Friday, April 24, 2009

Retracting the "down by 74" figure

Robin and Chuck B. make some good points in the comments two posts down. I wish they'd made them in a nicer tone, but I won't let the points' basic reasonableness be obscured by their rude presentation.

To be clear, no I don't know exactly how many UUs we lost in the past year. After trying to find that information, I'm frankly not convinced that anyone does*. Using different numbers available from the UUA, I've calculated that we could have lost or gained a few hundred.

I still think we lost 74. And here's why I still think that.

-I don't think Morales would have written what he did if he didn't have excellent reason to think we'd lost some members.

-I think that if we'd lost, say, 1000 members and Morales knew it, he would put that in his letter because it would have made his argument much stronger and Morales has never shied away from talking about how we're in decline.

-I think that if we'd lost some huge number of members but we didn't know exactly how many, Morales would have said essentially that because it also would have made for a stronger argument. Since he focuses his argument not on the amount of the loss, but the fact that it was the first one in awhile, my guess is that Morales knows or strongly suspects that the amount isn't actually very big.

-I heard from a reliable source that this number was announced at the UUA board meeting. If someone who worked for Consumer Reports said that a Volvo was a safe car, I would be inclined to believe them without checking up so see if they were lying to me. More to the point, nobody here has questioned whether Morales himself knew what he was talking about because I think we all assume he's in a position to know how the UUA numbers came out. Similarly, I trusted the number because I heard it from someone who was in a position to know it. You don't have to believe me when I say that, but this list is about why *I* think that 74 is still the correct number and that's certainly a factor.

-I don't think that 74 churches closed because if that many churches closed in one year, somebody would have noticed and written about it and we would all be talking about it on blogs and in our congregations. 74 churches is an average of almost four churches per district. Did three or four churches close in your district? Didn't happen in mine. Also, Morales didn't mention church closings and had 74 churches closed he would have because it would have made his argument stronger.

All that having been said, I do not know to a degree of certainty that I'd make a big wager on that the "down by 74 members" figure is accurate. For the reasons mentioned above, my guess is that if it isn't accurate, it's very close, but you certainly shouldn't rely on it for anything significant. The person who said it to me said it as if it were common knowledge and I took it as such, but I shouldn't have been so quick to do so. I'm certainly not accepting Chuck's invitation to follow the rules of courtroom evidence any time I'm going to write on my blog, but if I had the post to write over again, I would do it differently as I know now that the "74" figure isn't as clear-cut as I took it to be.

That having been said, even without the "down by 74 members" figure, it's pretty easy to compare the number Morales' church says they had last year to the number they say they have this year and I doubt they've changed their way of counting, so I'd say my central point still stands.

From where I'm sitting, Hallman has mentioned growth as an important thing, but has focused on her experience as a reason to vote for her, with a lot of her supporters mentioning that she would be a steady hand on the tiller. I read her sermons and see a person of vision who gets that we need to grow, but also understands why.

Morales' entire campaign has focused around growth for the sake of growth and how his church is fast-growing under his leadership and his church leads seminars on growth and he's the man who will grow the denomination.

My church is not being run by a man promising to grow the denomination and we still grew last year. So yeah, Morales' church losing members makes the central issue of his campaign ring a little hollow, whether the UUA overall lost 75 or 7,500**.

CC


*For one reason why this is the case, my impression is that churches don't have uniform membership standards. Bob, our aforementioned guy who puts money in the plate but who doesn't pledge, will be counted as a member in some churches and not in others. Indeed, I've attended a church where it would come down to whether he used cash or wrote a check when he put the money in.

And my guess is that, say, a mom who puts her kids in RE but doesn't join herself or the occasionally-attending spouse of a member or someone who joined mid-year would be counted differently in different churches and I know different churches let YRUUs join at different ages.

**Yes, if the UUA lost thousands of members, Morales losing comparatively few members would certainly look better than it does if we assume that the UUA overall didn't lose very many. But he's still not running as the candidate that will lose relatively few members. He's running as the guy who will help us grow.

8 comments:

LinguistFriend said...

The issue of what is being counted
here is problematic. Members die, but members are not born into any version of UUism that I know, so they come from other sources. Such
numbers refer to a dynamic equilibrium with various sources of accretion and drains, many of which I think (after years of membership work) would be identifiable and capable of quantitative estimation. My impression is that the appropriate models here are developed in various areas such as economics and sociology. I don't know whether such population modelling is going on in religious circles, to estimate quantitatively what is possible in particular areas, socio-economic groups, etc. I would like to think that the congregational consultants and institutes on congregational policies lean on such models, but I was distracted from following such things up a few years ago. Probably someone can point them out to me.
From another point of view, I have had the experience in membership work that an incapable pastor or board president would refer (blame for) issues of membership retention to local membership committees. Retention is the result of an overall effective church program, and small groups such as membership committees can have a limited effect, although they can point out and recommend such factors as the importance of integrating new friends and members into the congregation in various senses.

Jess said...

What do you mean, members are not born into UUism? My children, both dedicated in a UU church, would like to beg to differ. . .

