Figures from the membership and Finance Report 2018 to be presented at the September meeting of the Governing Body of the Church in Wales show continued decline in all measures bar one.
Confirmations were up 30% despite the unilateral decision of the bench of bishops to scrap confirmation as a prerequisite to Holy Communion - see Dodgy legal advice leads to Eucharistic free for all. There was a 36% fall in confirmations 2017 - 2016.
The 25% increase in weekdays only attendance between 2017 - 2016 fell back 19% between 2018 - 2017.
Perhaps more surprisingly the reported Sunday attendance increased between 2017 and 2018 in a number of important fields: under 7s; 7 to 10s; 11 to 17s; and families. The average attendance of under 18's was down 1%; down 7% between 2017 and 2016.
The Report also shows a worrying decline in total giving across a range of categories despite an increase in average giving per attender.
Archbishop George Carey's six-year-old prediction that "the Church of England was one generation away from extinction" unless more was done to attract young people into the Church was aired again in Norwich Cathedral where a helter skelter was thought to be the answer.
In Llandaff it is gay pride.
The predicted outlook for the Church in Wales is even more gloomy than for the Church of England with 'massive church closures from around 2025 onwards' leading to extinction around 2040.
The ordination of women was supposed to reinvigorate the Church. It has had the opposite effect importing a brand of liberalism summed up by Piers Morgan in an interview ‘Liberals have become utterly, pathetically illiberal’.
One cleric has had the guts to put down a question (Q.2) at GB about the declining moral standards of the Church in Wales. Perhaps he will inspire others to reclaim the Church in Wales from the bishops before they destroy her.
Postscript [05.09.2019]
From Not Another Episcopal Blog:
"The Church in Wales has bought into the LGBTQ formula for denominational decline. The statistics look eerily similar to those we have witnessed in most Episcopalian dioceses."
A point strongly made by George Conger on Monday's Anglican Unscripted (No. 529) when he said all the mistakes made by the Episcopal Church 20 years ago are being repeated by the Church of England. The Church in Wales has gone down the same path but has become so irrelevant that it no longer warrants a mention.
The 25% increase in weekdays only attendance between 2017 - 2016 fell back 19% between 2018 - 2017.
Perhaps more surprisingly the reported Sunday attendance increased between 2017 and 2018 in a number of important fields: under 7s; 7 to 10s; 11 to 17s; and families. The average attendance of under 18's was down 1%; down 7% between 2017 and 2016.
The Report also shows a worrying decline in total giving across a range of categories despite an increase in average giving per attender.
Archbishop George Carey's six-year-old prediction that "the Church of England was one generation away from extinction" unless more was done to attract young people into the Church was aired again in Norwich Cathedral where a helter skelter was thought to be the answer.
In Llandaff it is gay pride.
The predicted outlook for the Church in Wales is even more gloomy than for the Church of England with 'massive church closures from around 2025 onwards' leading to extinction around 2040.
The ordination of women was supposed to reinvigorate the Church. It has had the opposite effect importing a brand of liberalism summed up by Piers Morgan in an interview ‘Liberals have become utterly, pathetically illiberal’.
One cleric has had the guts to put down a question (Q.2) at GB about the declining moral standards of the Church in Wales. Perhaps he will inspire others to reclaim the Church in Wales from the bishops before they destroy her.
Postscript [05.09.2019]
From Not Another Episcopal Blog:
"The Church in Wales has bought into the LGBTQ formula for denominational decline. The statistics look eerily similar to those we have witnessed in most Episcopalian dioceses."
A point strongly made by George Conger on Monday's Anglican Unscripted (No. 529) when he said all the mistakes made by the Episcopal Church 20 years ago are being repeated by the Church of England. The Church in Wales has gone down the same path but has become so irrelevant that it no longer warrants a mention.
The statistics do indeed make grave reading - and I'm sure the picture is similar for other denominations.
ReplyDeleteWhat is much harder to know is "cause and effect". Would reverting to nothing but BCP services and Victorian hymns attract more people or drive more away (the same could be said about contemporary worship)? Does Joe Bloggs in Methyr care two figs whether his Bishop is male or female? If the Church were to uphold "traditional gender ethics" (to coin a phrase) would folk come flocking or would they say, "Just shows how out of touch those Christians are"? Do "Fresh Expression" initiatives succeed in reaching out to the unchurched while simultaneously antagonising existing members? I'm sure there are many more imponderables out there.
