Episcopal Churchwide Trends: Membership, Clergy, and Transitions

Are you wondering about declining church attendance, changes in pledging, or the challenges with finding clergy to fill the open calls in your communities? To plan for and adapt to this current and exciting moment in the church’s life, we must have a complete picture of the trends driving the changes we see across the church. Join Episcopal clergy and lay leaders from across Province VIII to dig into the 2022 Parochial Report data about trends across the Episcopal Church, including membership and giving numbers and the state of the clergy. We will engage the emerging nature of ministry models, clergy trends, and search and call contexts. We’ll also explore possible opportunities as we move forward into a future that looks very different from what many of us have known.

The Rev. Dr. Molly F. James from the General Convention Office, Dr. Matthew J. Price from the Research Department of the Church Pension Group, and The Rev. Meghan F. Froehlich from The Episcopal Church’s Office for Transition Ministry will offer current information and guide us in this discussion.

About our presenters:

The Rev. Molly F. James, Ph.D., Deputy Executive Officer of General Convention
Molly currently serves as the Deputy Executive Officer of General Convention for The Episcopal Church. She holds a PhD in Theology from the University of Exeter (UK), a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Tufts University. She grew up in Maine and was ordained as a priest in 2005. She has served on the Bishops’ Staff in Connecticut, as a parish priest, and a hospital chaplain, as well as an adjunct professor focusing on ethics and pastoral care. Her doctoral research focused on suffering and grief. Her work, With Joyful Acceptance, Maybe, was published in 2013 by Wipf and Stock. Molly previously served as co-chair of Young Clergy Women International (an ecumenical organization of clergy women under 40) and as a board member for the Society of Scholar Priests. She is currently co-chair of the Faith Communities Today research consortium and a board member of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. She has two children and loves cooking, reading, traveling, and spending time in the splendor of God’s creation.

Dr. Matthew J. Price, Senior Vice President, Research & Data, Church Pension Group
In addition to serving as the Recorder of Ordinations for The Episcopal Church, Matthew is responsible for collecting insights that help inform CPG’s decisions around major policy initiatives affecting benefits for clergy and lay employees of the Church. Prior to joining CPG in 2001, he was Associate Director, Duke Pastoral Leadership Project, Duke University Divinity School. Previously, he was a Research Associate with the Religion in Urban America Program at the University of Illinois, (UIC), Chicago. He has also held teaching positions at Duke, North Carolina State, and UIC. Matthew received a BA in sociology from the London School of Economics and a PhD in sociology from Princeton.

The Rev. Meghan F. Froehlich, Director, Office for Transition Ministry, The Episcopal Church
Meghan serves on the Presiding Bishop’s staff of The Episcopal Church as Director of the Office for Transition Ministry. She supports dioceses, bishops, transition ministers, clergy, search chairs, seminaries, and others in the work of search and call processes. She brings many years of experience in management, finance, technology, pastoral care, data analysis, and preaching to her ministry. Meghan has served as Canon to the Ordinary and parish priest in large and small, rural and urban parishes. She has been active in leadership in several dioceses in congregational development, ordination formation training, financial stewardship, and preaching enhancement, and has international experience in Honduras, Kenya, and the UK. Meghan is a priest, executive leadership coach, facilitator, hospice chaplain, photographer, musician, and writer. She lives in Northeast Ohio, where she enjoys the outdoors.

This event is sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia.