Friday 28 May 2010

Unitarian congregations membership



Warning! The numbers below may be very inaccurate! Very!


I needed to get that warning out of the way... I arrived at these membership numbers using the congregational quota contributions from the GA's 2009 Annual Report. I simply divided by £24 and rounded, as each chapel was meant to contribute £24 per member in 2009. Some chapels give more and some give less. Some chapels have  not cleaned out their membership list in a while. It happens... Life is messy.
Nonetheless, as the old management adage goes, "you can't manage what you can't measure." If we are trying to measure growth, we need to be able to measure it.
Admittedly, weekly attendance is a better, more reliable measure than membership, but you have to use what you've got.  So, here are the 2009 numbers!
If anyone would like to correct the numbers listed for their chapel, please feel free to post a comment.

Congregation
Members
Aberdare
23
Aberdeen
50
Ainsworth
17
Alltyblaca
3
Altrincham
50
Ashton-in-Makerfield
52
Atherton
59
Banbury
10
Bath
7
Bedfield
2
Belper
4
Billingshurst
7
Birmingham Edgbaston
48
Birmingham Hollywood
50
Blackpool
19
Bolton Bank Street
56
Bolton Chorley New Road
19
Bolton Egerton
29
Bolton Halliwell Road
15
Boston
9
Bournemouth
8
Bradford Russell Street
17
Bradford Unitarians
17
Bridgwater
5
Bridport
12
Brighton
38
Bristol Brunswick Square
14
Bristol Frenchay
19
Bury
81
Bury St Edmunds
22
Cambridge
49
Capel Ifan
0
Cardiff West Grove
18
Cefn Coed y Cymer
23
Cellan
2
Chatham
8
Chelmsford
10
Cheltenham
11
Chester
10
Chesterfield
4
Chorley
23
Ciliau Aeron
2
Cirencester
6
Coseley
7
Coventry
10
Cradley
24
Crewkerne
12
Cribyn
5
Croydon
49
Cullompton
6
Cwmsychbant
5
Cwrtnewydd
7
Dean Row
84
Denton
0
Derby
7
Ditchling
16
Doncaster
18
Douglas
6
Dover
5
Dudley
1
Dukinfield
50
Dundee
35
Eccles
64
Edinburgh
54
Enfield
16
Evesham
26
Felinfach
2
Framlingham
10
Glasgow
38
Gloucester
8
Godalming
34
Great Hucklow
19
Great Yarmouth
11
Hale Barns
29
Hastings
16
Hinckley
64
Hindley
12
Horsham
29
Horwich
6
Hull
27
Hyde
2
Hyde Flowery Field
8
Hyde Gee Cross
12
Ipswich
38
Kendal
47
Kidderminster
29
Knutsford
53
Lampeter
14
Leeds
30
Leicester
25
Lincoln
13
Liverpool Gateacre
19
Liverpool Sefton Park
28
Liverpool Toxteth
9
Llandysul
4
Llanwnnen
8
London Bethnal Green
0
London Brixton
0
London Golders Green
39
London Hampstead
163
London Islington/Newington Green
56
London Kensington
50
London Lewisham
13
London Stratford
5
Loughborough
2
Lytham St Annes
14
Macclesfield
42
Maidstone
7
Manchester Chorlton
10
Manchester Cross Street
26
Manchester Dob Lane
15
Manchester Gorton
14
Mansfield
48
Mossley
12
New Mill
6
Newcastle
22
Newcastle upon Tyne
21
Newport
7
Northampton
8
Norwich
34
Nottage
12
Nottingham
21
Oldbury
4
Oldham
10
Oxford
36
Padiham
50
Plymouth
22
Pontsian
5
Portsmouth
45
Prengwyn
6
Pudsey
12
Rawtenstall
8
Richmond
34
Rivington
19
Rochdale
54
Scarborough
13
Sevenoaks
26
Sheffield Fulwood
48
Sheffield Norfolk Street
56
Sheffield Stannington
24
Shrewsbury
25
Sidmouth
4
Southampton
16
Southend-on-Sea
3
Southport
10
Stalybridge
12
Stockport
8
Stockton-on-Tees
21
Stourbridge
7
Styal
24
Swansea
12
Talgarreg
8
Taunton
13
Tenterden
8
Torquay
9
Trebanos
19
Trowbridge
20
Urmston
46
Wakefield
17
Warrington
14
Warwick
18
Watford
11
Whitby
7
Whitefield
53
Wick
10
Wirral
19
Wolverhampton
2
Worthing
4
York
40


12 comments:

  1. Well, by the magic of Excel, I've been able to do a few calculations with those ESTIMATED figures...

    Out of 170 congregations, there are a total of 3658 registered members. This gives a mean average of 21.52 members per congregation.

    This is slightly higher than in the letter to "The Inquirer" discussed on Stephen Lingwood's blog a few months back.

    Discrepencies I can identify include:
    1. Islington/Newington Green has grown since the figures were compiled (right?).
    2. Denton definitely has members (Some of us are in contact with its lay leader).
    3. Stockport Unitarian Church closed down in July 2009. Incidentally, Stockport Metropolitan Borough is where I live and is now the only Greater Manchester borough without a Unitarian congregation.

    I understand there are a handful of local fellowships which are not part of the GA, due to their inability (or is it unwillingness?) to pay per-head-fees.