I seem to remember reading a survey for the CofE a few years ago which suggested that the worship style and theology of a congregation weren't in fact the key factors as to whether it was growing or not. What were more important were things like welcome, integrity and enthusiasm. Those can't be faked.
I think that the insights which you're offering are perceptive and they strike me at least as pretty much on the nail.
DeleteI'd say that 'attracting' more people - as if the church were akin to, say, a small business which needs to generate 'customers' in order to stay solvent and keep going - is a complete mis-start; first and most fundamentally because the church - despite the assumption of not a few chuch members - doesn't exist merely to keep its show on the road from one decade to another.
And secondly because very few folk are ever going to be 'attracted' unless they are experiencing at the least some degree of curiosity as to what the church is really all about. If they're simply looking for a venue with, say, music and a friendly clientele, there's no shortage of other places better placed to provide that. Why go to a church for it?
Whereas, as you say, 'welcome, integrity and enthusiasm' are very much the qualities which make a mark on a curious person: someone motivated, for whatever individual reason, to overcome the natural fear (of finding him- or herself a fish out of the water in which everyone else appears to be a practised swimmer!) enough to seek contact with a local church. What the music's like, the sort of language used in the liturgy or the gender of the pastor are, for a person dipping their toes for the first time in some ecclesial pool, entirely secondary and incidental, and are matters unlikely to occur to them.
The Archbishop keeps saying: "If you do what you have always done, you will get what you always got". I wonder when the bench will learn that lesson. Liberalism always leads to decline. Every Church that has gone down the liberal path, and turned its back on the life-giving Gospel of Jesus Christ, has found itself dying. The Welsh bishops insist that their way is right, even though their way has led to continuous decline. When are they going to turn away from iniquitous idolatry, having placed secularism on the throne of King Jesus, and turn back to the only place where salvation is to be found? Until the Governing Body realizes that allowing the Bishops to do what they have always done, and not censuring them for it, decline and ultimate death for the Church in Wales is assured.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't even give it until 2040.
Seymour
I think Trainfan has it absolutely right! 'Welcome' is always seen as the best way of building a congregation … however, virtually every church rates itself highly on this! It takes some form of 'mystery worshipper' to give real feedback to the PCC and it might be a real 'wake-up call'! 'Integrity' is also important (although I might prefer to call it 'leading worship professionally' rather than the wishy-washy 'oh sorry about that' of many services I've attended!) and 'enthusiasm' (although again I might prefer to call it 'deep engagement' in the worship/silences/singing/prayers)
ReplyDelete(NotGoneYet)
Although I totally agree with you about "leading worship professionally" and "deep engagement", you have slightly misunderstood me. By "integrity" I meant a consistency whereby people don't have one persona for Sundays but a completely different one for weekdays; and by "enthusiasm" I didn't necessarily mean fervour in worship but people giving the palpable impression that they take their faith seriously and it means a lot to them.
DeleteIt is perhaps important to consider the image the Church presents and how much authority it wields. This is especially so for the CofE as the national church.
ReplyDeleteThe relentless slide to liberalism in an attempt to 'appeal' and therefore to get people into church on Sunday has spectacularly failed. People are not idiots. If they don't take the Church seriously then no amount of persuasion in the form of helter skelters or
ladies in dog collars will work.
Clergy and the invisible Archbishop of Wales need to forget their pensions, get out there and preach the Gospel as if they actually believe it.
Stoppit
Now there is the real problem.
DeleteThey don't actually believe it and it is obvious.
@ Anonymous:
DeleteWell put! The irony is that, in the 'western world' at least, Anglicanism has now been ploughing the 'search for relevance' furrow for over half a century now, and yet appears more marginal now than it was at the start of all that. 'If you don't strike oil, stop boring' comes to mind.
