During last year’s retreat, one of the frequently heard comments was about the age of St. James’ members, and how we’re not getting any younger. That got the Visioning Team thinking – what is the makeup of ages at St. James’? One of the great things about our congregation is that we have representation from all ages, from new-born through those in their 90s, but is it true that the St. James’ membership is “ageing”?
We went back to our parish profile from 2009, which we wrote as part of our Rector search process that called Rev Lori, and found that at the time we reported “The average age at St. James is 59”. We then went to our database of church members that it used to compile the Parish Directory, and generate the list of Birthdays that appears in The Window every month, and from it extracted the graph below.
What was fascinating to us is that in the last 6 years, our average age has fallen to 55, whereas if our 2009 membership had remained static, we would have aged to 65! So, St. James’ does appear to be getting younger.
What we also spotted was that we don’t have this key piece of information for a quarter of our members. As part of the Visioning Team’s work to study “Who are St. James’ in 2016?” we’d like to get a better understanding of our demographics so that we can compare them with our wider community. In the coming weeks, we plan to provide the opportunity for you to help us complete our picture. Look out for more details in your email in-boxes, and on posters in the Parish Hall.
~Mike Scrutton, Visioning Team Chair