Lowest Common Denomination April 15, 2009
Posted by Dan R. Dick in Congregational Life, Religion in the U.S., The United Methodist Church.Tags: Church membership, Religious Trends, The United Methodist Church
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With the exception of a couple brief positive blips, membership and worship attendance have been in steady decline in The United Methodist Church since the Methodist/Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) merger in 1968. This isn’t news. It has been virtually impossible to read anything written about our denomination over the past 40 years that hasn’t noted this fact. However, for the first thirty years the majority of people who left the church were inactive, nominally active, or the predominantly disinterested. The trend of the late twentieth century was to lose members from the realms of the least invested. In the twenty-first century, a more troubling and potentially fatal trend is emerging.
A steadily growing segment of the dear-departed is not the less active fringe, but the faithful core. Long time, deeply committed congregational leaders are packing it in and staying home. This trend first appeared in the late twentieth century when retirees relocated to new communities, and instead of reestablishing relationship with a UMC, attached themselves to another mainline or independent congregation. Interviews with these folks showed that, in their minds, “a church is a church – if it does God’s work, it doesn’t matter what flavor it is,” in the words of one lifelong Methodist-turned-Presbyterian. Denominational loyalties weakened, and some key leaders were lost. The newest trend, however, is for disillusioned, disenfranchised, and disheartened lifelong members to not shift allegiances, but to leave the institutional church altogether.