A little light was shed on the confirmation statistic over a pint of Brains 'Reverend James' last night. The figure is for the total number of confirmations administered for people living in Church in Wales parishes. These statistics come from the parishes, and are a reflection of the actual numbers that have been confirmed in a given parish. They are not the figures for the total number of confirmations administered by the bishops of the Church in Wales. Get it?
ReplyDeleteIf this is so, it tells me that traditionalist parishes are presenting more candidates for confirmation. By all accounts, the Bishops of Ebbesfleet and Beverley are keeping busy these days. So are certain parish priests who maintain two separate confirmation registers. They've learned to do that since the days when Barry the Golfer used to send the Stazi around to snoop.
What would be more telling, overall, would be a break-down of the figures, diocese by diocese. Then we could see the full extent of the hopeless shambles in Bangor, as well as having some clarity about which diocese comes a close second.
Q.1 to GB is also rather pointed, given that the job spec' was only recently published & the electoral college is due to meet very soon. It may be that the college will be presented (again) with a choice between Candidate no 1, or the first (and only) nominated candidate ...
ReplyDeleteRe the statistics: there is a report in The Guardian / Groaniad today that generally requests for non-religious funerals are increasing. The general changes in approach to rites of passage, or the 'Occasional Offices' as they are officially called in Anglican-ese- as previously discussed on this blog re: weddings - are perhaps partly the cause of some of the decline in the figures above.
Well over thirty years ago I remember reading a comment that the continuing and then still near-universal popularity of Christian funerals was in reality based merely on the fact that no one had thus far come up with an alternate adequately decorous ritual around disposing of a corpse.
DeleteThe invention of the humanist celebrant has filled that gap in the market, and presumably religious funerals will in due course go the same way as church weddings have gone since the rules about secular registrar were relaxed,.
Congregations of the Church in Wales as well as those of the CofE and traditional nonconformist churches consist overwhelmingly of the elderly, and the declining number of regular worshippers is due almost entirely to the activity of the Grim Reaper. Today's octogenarian churchgoers are probably the last generation to have acquired in youth the habit of going to church before universal car ownership and Sunday sport diverted all but an eccentric minority of young people elsewhere, and as they die they aren't being replaced: the decline in Baptisms (and to some extent that in church weddings) is only to be expected as in each succeeding generation the link with organised religion becomes progressively weaker. There are of course exceptions to this general trend, although I have a hunch that occasional increases in the figures for Confirmation may be connected with the practice of presenting children from church schools for that sacrament irrespective of their connection or lack of it with a parish worshipping community.
ReplyDeleteI notice that Baptist Trainfan and John Ellis, who have recently begun their contributions, appear to be fifth columnist liberals, who are attempting to dominate discussions and dilute the orthodox argument. We know what you are trying to do.
ReplyDeleteRob
So it's a conspiracy, then, is it?!
DeleteAt the time when David Steel was piloting his Abortion Act through Parliament in the mid-1960s, I recall the American Anglican liberal polemicist W. Norman Pittenger, who'd come to speak to one of our university religious societies, derisively characterizing me as 'a conventional bourgeois moralist' when I set out my objections to certain of that act's provisions.
A few years later, when world-wide Anglicanism was first exploring its attitude in principle to the ordination of women, I also remember being passionately reproached by a strong anglo-catholic for saying, at a meeting convened by the bishop to air the matter, that while I would be absolutely unable to remain in a church which unilaterally opted to ordain women to the priesthood in the absence of a recognizable universal consensus, on the actual topic itself I was personally agnostic. He reckoned that I had 'sold the catholic pass'.
So to Dr Pittenger I was an unreconstructed religious reactionary and to my anglo-catholic acquaintance a subversive liberal. Clearly, not much changes!
While I'm at it, how does attempting to contribute in a discussion come to equate with seeking to dominate it? Wouldn't confining your discussion to people who wholly agree with you be a tad unstimulating?
Terminal decline is still the obvious conclusion.
ReplyDeleteSo where are the thousands of new worshippers from the gay, lesbian, non-binary, questioning, inter-sex, transvestite, transsexual, sadist, masochist, rainbow, unicorn and paedophile communities being attracted to the Church in Wales by the thousands of £s squandered on the Pride "Faith" tent and the gay blasphemous "Blessed Sacrament" worship band?
