I was so glad to share information from our New England Annual Conference with you. I was especially glad to share the apology for sexual misconduct and the way it has been handled over the years. If you haven’t had a chance to see the video of our Bishop and Cabinet sharing the liturgy, you can find it on our Facebook page at this link. This apology came from the top as the Council of Bishops also shared it at our international General Conference early in May. I join those colleagues in sincerely apologizing for any sexual misconduct that has occurred in our church and for the way it was covered up or not responded to as fully as it should have been.

 

I’d like to share some information from one of my favorite reports from Annual Conference, that of our Statistician, Joy Mueller. You can also watch her report at this link just after the three hour mark which you can find by dragging the status bar to 3:01:00. Joy reported that we now have 532 churches in New England that include 61,207 professing members averaging 115 members in those churches. That represents a membership loss of 7%, larger than the 3-4% usual because of disaffiliations. Because our Conference did a good job around full inclusion, we had a much smaller loss than other conferences throughout the connection. In-person worship attendance increased 5% from 2022 to 2023 to a New England total of 14,538. The average number of people worshiping in each of our United Methodist churches is 27 (which we have beaten here in Oakdale as we are in the high 40s!!!) The ratio of worshipers to membership is 23%, that is three quarters of the members of most churches don’t attend worship each week. Only 23 of our churches have more than 75 in worship and only 12 have an average of more than 100 in worship throughout New England. The median pledge has increased and is now $44 a week by giving members. Churches together have spent $2.5 Million Dollars in Mission in 2023!! 9,873 participated in mission serving over half a million people in need through 2,043 mission projects!! That’s around 68% of those attending worship which means more than half of our worshiping members are out there working on these projects.