Chapter One — 2013 Statistics — Ethnicity, Gender, Membership

Each United Methodist congregation maintains records on membership, worship attendance, and a host of other statistics. This information is submitted on a yearly basis to the annual conference and then on to the General Council of Finance and Administration. The staff at GCFA diligently processes this data so that we have a snapshot of the state of the denomination. I am a firm believer that our statistical tables are more than dry numbers in neat columns. Behind each number is a story. The numbers do not provide answers, but they do lead to good questions. 

This post and those that follow will deal with the 2013 statistics of The United Methodist Church. I hope that they encourage meaningful conversation and raise intriguing questions. The information below is based on a composite of churches with at least five members (32,154 congregations). You may want to read this post from last year to see the similar statistics from 2012.

Ethnicity as a Percentage of the total number of United Methodist Members
African American: 6.11% (This represents a net increase of 2,571 people from 2012)
Asian American: 1.26%(This represents a net decrease of 619 people from 2012)
Hispanic American: 1.03% (This represents a net increase of 303 people from 2012)
Native American: .29% (This represents a net decrease of 266 people from 2012)
Euro American: 90.1% (This represents a net decrease of 72,183 people from 2012)
Pacific Islander: .19% (This represents a net increase of 241 people from 2012)
Multi Racial: .78% (This represents net increase of 7,099 people from 2012)
Not Reporting: .24% (This represents a net decrease of 30,492 people from 2012)

(Note: There were a total of 57,160 people reported as multi-racial, however, this includes 25,714 people from 59 congregations in which 100% of the congregation was reported as multi-racial. I am doubtful that those 59 congregations were defining multi-racial in the same way as the other 32,095 congregations.)

Gender as a percentage of the total number of United Methodists
Men: 42.51% (There were 30,488 fewer men reported in 2013 than in 2012)
Women: 57.49% (These were 42,227 fewer women reported in 2013 than in 2012)

Membership Related Statistics
Professing Members: 7,298,907
Baptized Members who are not professing members:  648,861
Constituents: 1,591,833
Average Worship Attendance: 2,900,627

Change in professing membership from 2012 to 2013: -72,829 or -.99%
Change in baptized (non-professing) membership from 2012 to 2013: -46,154 or -6.6%
Change in constituents from 2012 to 2013: 6,138 or .39% 
Change in worship attendance from 2012 to 2013: -55,775 or -1.89%

Number of people baptized : 91,650  (A decrease of 5.6% from 2012)
Number of people in confirmation classes: 64,061 (A decrease of 7.6% from 2012)
Number of professions of faith: 118,079 (A decrease of 5.2% from 2012)
Number of people received from other denominations: 46,920 (A decrease of 6.2% from 2012)
Number of people who transferred to another denomination: 25,329 (An increase of 1.9% from 2012)
Number of deaths: 96,903 (A decrease of .14% from 2012)
Number removed by charge conference: 88,420 (A decrease of 6.2%  from 2012)

Things I Wonder About
• In 2012 there was a slight increase in professions of faith, but in 2013 there was a fairly significant decrease. I wonder how that is related to the decrease in number of people baptized and the number in confirmation?
• I wonder why we increased in the number of constituents but decreased in almost everything else?