Honorable? Perhaps.

Or perhaps it's just good for credibility to get the unpleasant facts out early.

And they've been crowing about rapid growth for months. It's easy to grow from a small base. Especially if you reset the base to a lower number.

What a ridiculous post. ACNA was just founded not 24 hours ago and you're already spreading lies about its decline? Up until now it's been a loose, hard to measure, confederation of Christians living in fear of having their churches they built stolen by the powers that be in DC and New York. Your statements are more fitting for a 16th century roman bishop, bitter that the catholic church no longer controls the life of the multitudes of newly formed protestants. Don't be so petty.

Spencer, the headline is a joke, as even a casual reading of the sentence that begins: "The ACNA folks have done the honorable thing here..." makes clear.

ACNA's numbers of bishops and archbishops are certainly growing...former Episcopal priests are becoming bishops in a steady rate...

;)

Peter+

A rule of thumb is one third of a mainline denomination's members attend church on any given Sunday. 69,197 x 3 = 207,591 members. However this doesn't factor in newness, enthusiasm, initial committment and ratio of bishops and priests to laity that for a while may raise ACNA percentage.

It seems that my earlier comment on TEC's less than accurate statisticts has been deleted. I believe I was challenged to give an example.

Here is one. St. James Newport Beach. They left TEC in the early 2000's. Their membership, pledge and plate and ASA have all been steady - no change - since 2003.
http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_624200993423PM.pdf

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

Phil,

I removed your earlier comment becaue you made an allegaton and didn't back it up in a timely fashion. Now you have provided one example to support a sweeping allegation. Do you know for a fact that the Diocese of Los Angeles counts these figures when calculating its average Sunday attendance? Are you familiar with the reporting guidelines for parochial reports? I am not. So you may have a point here. Or you may not. But if I were going to claim that MBsIC were being dishonest, I think I'd do that bit of due diligence.

Jim,

I don't know whether DLA counts those numbers, but I suspect they do. The TEC website numbers come from the Parochial Reports. I don't know what happens when a church stops sending its parochial reports. This may simply be an example of that. But I would hope that DLA would know that those parishes that left did not have the same ASA/Membership/P&P and turn in zero because they are no longer members of TEC or attending a TEC congregation.

After the lawsuit dust has settled and the diocese has a new rector and a new congregation in those parishes (or sells the buildings, if it can in this market) then the numbers should take on a more realistic view, but that could take a while.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

Spencer: The churches they built?

By 'church,' are you referring to the physical plant, or the community of believers worshiping together?

The physical plant is owned by TEC / the diocese in trust for the parish (member of TEC / that diocese). And unless I'm mistaken, the physical church building in most parishes was built either a) by TEC initially as a mission, or b) was built with the contributions of previous generations of worshipers who were building an Episcopal church, not an ACNA church (and probably still received generous support fromn TEC).

My parish (Old St. Paul's, Baltimore) recently discussed this issue in our Sunday morning Forum. I think almost all of us agreed a congregation who feels they need to leave the Church, also needs to leave behind the (physical) church. So far, the courts have agreed.

The 'powers that be'--i.e., TEC--are worried about having the churches they helped to build stolen by schismatic parishes who want to run off with church property. When the Methodists started, the Wesleys had their meetings in people's homes, until they gained enough momentum to build churches of their own; they didn't steal churches from the C of E.

Also, think about it this way: in most cases, a majority of the congregation (and their rector) voted to leave the Episcopal Church. But a majority is not all. Why should those who want to remain Episcopalian be penalized, in having to raise money to build a new church, just because some of their fellow parishioners want to leave to form ACNA. If you want to build a new Church, you can also build a new (physical) church.

As far as the numbers go...
A group that broke off from TEC out of a deep-seated fear of moving forward with the rest of the church doesn't seem like one that's going to grow in the future. A society for religious anachronism like ACNA is setting itself up to fall victim to attrition from the very beginning.