The Diocese of Niagara is in decline

The Anglican Church of Canada is squeamishly shy about publicising how many people attend its churches. No complete statistics for membership and average Sunday attendance have been published since 2001, although the ACoC did claim a membership of 545,957 in 2007.

The Diocese of Niagara’s paper, however, has published some statistics for 2013 and 2014:

DoN NumbersYou can see that the average Sunday attendance fell 7.2 percent in one year. We cannot know, of course, whether this rate of decline will increase or decrease as the years pass but, if it remains the same, in 60 years there will be 91 people left in the diocese or, since there are 89 parishes, around one person per parish – presumably the priest.

On a less gloomy note, the number of green parishes increased by three, demonstrating, I suppose, that the diocese overestimated the drawing power of its Gaia god.

2 thoughts on “The Diocese of Niagara is in decline

  1. What should be disturbing is that the statistics show that numbers of teenage children, upon reaching the age where they are old enough to start being difficult, drop their participation in church programmes. There is a 50% decline between younger and older children. What that means is that pizza and a movie, or some pop values\ethics drivel are not really enough to keep young people.

    • While I fully agree with your statement that young people are turning away from the church, the reasons for this need careful consideration and I firmly believe that one of the main reasons is that the apostate leadership within the ACoC is largely responsible as they have turned their back on the authority of Scripture and seem content to worship “political correctness” – a deceitful term in itself. If the Church remained faithful to our Lord it would result in the membership being more committed and that would reflect on the younger generation.

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