While children do not officially sign membership books until they are old enough to do so, usually 16 or 18 depending on your congregation's bylaws, they are still members of the faith community -- particularly if they have been formally dedicated, which usually includes the congregation agreeing to support their religious upbringing.

And religious education enrollment numbers are tracked as part of church membership if you wanna get technical about it.

LinguistFriend said...

Jess, I left out a clause to the effect that religion is to a considerable extent hereditary, as a space-saver. That omission was a strategic mistake, apparently. Probably another mistake can be when parents (thinking of myself)
do not introduce children into RE
and a religious community early in life, because of all that it can give by way of a supplement to home life. But in the back of my head was the controversy about infant baptism versus baptism of the adult believer. Perhaps it is
not a good parallel.

Robin Edgar said...

The down by 74 figure may well be right but, as I said earlier, if so it refers to whole UUA congregations not individual U*Us. As it now stands, more than 40 UUA congregations have officially gone AWOL according to publicly available UUA statistics.

Chalicechick said...

If we've lost 40 congregations and only lost 75 people, then my guess is that our remaining congregations are very healthy on the whole. Even if those 40 congregations only had 5 people each, then that means 200 people left.

If the UUA only lost 75, that suggests the other congregations had a net gain of 125.

CC

Robin Edgar said...

:If we've lost 40 congregations and only lost 75 people,

That's a big *if* CC. Why are you stubbornly sticking to "75 people" when you just officially retracted the "down by 74 figure"? You are being considerably less than logical here. I could have misheard her, and Rev. Laurel Hallman could have misspoken during the telephone presidential forum, but I am reasonably sure I heard her speak about 74 whole congregations gone AWOL. This figure is about 30 congregations higher than the current official UUA "loss" of over 40 congregations so I don't know quite what is going on but I have been consistently talking about "lost" congregations, not individual U*Us. That figure would likely be considerably higher than 75 members if the UUA really did lose 40 or more congregations.

:then my guess is that our remaining congregations are very healthy on the whole.

ROTFLMU*UO! Your "guess" or your wishful thinking CC? Why do you assume that the remaining U*U congregations "are very healthy on the whole"? There is plenty of evidence suggesting that this is not the case.

:Even if those 40 congregations only had 5 people each, then that means 200 people left.

And if they had 25 people? What if a few of them had a few hundred people CC? What if, for whatever reason, one or more large U*U churches decided to go AWOL?

:If the UUA only lost 75, that suggests the other congregations had a net gain of 125.

You lost me here CC. I am sure that whatever "loss" the UUA is talking about, be it congregations or individual members is a net loss.

Chalicechick said...

(((hat's a big *if* CC. Why are you stubbornly sticking to "75 people" when you just officially retracted the "down by 74 figure"? You are being considerably less than logical here.)))

Because I had logically supported my reasons for believing the 74 number was either correct or very close to correct. And I still believed that and said so. I just said in my post that you should take it as my belief and not a fact.

Also, at the time I wrote that response I had the letter that went out to the UUA board saying it was 74 and was waiting for permission to print it on the blog. And if the UUA were lying to its own board to hide a large drop in membership, my guess is they wouldn't say there was a small drop in membership, they would say there was a small gain.

(((That figure would likely be considerably higher than 75 members if the UUA really did lose 40 or more congregations. )))

But it wasn't higher than 75 members as far as the overall UUA numbers were concerned. Even if we go with the estimate that excludes the CLF, if 40 congregations closed and the UUA lost only 140 people, then either:

1. Those 40 congregations averaged about three people per congregation.

or

2. There was lots of growth in other churches that made up the difference.

((((Your "guess" or your wishful thinking CC? Why do you assume that the remaining U*U congregations "are very healthy on the whole"?)))\

Because if 40 congregations closed then the other congregations in the denomination must have gained quite a lot of people for the UUA's net loss to have been only 74 people.

And aren't your guesses about the UUA suffering huge losses wishful thinking on your part?

(((And if they had 25 people? What if a few of them had a few hundred people CC? What if, for whatever reason, one or more large U*U churches decided to go AWOL?)))

Then (a) we would have heard about it and (b) the loss would be reflected in the membership numbers and (c) Peter Morales would be shouting it from the rooftops.

((((You lost me here CC. I am sure that whatever "loss" the UUA is talking about, be it congregations or individual members is a net loss.)))

Again, if 40 churches closed, unless they were two-person churches or three-person-churches, then other churches must have gained members to make up the difference.

CC

Robin Edgar said...

::((((You lost me here CC. I am sure that whatever "loss" the UUA is talking about, be it congregations or individual members is a net loss.)))

:Again, if 40 churches closed, unless they were two-person churches or three-person-churches, then other churches must have gained members to make up the difference.

No kidding CC. I think that's what is known as a no-brainer. . .

For the record it seems that as many as 50 whole UUA congregations may have gone AWOL if I am to believe the following content of the Florida UUA Trustee's report of the April 2009 UUA Board Meeting -

"Paul (Rickter) reported that 50 congregations failed to certify for GA 2009."