Meeting for Sufferings: Membership data
‘We need to pay attention to when people stop attending… Lots of people drift away, particularly young adults.’
BYM’s recording clerk, Paul Parker, tgave a graphical presentation of some statistics on membership (data on attenders was not included, but showed similar patterns, he said). Presenting a graph with figures dating back to 1860, he noted that although the Society has seen a decline in members since its peak in around 1955, current membership of c12,000 was not vastly different to that of 1860 (c13,500). The loss of members in 2019 amounted to less than one per Meeting, he said, so a reversal would require the addition of just one. This ‘doesn’t feel unachievable’, he said.
The figures for children’s membership had dropped significantly however, he noted, wondering whether ‘Friends have forgotten that children can have the maturity to be members’.
Another chart showed that the Society now has an extremely low number of very large Meetings, and Paul compared this to other churches, which have seen growth in attendance at cathedrals and ‘megachurches’. Those allowed people to ‘dip in without commitment’ he noted, whereas, for new Quaker members, nominations committees were immediately ‘outside your door’. A ‘staggering’ number of Friends had to fill roles, he said.
It was important to look at local detail as well as overall figures. ‘Large Meetings seem to be worse at growing,’ he said, while some smaller ones, often newer, were growing the fastest. Other smaller ones might be better closed rather than continuing in a limbo state – that wasn’t rewarding for those attending, and quality of worship mattered more than quantity.
One representative wondered whether there was an optimal Meeting size, while another noted that it was a natural phenomenon to see small things grow and large things shrink. But the median size of a Meeting was getting smaller, Paul said. ‘We need to pay attention to when people stop attending… Lots of people drift away, particularly young adults.’
The morning ended with reports from other European Meetings, and a timely reminder from South Wales Area Meeting about supporting Woodbrooke.
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