Episcopal Church Insurance Fund VP Says TEC Is Losing a Diocese a Year

Average Sunday Attendance, Easter Attendance, Child Baptisms all down
By David W. Virtue
September 22, 2011

A Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Church Insurance Companies of The Episcopal Church says that TEC has 6,900 parishes and missions worth $20 billion, but average Sunday Attendance (ASA) and all other indicators are down. Church leaders will need to close entities to make the church more mission viable in the future.

Rod Webster said in a video on the state of the church that while TEC's properties are sometimes as large as denominations twice TEC's size, to stay efficient an organization needs to build new sites and close ones that are not working.

"The issue we have is the shrinking size of the church, and the fact that closing churches outnumber new churches by two point five to one (2.5 to 1). For every new church that has opened over the last 10 years 2.5 of them have closed. Just over 40 churches each year are closing, based on the data we collect and the data we have managed very carefully over the last 39 months. The number of churches closing are about the size of a very small - admittedly - Episcopal diocese each year."

Webster said the large number of closings was going on everywhere in all regions of the country. "We're talking about 40 to 50 closings in a year, averaged over a 10 year period, continuing into the current time." the rest