End of Year Report 2022

For the last couple of months, the staff have been doing a lot of counting to enter our end of year statistics for the conference’s end of year report that every church is asked to fill out. It’s fifty five questions that reflect who we are and how we are doing as a congregation. It is a bit of a headache and we never look forward to completing it but it does help us celebrate when things are going well. So for those of you who love spread sheets and numbers, this is speaking your love language. :)

Our children and youth departments both grew this last year. The children have increased from 81 to 89 active kids. The youth grew from 50 to 54 active youth with attendance on Wednesday nights averaging more than 30 youth. We could tell by looking around but when the counting was done, it was confirmed. Our attendance both in person and online have also both gone up. Our virtual audience went up an astounding 58%! (We only count folks as having attended online if they watch for twenty minutes or more.) Our membership numbers have also gone up with additions by confirmation, transfers from other UM churches and from other denomination for a total of 27. Our loss of members to death was the highest in years with 10 of our folks becoming Saints in 2022. We also lost 8 members who decided to leave Faith. But in a world where churches are struggling and coming out of a pandemic, I am encouraged by these numbers.

The number of opportunities for mission and ministry that we offered last year was 39. The number of people who served went up to 88% of the congregation with 50% of those serving in multiple ways. The dollar amount for benevolence to UM causes including our own church missions was $69,615. In addition we supported non-Methodist causes (Day Center, Food Bank, etc.) in the amount of $58,409. What an incredible impact we have had on the world this last year!

We offered adults more ways to be in a learning setting with 12 short term opportunities in addition to our year long classes. If we had any area to work on improving, it would be our Sunday school attendance numbers which were down 25%.

So those are the numbers. It was a good year and as we celebrate that I look forward to what 2023 brings as we vision for the future of the church that we love.

Peace be with you,