Who's monitoring the "value for money" statistics of that filth and the £10 million given to Andy Crap to blow on such rubbish?
'I notice that Baptist Trainfan and John Ellis, who have recently begun their contributions, appear to be fifth columnist liberals, who are attempting to dominate discussions and dilute the orthodox argument. We know what you are trying to do.'
ReplyDeleteBaptist Trainfan is only stating facts lots of research backs him up eg Linda Woodhead, all mainstream denominations are declining, was at a large CiW event on Saturday and apart from the clergy and one or two children, average age = about 65 and most of the leading members were 80+ same with Methodists and Baptists. Those Churches I know who have made an effort attract people to 'events' or 'services' do so if people want to do craft, get food from a foodbank or go to the parent / toddler group but the lead into Church seems not to happen. The trend for funerals to be held on secular premises is also noticeable - I am involved in our local village hall and we have started doing funeral services as well as wakes and many of the attenders have liked the more low key atmosphere as well as the option of having the wake there with bar/kitchen. Disabled access in Churches is often poor too.
I do not think decline has anything to do with the factors described by Cymru'r Groes inter alia but simply part of the general atomisation of the population and it is hard for any community group/religious group/political party to wrest people away from their tablets/phones/Net Flix/warm houses. The ones that do in my experience are catering for special groups (eg Catholics and EU residents) or quite extreme (eg Jehovah's Witnesses, extreme evangelicals, Momentum). Let's take an empirical approach to the problem!
PS My worry is that the CiW / Churches Together are the backbone of low key social care provision in our area and many others - Food Bank Lunch Club, Anti Poverty Drop In, Refugee Group etc etc - in some areas of Wales all the Family Centre provision is through the Diocese all these projects are increasingly at risk by the decline described in the statistics, problems in getting volunteers through people having to work for longer because pension age has been raised, decline in final salary pensions, competition for volunteers etc etc. Will shut up now
ReplyDeleteMore funerals than baptisms. The math would predict zero communicants in the next 50 years.
ReplyDeleteThe self inflicted implosion will be much sooner than that due to the lack of clergy and closed Church buildings converted to mosques.
DeleteHow much of the £10M 'Evangelism Fund' is going on evangelism. I mean real evangelism where the message of the Gospel is delivered to unbelievers by direct preaching or courses such as Alpha or facilitating good works that directly lead to such events?
ReplyDeleteVery little I suspect? It could be a colossal waste of money. Perhaps its all too late and the church is incapable of changing to rediscover the Spirit's power?
Have you thought about putting a helter-skelter in St. David's cathedral, or a crazy golf course in Llandaff. I'm sure there would be plenty of room in Bangor cathedral for a ferris-wheel - that should pack 'em in!
ReplyDeletePP. It would be interesting to see the statistics for evangelism, outreach etc per parish/deanery. How is CinW on the ground doing church in its community.
ReplyDeleteThe Evangelism fund, so far has one major project in Wrexham, the youth hub in the former Burton building. However, be great if the province publicly revealed the spend of the huge sum. Has it paid for on evangelism?
Why don't our 6 cathedrals publish there evangelism strategy, opening hours, community outreach that would show hard working parishes, how the diocese's mother church is leading by example
You would need to define evangelism first of all - it is preaching the Gospel news -but clergy don't seem to know that and will think of everything but, e.g. Rainbow face painting in a faith tent, food banks, messy church.
DeleteWe might well ask why it costs £10 million extra for a church to do evangelism. It's a bit like the recent 'festival of prayer', just as crass but more expensive.
LW
PP. Simple definition... Go into all the world and preach the Gospel. If we take the example of the Northern English bishop's, they enmass annually around the province just to evangelise. CiW celebration 80, eons ago, was for the purpose. The late Fr Derek Jones CA was it's lead, the teaching pack on Ephesians was good. I remember, his story of conducting a workshop in Monmouth and stating that we need to take an example of the Ephesians. One of the clergy present said, "but we have no Ephesians in Monmouth Diocese" a part from a very true tale, today where are the pioneer clergy and missioners?
ReplyDeleteThey spent thousands in Bangor Diocese training pioneer clergy, then allowed them to be bullied out of the church just before ordination
DeleteI well recall Derek Jones, Brian Stares and the lay training project which they initiated in the Welsh province in 1972.
