LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) continued to lose members in 2017, extending a pattern that has persisted since the mid-1960s, according to news released by the church’s official communications arm June 4.
PCUSA currently has 9,304 congregations, 147 fewer than at the end of 2016. At the end of 2017 church membership totaled 1,415,053, a decline of 67,714 members from 2016. Larger losses were recorded between 2012 and 2016 when the denomination’s General Assembly voted in 2010 to allow the ordination of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people as church officers and the 2014 Assembly voted to allow same-gender “marriage.”
General Assembly Stated Clerk J. Herbert Nelson said the dismissals and separation of churches of the previous five years seemed to abate in 2017 but blamed the ongoing drop in membership as a sign that “Presbyterians are doing poorly at evangelism.”
“Churches leaving was a temporary roadblock. Our inability to share the faith — to demonstrate the power and justice of Jesus Christ and His church to change a world where inequality, injustice, violence and war seem to gain strength daily — is a critical factor in our failure to grow,” Nelson said. (TAB)
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