From The Living Church-Clearly, it hasn’t fared as well as many parts of the Anglican Communion. Does that mean it is “dying”? Or are parts of it dying? And how does the C of E compare with the rest of the Anglican Communion? Many parts are growing. But others are declining, and North American Anglicanism is generally shrinking faster than the C of E. Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion, 1980 to the Present (Routledge, 2016), a new book by an international team of researchers, sheds light on all these questions.
Questioning “growth” and “decline”
Talking about the “growth” or “decline” of any church body needs great care. Numerical growth is not the be-all and end-all. Growth, for the Christian, means growth in personal holiness and wholeness in Christ, just as much as it means growing in service of others as well as “bums on seats.” But numerical growth of congregations and growth in the number of congregations are a crucial part of Christian life. Scripture, core doctrines, and key figures in the Christian Church — from St. Francis to John Wesley, from St. Cuthbert to St. Irenaeus — urge us to grow churches.
More here-
http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2016/12/16/is-anglicanism-growing-or-dying-statistics-the-c-of-e-and-the-anglican-communion/
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