I have updated last year's charts with the latest 2008 calendar year data from the 2009 United Church Year Book.
The following are all Adobe PDF documents. To open and read them, you will need the free Adobe READER which you can download from www.adobe.com.
The trend for the last 10 years (1999-2008) is forecast to the year 2025 using Microsoft Excel's TREND function.
This set of charts compares Canadian births, marriages, deaths and population with United Church baptisms, weddings, funerals, and membership. With the exception of a temporary increase in the 1980's when the Baby Boom generation were getting married and having children , the charts show a steady decline of Canadians participating in the United Church since the mid-1960's.
Reports from other churches - and other secular, volunteer organizations - indicate that this trend in wide spread throughout North America - even for evangelical churches. Yes, there are individual congregations that are exceptions to this trend, but overall, all congregations are feeling the impact of the broad cultural change to being "spiritual but not religious."
This set of charts shows selected United Church of Canada people-related data. (Financial data will be added at a later date.)
This set of charts shows the same United Church data for an "average" United Church congregation. In summary, on average, in 2025 a United Church of Canada congregation will have:
- 107 Members,
- 14 Average Weekly Attendance,
- 52 Financially Supporting Households
- 0 New Members Received by Profession of Faith by the year 2020,
- 0 Participants in Sunday School by the year 2018,
- 0 Baptisms (All Ages) by the year 2020,
- 0 Weddings by the year 2019
- 4 Funerals
