TJ and I took some time to go through a GCFA report that was supposed to shed light on the biggest churches in the UMC in 2020. Ideally, one could go through the list and track which ones had disaffiliated to get a sense of how many have actually disaffiliated from the UMC since then, indicating the overall attendance loss to disaffiliation. However, because of some things we explain in this segment, the form is probably actually not useful at all.

This segment is probably just for nerds. It underscores the importance, not just of collecting good data, but making sure local churches know how to report it. This will also be somewhat frustrating to listen to, as we are constantly making reference to websites and stats on the screen. If possible, you might want to watch it.

Link to GCFA form in question - https://www.gcfa.org/_files/ugd/5524b1_20f39c75fee649c69ec49751578b2b08.pdf

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plainspokenpod.substack.com