The Episcopal Church now claims to have 2.3 million baptized members, an average Sunday attendance of 680,000 in some 7,000 parishes. The average age of an Episcopalian is in the mid Sixties with the average congregation size at slightly less than 70.

The Dean of the flagship cathedral of St. Matthew’s, Dallas, the Very Rev. Kevin Martin, says The Episcopal Church is heading off a cliff into oblivion. He opines that the “20/20: A Clear Vision” set by GC2000 to double the church in the next decade is now an impossibility.

Writing in the October 3 issue of The Living Church Martin said, “I have come to the conclusion that the Episcopal Church is headed toward about 1 million members in 2020, an average Sunday attendance around 400,000 and around 6,000 mainly small congregations.

“The 20/20 initiative was, among all things, a concerted effort to bring revitalization and growth to a long declining mainline church. It failed and we are now faced with an institutional decline that, save a direct intervention and miracle by God, cannot be reversed. There is insufficient leadership, desire, or institutional will to change.

“The failure of the 20/20 initiative, combined with the subsequent controversy around human sexuality, has placed our community in a very precarious position,” he writes.

Ironically, St. Matthew’s is one of the few thriving inner city cathedrals left in The Episcopal Church. It is also in the relatively orthodox Diocese of Dallas that saw its flagship parish, Christ Church, Plano, defect to the Anglican Mission in the Americas.

By contrast, the Washington National Cathedral has had four sets of layoffs since 2008.

The Episcopal Church now claims to have 2.3 million baptized members, an ASA of 680,000 in some 7,000 parishes. The average age of an Episcopalian is in the mid Sixties with the average congregation size at slightly less than 70.

Most congregations do not want to grow despite repeated efforts by Episcopal Church leaders to jump-start the church. The 20/20 initiative was dead on arrival. Most aging congregations do not want change as they are comfortable with the familiar. The vast majority of churches have no interest in leaving TEC with most brushing off the culture wars raging in the denomination as none of their concern.

Homosexuality and Millennium Development Goals are of little interest to the vast majority of aging Episcopalians. As most Episcopal homosexuals congregate in big cities, thousands of smaller congregations never see a homosexual and wouldn’t know one if he or she bit them in the backside. MDG’s are virtually unknown and never discussed in most congregations, or if they are known at all they are associated with the United Nations. Most Episcopalians could not name two MD goals.

The vast majority of Episcopalians see their bishop once every three years. For the most part, he or she is irrelevant to the life of the average congregation.

Many older Episcopalians yearn for the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (when asked), but the prevailing attitude of the vast majority of Episcopalians is “This is what we now have, this is what we are comfortable with. We’re not going to rock the boat. Leave us alone.”

Most Episcopalians view their bishop as largely irrelevant to their day to day lives (even week to week). Some Episcopalians I have talked with cannot even name their bishop. A rector I spoke with recently in San Diego said his bishop lives barely a mile away and he never sees him. “He never calls, never invites me out for coffee. I see him once every three years.”

Clergy who sit on diocesan councils see more of their bishop. For the most part, the bishop is totally irrelevant to the average Episcopalian, except when there is a parish crisis, usually financial, when the bishop is forced to intervene. (Two such cases can be found in the Diocese of Los Angeles and the Diocese of Western Michigan).

If the bishop fears money might be withheld by a congregation with a stroppy Vestry or a sizeable Trust Fund, he will certainly intervene. Money is king in TEC, not doctrine.

Bishops tolerate doctrinal differences with an ambient attitude. So long as the creed is said (but not necessarily believed), the bishop will say and do nothing if a priest wavers over a literal belief in the resurrection. The Diocese of PA still has a Wiccan priest in its employ.

With little or no evangelistic zeal by the vast majority of Episcopalians, it is hard to know how the Episcopal Church can make it much beyond 2030. Those in their late 70’s or early 80’s will either be dead or dying.

Dean Martin says that the 20/20 initiative is dead. Logically, by 2030, the situation in TEC can only be much worse.

Individual parishes like St Matthew’s, which has a membership of 800 and an ASA of 450 with a plate and pledge of $740,000, is growing and healthy. His cathedral is the exception, not the rule. He is also orthodox and evangelical forcing his members to think outside the box.

The Diocese of Dallas, like the Dioceses of Central Florida, Albany and South Carolina are also committed to evangelism and The Great Commission. Such is not the case with the Dioceses of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Newark or Washington.

Whatever hope there is for Anglicanism in North America now resides with the newly formed Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) that claims some 900 parishes and 100,000 members. Archbishop Robert Duncan has a goal to double ACNA through its multiple Anglican branches in five years. With his commitment to evangelism and zeal to save souls, he and his church might just succeed.

In any event, for TEC to survive it needs a miracle. These are in desperately short supply these days especially if one thinks that pansexuality is a violation of the Moral Law and that God has not changed His mind about how human beings should behave. The curtain is slowly but surely coming down on a denomination that once proudly proclaimed it was spiritual home to eleven presidents who weekly darkened its doors. Those days, it would seem, are over.

David W. Virtue is a theologically trained journalist and a pioneer in Internet journalism. He has been a newspaper reporter and editor in New Zealand, Canada and The United States. He studied theology in London, Chicago and Vancouver, and has worked for a number of large non-profit organizations including World Vision International, The American Bible Society and American Leprosy Missions. David’s expert reporting, orthodox theological education and large network of contacts has made VirtueOnline the world leader in Anglican news. www.virtueonline.org