    While the figures are certainly not accurate, they work as a rough guide. There certainly should be more precise figures available, howver, and this has been appealed for many times. Sometimes, people don't know the membership figures for their own congregations.

    While attendance at some congregations may be higher than the membership number indicates, I expect that average main service attendance is lower than the membership total in many communities. Factors determining this will include
    a) membership lists not being "cleaned out" as stated above,
    b) the requirements for membership set by each congregation,
    c) the inclusion (or not) of children on the membership list,
    d) the number of frail or housebound members, or
    e) fluctuating attendance at services in some congregations (such as my own, due to its location outside a residential area).

    I do believe there are somewhat more than 3658 people involved in our movement in some way overall, due to the midweek activities many chapels run, which will include people who do not become regularly involved in the main act of worship, but still be part of the life of a congregation.

    The figures should still be a wake-up call for all Unitarians in the UK (the two GA-affiliated congregations in the Republic of Ireland aren't included), especially their leaders, and I would raise the following questions and make some suggestions.

    Is there a GA-recommended definition of a church member, or is it entirely in the hands of a local congregation? How honest are local congregations being about their own membeship figures, particularly when making contributions to the GA? Clear guidance is needed to ensure more accurate figures (and fair GA contributions) are submitted.

    With such a small average congregation size (though quite a wide range), how well is national leadership equipping our congregations to make the most of being small in the present and equip them to grow for the future? Are the GA and Districts filling the right skills gaps to support smaller congregations, particularly those who want to invest in the future? Essex Hall (and the districts) need to ensure resources and training are geared towards assisting small congregations, offering something different to many of the American Christian (and even UU) initiatives which treat a "small" congregation as having 100 people.

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  2. Great comment Tim!

    Yes - the NG/I membership is now up to 84. There's a lag between growth and reporting, apparently...

    Your last paragraph is especially to the point. How can we best invigorate the congregations that can survive?

    Andy

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  3. Ah! You know I've been wanting these figures for a long time. These kind of numbers should be public knowlege. Thanks for doing this Andy!

    Yes, the numbers do hide a great deal, but they do also reveal a great deal. We should be in no doubt that this is what our tiny denomination looks like.

    Our number is accurate. Though I don't expect it to go up any time soon, as there is probably a little bit of "clearing up" still to do done, and our age profile means that we will lose members through death in coming years. I'm more interested in average attendance at the moment. That number can go up considerably before our membership number will budge.

    I've taken to the practice of reporting average attendance and membership numbers at our AGM. Congregations and the GA should do the same.

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  4. More Excel magic [yes, two can play at this game Tim, my friend!] tells us that:

    the median congregation size is 15
    the mode of the congregational distribution is 8

    I never got much out of the mode [statisticians, please feel free to chime in and give us your best stdevs and such!] but the median is a good way to discount the effects of a few outlying points. So, although the mean is just over 20 people, the median, at 15, tells us what it really feels like in most congregations.

    84 congregations have fewer than 15 members
    46 congregations have 15-30 members
    25 congregations have 31-50 members
    14 congregations have more than 50 members

    How many of these congregations will survive?

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  5. The Bristol figures do not reflect attendance at Bright Lights; also many Sundays at Frenchay have more than 19 people present.

    It would be interesting to see which of the congregations are more Christocentric and which are more pluralist (as it is sometimes claimed that Christocentric congregations are growing); which have a minister and which do not (I can see a few on the list that I know to have a minister which also have a larger congregation).

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  6. Yewtree - these are meant to be based on membership, rather than attendance, of course.

    Yes, it would be interesting to compare growth rates over time with a variety of parameters.

    Presumably, one can get hold of previous annual reports and look at growth rates...

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  7. I *thought* there was a Unitarian church in Salisbury Wiltshire and, sure enough, I was right. I notice however that it meets in the United Reformed Church building. Is this why it does not figure in your list?

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  8. Good question Robin. I have no idea... You're right though. They appear to exist.

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  9. Perhaps you can look into that.

    I *may* pop over your side of the pond later this summer and check it out myself.

    WVC = beret

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  10. The current numbers for Birmingham Edgbaston are 54. We have only just begun tracking average attendance - we think it's around the 30 mark.

    My favourite statistic is that the majority of Unitarians belong to a congregation of more than 30 members. That suggests that the majority of Unitarians worship in services with 15 or more other people. Small communities, certainly, but communities nonetheless.

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  11. Hi Angela,

    That does put a nicer light on it, but another way to think about the future is to ask the likelihood that a new potential Unitarian will encounter a reasonably well-attended service on their first visit. If membership of at least 30 (average attendance of roughly half that) is the dividing point, then the odds are just under one in four...

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  12. To look at the chances that an enquirer will go to a reasonably well attended service, you need to look geographically I think.

    In London, for example, the chances are excellent in North London, and significantly less so in South London. In Bolton, your chances are 1 in 2 at best. On the other hand, in south Birmingham you're almost guaranteed to hit on a well attended service. Manchester is a centre of Unitarianism, but it has a lot of smaller congregations.

    People are likely to try out a congregation near where they live, so it's not possible to extrapolate nationally. There are after all, swathes of the country where there are no Unitarians at all.

    What would be really clever, would be a map with density of Unitarians @ services. Would be time consuming to do unfortunately.

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