Florida Episcopal Church welcomes 3,000th member
A Florida-based congregation of The Episcopal Church is defying the denomination’s general pattern of decline, having lately reached the milestone of three,000 members.
Church of the Redeemer of Sarasota introduced that it surpassed the three,000-member mark on Feb. 16, once they baptized infants Casey Jane Clegg and Ruby Mae Spears.
The 2 infants represented the three,000th and three,001st members of the congregation, with the parish celebrating the event with gold balloons of the 2 numbers.
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In line with a church press launch emailed to The Christian Put up on Tuesday, the 2 baptisms obtained a standing ovation as soon as accomplished.
“The hand of God is clearly at work at Redeemer, and we give because of God for this unimaginable milestone,” mentioned Fr. Charleston Wilson, rector of Church of the Redeemer, as quoted within the press launch. “Now our focus is on doubling down on making new Christians and making all Christians new.”
Final yr, in line with the congregation’s press launch, Redeemer had 150 folks turn into members; and this yr, 47 have turn into new members.
Concerning a proof for the expansion of his congregation, Wilson acknowledged, “Jesus lies on the heart of all we do at Redeemer, and which may be our ‘secret sauce,’ so to talk.”
“I believe Redeemer is rising as a result of people who find themselves related to this parish really feel a really deep, private and actual connection to the compassionate Christ — to the Jesus of the Bible,” he added.
Church of the Redeemer’s development contrasts sharply with the general Episcopal Church, which, like most different non secular teams, has seen appreciable decline in latest many years.
In 2010, The Episcopal Church’s membership dipped under 2 million. In line with numbers launched final November, as of 2023, the denomination had a membership of roughly 1.547 million folks.
Though the years-long decline in membership has continued, the newest report additionally confirmed that, for the second consecutive yr, worship attendance was on the rise, with 2023 seeing round 411,000 common attendance, whereas 2022 had roughly 373,000 and 2021 had roughly 312,000.
Final yr, the Rev. Sean Rowe was put in as the brand new presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church, succeeding the Rev. Michael Curry, the primary African American chief of the denomination.
Throughout his set up service, Rowe preached that church buildings and dioceses can not “go it alone,” however they “should acknowledge our mutual interdependence, our have to do ministry collectively, to share what we now have and to maintain each other.”
“We’re not a set of dioceses and establishments, a set of the methods of doing issues. We’re one church, one church in Jesus Christ,” Rowe acknowledged on the time. “This work, the work of proclaiming in phrase and deed that Jesus’ resurrection and life is the work to which God has referred to as The Episcopal Church, now and all the time, as one church, collectively.”
