A reader has kindly spent some time putting the ACoC statistics found here into a spreadsheet and has come up with some interesting results. Since the ACoC stopped publishing membership numbers after 2001, the graphs end there.

The spreadsheet is here and below are some of the graphs generated.

Total membership and confirmed members; remember this is the number on the parish roles not the number attending each Sunday:

The number of active bishops; this number has increased slightly in spite of a decrease in membership, a sign that the ACoC is becoming a top-heavy organisation:

Members per bishop:

Number of active clergy including bishops:

Members per clergy:

Just when I had reached a nadir of despair at the plight of Anglicanism in Canada, I stumbled across this and was electrified by a frisson of excitement; the Canadian Anglican Church is alive and well:

Anglican tea and plant sale
Jean Comstock, right, identifies a couple of plants at the Anglican/Lutheran annual tea, bake sale and plant sale May 25 at the church hall. Audrey Egger, left, was manning the plant tables, and Georgie Anderson, centre, is trying to choose some plants. Plants for the sale came from local gardens.
Lynne Maynard reports that the annual Anglican/Lutheran tea, bake sale and plant sale was a huge success, with almost $1,000 raised.

Shirley Hawk won the cake raffle, which she donated for re-selling, and Nana Joumblat purchased it for promotion for Sweet Queen.

Ed Maynard’s cream puffs were in high demand.

Although the “Working Paper – Anglican Church of Canada Statistics” report is from 2010, I hadn’t seen it before. The numbers only extend to 2001 and the numbers are mostly for “membership” in the ACoC and so are far higher than those actually attending church. In 2001 the number of “identifiable givers” stood at just over 200,000; this number is probably closer to the average Sunday attendance at that time. The whole report is worth a look:

We begin our discussion by looking at the national membership of the Anglican Church of Canada after World War II. The membership of the Anglican Church (Figure 1) rose steadily in the immediate post-war period. Starting at just under 1 million members (983,779) in 1948, the earliest year after the war for which we have such figures, membership grew over the next decade and stood at 1,300,029 a decade later (1958). The rate of growth over this ten year period was very high, a remarkable 32% increase. Membership continued to grow consistently for several years after 1958, reaching 1,361,463 members in 1962. Membership then dropped slightly to 1,356,424 in 1963, but rebounded the next year in 1964 to reach a peak of 1,365,313. This was to be, though no one could have predicted this at the time, a record high, one that the Anglican Church would never come close to achieving again.

After reaching a peak in 1964, a significantly different trend emerges as membership moved into steady decline. The initial decline was notably steep. By 1968 Anglican membership had declined to 1,173,519 – a decline of almost 200,000 members in a three year period. In just three years, almost 15% of the church’s membership had vanished from its rolls. There was a small rebound in 1968, as there would be at various times in later years, but the downward trend after 1964 is notable. By 1978 the Anglican church membership had not only fallen below 1 million members, it had also fallen below its membership level of thirty years previously (1948). There was a brief increase in the late 1980s, but this did not reverse the overall trend. By 2001, the last year the church reported such figures, Anglican membership had fallen to 641,845. To put this in perspective – membership was less than half of what it had been at its peak. And, of course, the overall Canadian population had been increasing in this period, with the national population increasing by just over 60% from 1961 through to 2001, that is from 18,236,247 people in 1961 to 29,639,030 in 2001.

I couldn’t resist plugging the numbers from the graph above into a spreadsheet and extrapolating the decline to find the year when membership reaches zero:

Read it all here:

The fourth consultation among Canadian, American and African bishops took place in Cape Town South Africa from Thursday May 2^nd to Sunday May 5^th 2013. We met in the context of worship, prayer, Scripture reading and the breaking of bread.  Through the presentation of papers, continuing conversation, and growing relationships we engaged in dialogue both in sessions and over meals.

[….]

We recognized that we have inherited the ministry of reconciliation from our Lord Jesus Christ; that God’s mission is not a human achievement. It is something we are called to live into and to share. We observed that the engagement in the ministry of reconciliation is a costly process because it involves facing positive and negative truths about others and about ourselves with courage, honesty and humility.

What a lovely sentiment. Note the Canadian bishops in attendance:

The Rt. Rev’d Michael Bird — Diocese of Niagara, Canada
The Rt. Rev’d Jane Alexander — Diocese of Edmonton, Canada
The Rt. Rev’d John Chapman — Diocese of Ottawa Canada
The Rt. Rev’d Michael Ingham — Diocese of New Westminster, Canada
The Most Rev’d Colin Johnson — Diocese of Toronto & Metropolitan of Ontario
The Rt. Rev’d Michael Oulton — Diocese of Ontario, Canada
The Rt. Rev’d Mark MacDonald — National Indigenous Anglican Bishop, Canada

God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

The Anglican Church of Canada so loves the world that its hierarchy is meeting in an air-conditioned Ottawa convention centre to press the Canadian government to squeeze more taxes from its citizens to subsidise affordable housing. And to try and prevent “resource extraction” companies from drilling for Canadian oil: the same oil that the ACoC’s hierarchy burned on their way to Canada’s capital; come to think of it, perhaps they prefer the more inclusive Saudi oil.

It’s a whole other world.

From here:

More than 800 Anglicans, Lutherans, and partners will gather at the Ottawa Convention Centre July 3 to 7, 2013, for a historic joint national meeting.

Inspired by the theme “Together for the love of the world,” members of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada will gather for worship and decision-making on areas of shared work, including mission and development.

Several key events will highlight the churches’ commitment to God’s mission in the world. Anglicans and Lutherans will be invited to make statements on two priority social justice issues: affordable housing and responsible resource extraction. On July 6, Anglican and Lutheran youth from Ottawa are to lead people at the assembly to Parliament Hill where they will participate in an act of public witness and worship.