The following chart shows the membership count reported to the UUA near the beginning of each year:
For each church, the probability1 (P) of obtaining these results from random fluctuations if there were no trend is shown in the following table:
| Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington | P <= 0.02
| Cedar Lane Unitarian Church
| P >= 0.20
| River Road Unitarian Church
| P <= 0.01
| Unitarian Universalist Congregation
of Fairfax
| P <= 0.01
| |
The following conclusions can be drawn with confidence:
Chuck Gaines, UU minister and former Director of UUA Department of Extension, states:
A congregation that experiences a ten to twenty percent loss in membership over a period of five years should take a serious look at numbers. Counting the house is a way of taking our temperature. The results cannot be explained away.2
A congregation that loses almost as many members as it gains over a period of two to five years should seriously assess the meaning of these numbers. Such congregations often have subtle and not-so-subtle barriers . . . Sometimes those in power don't want to let go.3
Notes:
| 1. | Probabilities were determined using the
Mann-Kendall Test for Trend, which can be found in: Bradley, James V., "Distribution-Free Statistical Tests", Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, 1968. 2.
|
Charles A. Gaines, in "Salted with Fire: UU Strategies
for Sharing Faith and Growing
Congregations", edited by Scott Alexander, minister at
River Road Unitarian Church in Bethesda, Skinner Books,
1999, p. 101.
| 3.
| Ibid, p. 102.
| |