Of course the story behind the census story is that all of that census increase is concentrated in a very few cities: Billings, Helena, Great Falls, and Missoula are about it. Billings and Helena are the only cities with more than one parish; St. Francis Great Falls was killed off by BRAC.

Montana is the 14th smallest diocese for ASA/parish, 8th if the foreign dioceses and Navaholand are excluded. This is hardly surprising, and I expect the same pattern holds for every organized denomination in the state. (Certainly it does for the Methodists, as Brother Van was, if anything, even more aggressive about starting churches than Bishop Tuttle was.) Having churches everywhere means having the majority of them in places where they aren’t viable by suburban standards, and having them in small towns and cities out west means that the population around them is declining.

Thanks, C. Wingate.  Yes, “Big Sky” country is indeed sparesly settled, as are most of the northern prairie states, including my home state of SD.  But regardless of how small the towns generally are, the fact remains that the diocesan ASA is down 20% in just a decade.  Not good at all.  It just means that Montana’s many small churches are even in deeper danger than most TEC congregations.

Hopefully, Statmann will chime in soon and provide us with more details about Plate and Pledge data and how many diocesan churches are teeny tiny, with an ASA of 20 or less.

But with a total diocesan ASA of less than 2,000, I imagine that even in Billings or Missoula there are RC parishes with an ASA bigger than that.

David Handy+

Well, of course: the vocations shortage in the RCC, coupled with the consolidation required to support a full spectrum of parochial schools, means that RC parishes are going to be bigger in places with the population to support them. But elsewhere, the situation for the Catholics is, if anything, worse. Missoula has multiple parishes along with G.F. and Billings; after that it’s one parish per city/town, and there are a LOT more towns with parishes, with perhaps half of them struggling as missions of marginally larger towns.

If you believe the statistics here, the Catholic population in the diocese of GF-Billings has dropped in absolute numbers even as the population of the area has increased. The numbers for the Diocese of Helena are worse, though in the past few years that has been a little bit of a rebound. The big winner? Well, looking at the Valpo maps, I’d say it was “irreligious”.

The diocese had a tough time during 2002 through 2008 with Members down 16.8 percent, ASA down 19.6 percent, and Plate & Pledge (adjusted for inflation) down 3.7 pecent. Using these data I ranked them at 60 for the 95 dioceses considered. And for Aging, there were 56 Infant Baptisms and 20 Burials in 2008. And for Money, only 6 of its 41 churches had Plate & Pledge of $150K or more in 2008. This means that each “rich” church had six “poor” churches to help. And for church size, 35 of the 41 churches in 2008 had ASA of 70 or less with 20 of the 35 with ASA of 20 or less. Not one of the 35 had Plate & Pledge of $150K or more. All of this presents a rather bleak view of the future.  Statmann

Oops! There were 120 Burials in 2008.  Statmann

Statmann-
You frequently refer to your ranking, but you seldom tell us what the ranking means.  On your scale of 1 to 95, which is the “healthy” rating, 1 or 95?

Looking through the parish charts shows two curious patterns. First, most churches that show much of a trend show a peak about 2001 and decline thereafter. I’m not clear on what this means, but there it is.

Second, chart-checking reveals that over a third of the loss for the whole diocese can be attributed to the implosion of St. Johns Butte, which went from a peak ASA of about 225 in 1998 to around 60 in 2008! P&P for the parish shows an even more precipitous decline. And of course everyone can guess what year that started in.

The loss of ASA in St John’s Butte reflects the fact that the majority of that orthodox parish’s congregation left TEC and became part of the Anglican diaspora under the ecclesiastical authority of the Province of Uganda and more recently part of the ACNA.  They left their property behind and now constitute one of the few thriving orthodox Anglican parishes in the Inter-Mountain West.  Additional losses can be attributed to the closure of many small town mission churches that were unable to maintain even a small overhead as once viable congregations aged and the orthodox voted with their feet in the face of TEC innovations.

Thanks to everyone for all the info, but especially to Statmann.

TJ,
I believe that in Statmann’s ranking system, #1 is good and #95 is bad, or perhaps, to be more precise, that the low numbers are less bad and the higher numbers are extremely bad (in terms of declining most).

David Handy+

You are correct, David. Like cross country, low score wins. Thank you all for your interest.  Statmann

For unrelated reasons, last year I happened to look at a variety of statistics for Carter County, in the southeastern corner of Montana. The entire county population was about 1400 as of the last census. Its only town had 350. As I recall, the significant churches were RC and Lutheran, with maybe some LDS and Evangelicals.

Of interest was that the average age (all, not just churchgoers) was in the 40s. I’ve seen that for some other remote (and not so remote) western areas, too. The old folks stick around, but there are no jobs for the young folk, so they move away. It didn’t matter if family sizes were large until lately; the young go.

If there is an population influx to replace the absent youth, it may fall into two categories: The first is immigrant labor, likely to be RC if anything, and willing to live a lifestyle that is unacceptable to the descendants of settlers. Carter County did not seem to have many of those. The second consists of “New West” yuppies who made money elsewhere and now want to live the ranching and hunting lifestyle, often on a commuter basis.

It was a couple of “New West” types who drew my attention to Carter County. They made their money in eastern jobs or through inheritance where values were higher. You can buy a lot of land in the remote West. The couple I had in mind are, I believe, nominal churchgoers, but are of the very leftist type (being significant participants in the Democratic Party, in a region that has traditionally been overwhelmingly conservative), and apparently they propound the kind of religion that believes Christ was simply not progressive enough.

Recently, someone in that county is trying to sell 5 to 20 acre parcels, subdivided from a ranch (most properties there tend to be measured in square miles). These parcels would be of interest to “New West” types, who are unlikely to have much connection with religion, or, if they do, it would be of the social justice kind imported from where they came. I note that social justice looks better when its progressive advocates are hundreds of miles away from places where the poor, ethnic recipients of social justice hang out. But the “New West” types nevertheless support low taxation, enhancement of private property values, guns (pickup trucks, dogs, etc.), and tough-on-crime policies. It’s just that they are not that into what you or I might call religion of any sort; “spirituality,” maybe.

Two recent blog posts which should be referred to as reference points are here:

http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/28520/

http://kendallharmon.net/t19/media/epis_data08_notes.pdf

http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/28521/

http://kendallharmon.net/t19/media/TEC_ASA_Graphs_97-08_All-Prov-All_Dio.pdf

A lot of people missed them which is my fault in part since I posted them on a Saturday.