Current Reality

Current Reality

This section is meant to provide the following types of resources: descriptions of our current reality (as congregations, as a denomination, or of our secular culture), tools for discerning the current reality of your congregation, book reviews on these topics, as well as a place to share your experiences. This area is broadly known as "Congregational Studies".

Membership Decline in the Presbyterian Church in Canada This is the first report of the study group which was presented to the General Assembly in 2000. The written report, as well as a Microsoft Powerpoint presentation of it are available here.
Patterns of Religious Attendance. This is an article from Statistic Canada's Winter 2000 volume of their journal Canadian Social Trends. It looks at the decline in worship attendance in Canada from 1988 to 1998. It looks specifically at trends relative to demographics, location, marital and family status, and so on. An excellent summary of the observations but sadly very short on analysis as to why this decline is happening. This is an important read for anyone interested in the future of the Church in Canada. The article is in a PDF format requiring an Adobe Acrobat reader. If clicking on the link does not bring this file up for you, try this: [1] right click on the link, [2] left click on "Save target as", [3] give the file a filename and save into the directory of your choice on your computer, [4] start Acrobat and open the file.
2000 PCC Demographic Study. This is the second study of the Study Group to Research Denominational Membership Decline. While the first study (at the top of this page) looked at the change in membership in the past 20 years, this one considers the makeup of our membership today and what we may look like 20 years from now. This report will be presented to the General Assembly in June of 2001. This is a Powerpoint presentation.
Restless Gods: The Renaissance of Religion in Canada, by Dr. Reginald Bibby. Here is a review of Bibby's 2002 book. The review is written by Rev. Dr. Stuart Macdonald, Associate Professor of Church and Society at Knox College, Toronto.
2001 Canadian Census: Religion in Canada. Find here the general report from Statistics Canada on the shifting religious scene in Canada. A more statistical version is here.
TimeLine: Forthcoming. This is a simple tool to analyse a congregation's current reality through the lens of its history.