelicals very under-represented. Question is: are we ok with this or not? And if we're not ok with it, what can be done about it? Is it possible to convince the diocese to change the way the system works so that representation is fairer?

Side question: if evangelical Anglicanism was more accurately represented in Synod, would it make a difference to how this diocese was run?

Jereth

[Jenny George-2]

Jereth,

I'm still a little bit annoyed that when I was seconding a Synod motion last year to look at Synod representation again with view to possible changes, an absolutely astounding number of evangelicals had already left Synod and gone home. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and lots of people had other things to do. But when you're a Synod rep I think you take on the responsibility to actually attend Synod for the whole time. OK we might have lost the motion anyway but it ties everyone's hands when the duly elected reps don't show up to vote. And it wasn't a landslide loss. There were quite a lot of people who voted for it, and with some appropriate speeches we might have swayed a middle ground (the motion was very very mild and just asked us to relook at it). I know lots and lots of people who are eligible to attend Synod. I regularly meet them on the first day and catch up. Of all those people, I only saw about 3-4 who were still in the room during this debate. Only one person (David Powys) spoke in favour of the motion and a lot of others spoke against. I felt like I was left stranded on a rock. If we want better representation then everyone needs to use the political processes that currently exist to change that. For those of you who are not Synod reps, perhaps you can find out who they are for your parish and strongly urge them to be at Synod for the whole time etc.

[Jereth]

i've got no idea who St. Judes's synod reps are. In 7 years of attending that church I've never heard anyone so much as mention synod.

Correction: one chap did mention it back when they were electing the new Archbishop. I think that's the first time I became aware that synod existed.

Jereth

[Paul Barker]

Thanks Jenny for this work. Some thoughts on it and comments made by others.

1. Technically, it is a parish that has two full-time clergy on staff that gets the extra lay synod rep. They have to be full-time clergy.

2. Jereth commented: The obvious point being made here is that the current system of synod representation leaves evangelicals very under-represented. Yes, but actually it is larger parishes that are under-represented. They just happen to be, mainly, evangelical. I think it important not to sound like there is something unrepresentative against evangelicals per se.

3. I think the data in the yearbook is susceptible to major error. for example I cannot believe that St Alfred's had only 97 attenders on average in 2001. It has always been a strong church and is still growing off-site.

4. Jereth asked whether a change of synod balance would lead to a change in the diocese, government, priorities, etc. Eventually I am sure that would be the case.

4. On a slightly related issue to the stats, it would be interesting to note the 'departures' from ministry, or at least diocesan licensed ministry in recent times. I cannot help noticing that many evangelicals in recent times have retired, gone on missionary service, gone to part-time with only a PTO and not a full licence, resigned through ill health, etc. We need more and more to find clergy for the future, as well as the present.

Thanks Jenny for the stats. I love stats!

Paul

[Jenny George-2]

Paul Barker wrote:

Thanks Jenny for this work. Some thoughts on it and comments made by others.

1. Technically, it is a parish that has two full-time clergy on staff that gets the extra lay synod rep. They have to be full-time clergy.

2. Jereth commented: The obvious point being made here is that the current system of synod representation leaves evangelicals very under-represented. Yes, but actually it is larger parishes that are under-represented. They just happen to be, mainly, evangelical. I think it important not to sound like there is something unrepresentative against evangelicals per se.

3. I think the data in the yearbook is susceptible to major error. for example I cannot believe that St Alfred's had only 97 attenders on average in 2001. It has always been a strong church and is still growing off-site.

4. Jereth asked whether a change of synod balance would lead to a change in the diocese, government, priorities, etc. Eventually I am sure that would be the case.

4. On a slightly related issue to the stats, it would be interesting to note the 'departures' from ministry, or at least diocesan licensed ministry in recent times. I cannot help noticing that many evangelicals in recent times have retired, gone on missionary service, gone to part-time with only a PTO and not a full licence, resigned through ill health, etc. We need more and more to find clergy for the future, as well as the present.

Thanks Jenny for the stats. I love stats!

Paul

1. Thanks for the definition Paul. I thought that was the case but because the yearbook didn't record whether someone was part-time or not I couldn't do it as accurately as I would have liked. If someone has better stats I'm happy to update the paper...

3. Yes that is definitely an error (as noted at the start of the first paper). It was brought to my attention by Wei-Han and Peter McPherson. What do you do when the "authoritative" source of stats is wrong??

[Paul Barker]

Jenny
Hard to know what to do when source of data is wrong. We face the same issue recently in Eastern Region as so many parishes simply do not submit stats. I think there are probably errors in Sunday counting, then in the tabulation and averaging of them by the parish, no doubt some typo errors here and there as well. So error upon error!

By the way, I also agree on synod attendance. Hard to get people there and we often sell ourselves short. (Admittedly I was absent on that Saturday due to an interstate speaking commitment set well before the synod date.) Much of synod can be tedious for many but a good time for knitting, reading, playing computer games or doing the Age cryptics!

Paul

[Gordon Cheng]

Paul Barker wrote:

Thanks Jenny for the stats. I love stats!

I've sensed that in you, Paul, but hadn't wanted to say until now.

;-)

[jane churchland]

Tim Patrick wrote:

 I've recently started wondering about much simpler categories too: 'competent' and 'incompetent'.

[jane churchland]

(sorry about the double post... still getting my nabble sea legs)

Tim: this is a thought which, though uncharitable, has been occurring to me lately too. I do know that it isn't an easy job, for many practical as well as spiritual reasons, but it is really so very important... as a lay parishioner you are so very limited by the encouragement, permission, etc which derives from the person with the collar. They don't have to do everything themselves, but they have to allow it to happen!

Further, can I tell all you little priestlings reading this how perfectly precious it is to come away from a Sunday service having heard the bible preached?

I was absolutely flabbergasted looking at the attendance breakdown, realizing that the new smaller church I've moved to is firmly in the 9th decile of churches in the diocese. Fully 80% of churches have fewer attendees!!!! I'd even be prepared for 50% maybe, but 80+%?

I know this doesn't advance the discussion terribly much (how sad that my first post is a 'me too!), but can I say finally that I for one am feeling my backbone snapping to attention upon reading through these stats. The Diocese at present does seem to be something of a conjuring trick with vestments... not much more than a gentle breeze would blow it over...