Episcopal Church Average Sunday Attendance Stats for Last 10 Years: Gay agenda had a negative impact here in SD

First, let me commend the Office of Congregational Development for keeping and compiling honest stats. Not sure how much longer this will continue - for example, The Episcopal Church has been replacing its journalists with public relations people. So much is now geared to "spin" and deception and this is likely to get worse after the upcoming General Convention.

But, while we have 'em, here is the link to the stats going back to 1997, both by province and diocese (pdf file).

In South Dakota, Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) fell

• - 10% over the ten years (average decline of 1% per year)
• - 6 % since 2003 (in 2003, TEC consecrated an active homosexual as a bishop in New Hampshire. In South Dakota, ASA fell from 2,839 to 2,677 that year alone, with another decline down to 2,583 the next year)
• - 1% 2006 - 07.

At the bottom of each Province (regional) bloc, you will find statistical summaries. It is shocking to look at the ASA 2002, and then track what happened thru 2004 or '05. The promise of the Gay activist church leaders was that moving ahead with their agenda would fling open to doors of our churches and fill them with secular folks looking for Bible-free Christianity.

So, the Gay bishop got his title and perks, and now flies all over the world on the church's dime sharing his feelings about being him. And those secular people are still out there being what they were, while the Bible-free church dies.

By the way, prior to our 1979 Prayer Book, Episcopalians gathered with this prayer on the Second Sunday in Advent (yesterday):

BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.