The State of the New Jersey District

     The world has changed quite a bit since 1982, when I received my first call to serve a dual parish in Northeast Nebraska.  If one was an ordained pastor, having graduated from a recognized theological seminary, there was a relatively high view of the pastoral office within the culture and community; being a golfer, I especially appreciated the free golf that the county extended to clergy (the county even closed the golf course on Mondays and only the local clergy were allowed to play – and there were four of us who played – Methodist, Baptist, Roman Catholic, Lutheran – the big four).

     Even back then, though, religious life in America was experiencing significant change, with some identifying 1968 as the watershed year of change; and I experienced that reality in my next congregation that was a church plant in Northwest Lincoln Nebraska (Go Big Red!).  During the two years of church planting, one-third of our members were raised Lutheran, one-third of the members were inactive Protestant, and one-third were not raised within the Christian faith.  Back then, through a generous grant from the Synodical fund-raising initiative called “Forward in Remembrance,” a very modest building was provided by the Nebraska District and I had the mandate to have the congregation be off of district subsidy within two years.  As I look back, those two years were the most fruitful years of my ministry; yet, they were costly, since I don’t remember that I was much of a husband to Carol and a father to our young children.

     One more observation:  the peak year for the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, in terms of its baptized and communicant membership, occurred in the early to mid-1970s.  As a Synod, the peak year for baptized membership took place in 1972 with 2,781,297 baptized members and the peak year for communicant membership took place in 1976 with 2,025,336 communicant members; fifty years later, there is an estimated 1,968,641 baptized members and 1,545,124 communicant members within the LCMS.  During that same fifty-year period, the US population had grown from 205,100,000 in 1970 to its present size of 331,002,000.

     In order to help us understand the State of the New Jersey District, and acquire perspective as to the ministry trends that have taken place among New Jersey District congregations since its inception as a LCMS district, here are the recorded data on its congregational size and financial giving for the years 1974, 1983, and 1991; along with the main findings from that data:  

+. 1974

     +. the average congregation had 540 baptized members, 358 communicant members, with an average worship attendance of 172

     +. 22% of the congregations worshipped less than 100 members on a Sunday, with the smallest congregation experiencing an average worship attendance of 46 and the largest congregation worshipped 506

     +. the average amount of funds available for “work at home – local congregation” was $43,453 (the 2020 dollar equivalent would be $226,393) and $8,478 for “work at large – district and synod” (the 2020 dollar equivalent would be $44,174)


+. 1983

     +. the average congregation had 511 baptized members, 368 communicant members, with an average worship attendance of 154

     +. 33% of the congregations worshipped less than 100 members on a Sunday, with the smallest congregation experiencing an average worship attendance of 40 and the largest congregation worshipped 505

     +. the average amount of funds available for “work at home – local congregation” was $84,158 (the 2020 dollar equivalent would be $217,129) and $9,232 for “work at large – district and synod” (the 2020 dollar equivalent would be $23,819)


1991

     +. the average congregation had 470 baptized members, 332 communicant members, with an average worship attendance of 146

     +. 40% of the congregations worshipped less than 100 members on a Sunday, with the smallest congregation experiencing an average worship attendance of 28 and the largest congregation worshipped 324

     +. the average amount of funds available for “work at home – local congregation” was $123,068 (the 2020 dollar equivalent would be $232,599) and $17,893 for “work at large – district and synod” (the 2020 dollar equivalent would be $33,818)

     We are not alone when it comes to experiencing these realities in congregational health and membership; for example, in 2018 the median average weekly worship attendance within the 6,000 LCMS congregations was seventy-one (that is, one-half of all LCMS congregations had seventy-one people or less in worship during any given week) compared to a median weekly worship attendance of one hundred in 2007.