Thursday, January 27, 2005

24 Hours later, 100+ more Congregations Certified

by RevThom

More fun than watching the stock market? For a while yesterday, it looked like Boy-in-the-Bands' forecast of a plummet in the rate of growth would hold true. However, a late surge brought the rate of growth back to stable. Here are the numbers:

# of US Congregations reporting: 467
Net change in # of UUs: +1690
Percentage growth: 2.18%

Of course, this steady growth comes with one caveat. Ten percent of this growth can now be attributed to the Sycamore Federated Church in Illinois, which went from reporting 10 UUs in 2004 to 181 UUs in 2005. Boy-in-the-Bands wrote critically of Federated churches one year ago.

Posted by RevThom, January 27, 2005 09:45 AM
Comments:

Phil on the Prairie says:

January 28, 2005 01:09 PM | Permalink for this comment

While this is good news, remember that these numbers don't include religious education enrollment, and as Larry Ladd has pointed out in the UU World (http://www.uua.org/world/2004/05/feature3c.html), "religious education enrollment fell for the second time in three years" last year. "The RE decline should be 'a warning signal for our movement that likely predicts a decline in adult membership in the near future.'" His follow up questions are particularly interesting: "Is it that our adult membership is aging? Is it that we are becoming less successful in attracting young families and single parents? Is it other factors?" I think we aren't attracting families, and our method of counting (adult members first, children in RE second) reflects our deeply-rooted but outdated focus on the individual.

RevThom says:

January 28, 2005 02:49 PM | Permalink for this comment

(Warning: sarcasm and facetiousness ahead)

Phil, you're ignoring the obvious correlation. Religious Education enrollment began to decline 9 months after the new "Our Whole Lives" sex-ed. curriculum was released. Clearly, fact-based education about contraception is impacting our growth as a denomination. Want to boost our RE enrollment? Rewrite OWL to encourage the "hope" method.

(Sarcasm and facetiousness has ended.)

Sean says:

January 28, 2005 10:07 PM | Permalink for this comment

Wow...if we were counting RE registrations, my congregation would be WAY up. Since I arrived in the 02-03 year, we've gone from 55 registrations to 122. We hope to get close to 150 by the end of the year. (Official adult membership is 180 with 8 more "waiting in the wings")

I wish we did track RE attendance and enrollment. I think Larry Ladd is right that it is a great indication of the health of the future of our movement. Now, if we can just get our YRUU program back on track, we'll have a youth/young adult powerhouse of UUs.

Sean