DeleteBut the names of the suave and invariably nattily dressed provincial stewardhip advisor and the team of Church Army missioners who - through Derek and Brian, I think - came to serve for a while in the Llandaff and Monmouth dioceses in the mid-1970s have slipped from my memory. They all came over to me as folk with vocation and charisma confident about how to do mission.
The Stewardship Advisor was Derek Lane. Father Derek Jones CA SSC was one of the finest priests I have ever known - he was always oozing with sheer common sense, he was a devoted parish priest and his sudden death deprived the CinW of a fine evangelist. He was a no-nonsense Yorkshireman who learned Welsh and worked in the one parish in the diocese of Monmouth that had regular services in Welsh. At one time he was packing 40+ people into his church for Benediction on a Saturday night and this included many youngsters. All this before helter-skelters and crazy golf and so many other dumbing down exercises which have failed. He simply taught the faith!
DeleteSD
PP. Derek and Brian certainly knew how to bring the gospel. Brian was stewardship lead in Monmouth and vicar of St Stephen's Church Newport. Derek was a really dedicated priest, with a foreright manner and dry humour.
DeleteThe colleague missioners were: Barry Ions and Sis Barbara Richards. They were a stoic team, all ordained in later years. One can wonder where are the CA evangelists in Wales, do we have any?
I am really very surprised. Given the usual attitudes of contributors to this blog, it seems odd that Mr Lane, Father Derek and Father Brian are held in such high esteem.
DeleteThank you for jogging my memory, and I agree entirely with your estimation of all of them. As I recall it, Derek Lane arrived in Wales first, in the early 1970s as provincial lay training advisor. I remember people going on the lay training weekends which he organized, and finding it a transformative experience. Most became very real assets to the parishes of which they were part.
DeleteMy memory of Barry Ions is surprisingly slight, given that, as I remember, he led the team of missioners in Monmouth and Llandaff. But I recall Barbara very clearly; the team came to a Newport parish in which I was living at the time.
And your post jogs my memory to remember the third member of that Church Army team, David Jones, whose very Welsh-sounding name belied the fact that he was very much a Londoner with an accent to match. He subsequently left the team to become a Church Army evangelist in the parish of New Tredegar, and I remember going, with a group of our parishioners, to his licensing on a glorious summer evening some time around 1978 or '79.
PP. We could certainly do with this former mission team right now. I don't see why it's odd to hold such talent in strong regards. All went on to ordination and esteemed in there respective parishes, the only one not ordained was Derek Lane, but that should not detract from his clear and forthright stewardship tything projects. Sis Barbara a well respected academic and counsellor these days.
DeleteThis dose of nostalgia brings a real painful reminded of how the Church has lost so much talent.
Terminal Decline was bound to happen when bishops, deans and other senior clergy gave up the Bible to rely on Twitter. We shouldn’t be surprised by Helter Skelters and Crazy Golf. Anglican clergy in Britain now inhabit an alternative planet.
ReplyDeleteThere are plenty of things that prove this.
For example, the Church in Wales offered £10 million for “mission”. As far as I know only £2 million has been spent. By the St Asaph diocese who have bought a defunct Dorothy Perkins/Burtons store as an alternative planet church.
In the Gospels — not much mentioned on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram but still worth a read — Jesus often mentions children and widows and orphans. “Widows and orphans” translates, in the modern world, to Single Mums and Fatherless children. Not many of those can afford to take six weeks off work during the summer holidays. But if you asked what Jesus would like done to help them I doubt He’d suggest fairground rides or putting.
Did no one anywhere in the C of E or the C in W think that perhaps church based Holiday Clubs might be a good idea. It would bring children into church and keep them amused. It might also teach them something about Christianity that could help them in later life.
Sadly, that is far too common sense a suggestion to appeal to the Moronachy.
Anonymous. Bangor Cathedral publish its opening hours? It would be blank. I wrote to the website last year bemoaning the fact that the cathedral did not have a daily Eucharist. The answer came back. But we do have a daily Eucharist on Wednesday and Friday. Say no more.
ReplyDelete