From the diocesan paper:
Between the years of 2007-2017 Huron witnessed the disappearance of more than fifty congregations. Each of these was a mission light that has gone out in our Diocese.
[….]
Statistics that show that between the years 2007-2017 Huron’s membership declined by 15,771 baptized members, with 5,037 fewer worshippers on Sunday, seeing 10,846 fewer participants for Easter celebrations and witnessing the disappearance of 2,346 children who had previously been learning God’s story through Sunday ministries. Trends that document that 85% of congregations in Huron were marked by membership decline in that decade, while roughly 10% were holding steady.
The article goes on to note that some may find it consoling that the rest of the ACoC is also evaporating at a similar rate. There are few things as comforting as all gurgling down the toilet together.
Some in our Church find consolation in these changing times knowing that most Anglican dioceses in Canada are in the same boat together – that widespread membership trends of decline are being experienced across the country. Researchers Brian Clarke and Stuart MacDonald have calculated that the annual decline of national Anglican membership to be roughly 22,700 members per year!
The same edition of the paper invites us all, on October the 11th, to celebrate:
National Coming Out Day. Celebrate with your queer and trans* friends and parishioners. Honour their journeys; hear their stories; lift up the voices of queer and trans* people within your community.
The author goes on to explain that ney (that’s nem’s pronoun – or perhaps it’s the other way around. It gets confusing), over the years has:
… gone by many different terms for my sexuality – lesbian, pansexual, demisexual, gay, and now the all-encompassing “queer”.
That’s a lot to celebrate.
If that hasn’t convinced you to come back to church, this workshop, described in the same newspaper, will:
A total of four workshops on allyship and the place of queer and trans* identities within the church were offered online on August 22 and August 29 by the newly-formed Proud Anglicans of Huron.
I still don’t know what the asterisk affixed to “trans” means. Perhaps it’s another pronoun for those yet to come out with more arcane, hitherto undeclared, sexual inclinations.
If, for some inexplicable reason that doesn’t halt the diocesan slide into oblivion, this video is sure to do the trick.
After watching that, I am experiencing an irrepressible urge to move to Huron myself. Just so I can attend an Anglican church there.
