The likeliest explanation is simply a change in reporting. WELS reports before 2020 are not publicly available, and reporting format changed in 2020 and 2021. I wager if you compare congregational-level data in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, you'll find some kind of major change in the implied underlying data-generating process: maybe before 2020 a bunch of churches had imputed values or were straight-lining, or maybe a bunch of congregations didn't report in 2020, or maybe the reporting forms changed, etc, etc.
That is possible, but the author only mentions a change in data collection starting in 2015, when WELS began collecting demographic data about age in years evenly divisible by five. I cannot find any footnotes or reporting showing a reporting shift that begins in 2020.
Note that they don’t offer excel sheets for 2020, and don’t offer any detailed data for 2019– that’s highly suggestive they changed something in the process
A statistic within the statistics is the "four years of rising attendance and record adult confirmations" (4100). One of the thematics in the WELS/ELS/LCMS dialogs has been the statement that WELS has a greater percentage of "church growth" and contemporary music practices than ever before. I don't have their statistical annual, but I would guess that much of the attendance and adult confirmation growth comes from those congregations (large/growing). Can that be verified one way or the other? WELS isn't burdened with oppositional diatribes - missional vs. liturgical viz. - as is the LCMS. So if and as those congregations are less pressed about on all sides and allowed to do what they do, could it be that the less liturgical movement within WELS is productive to the conservative Lutheran theological cause?
Anecdotally, the evidence is that rising attendance and adult confirmations are correlated with the wave of youngsters searching for confessional / conservative denominations / congregations. They are eschewing CoWo and are very done with the woke race and gender wars. So, there is quite strong evidence for gains for Latin Mass Catholics, EO churches, and confessional Anglican and Lutheran churches. This can be seen in some hard data from the Front Range where the CoWo congregations are really struggling.
Pastor Hein also noted the decline in weddings in our congregations. This, along with the admission that calculation of births includes baptism of non-member children, makes me wonder how much the data is and will continue to be affected by pastoral discretion in performing weddings and baptism of non-members as they come around for these services. I hear stories of more reservation here.
By this I mean, I wonder if numbers have been inflated in the past, and may begin to change to more accurately reflect membership characteristics.
Thanks, Leah. Past inflation is possible and probably likely. If that is the case, I'm surprised an adjustment was not made to bring prior "uncertain" years into line with the more reliable recent data.
I do have some additional raw data incoming that may help to explain it.
I admit I’m guessing based on anecdote, and I guess I wouldn’t expect it to be acknowledged at a syndodical level. Looking forward to further analysis!
I can attest in my own congregation that Covid served as an impetus to actually clean up membership rolls. There were more than a dozen "on the books" members who had moved or started attending other churches (in some cases years ago) that were finally followed up on and stopped reporting. It may have been close to a quarter of on-paper membership. Anecdotal, but I imagine similar things were happening in other congregations. Iirc, our pastor had a number of pastor friends that were doing the same.
I have access to the WELS data by congregation from the 1990s through 2024. The change in 2020 was a shift from reporting child baptisms to reporting births. Child baptisms fell 37% from 2000-2019. In 2020, the Synod separated out the 1,060 children of adult confirmations/professions in another category. There's still ~750 missing child baptisms not accounted for by the change in methodology.
What's interesting is the 37% drop in WELS youth confirmations between 2000-2020. No methodology change in those youth confirmation numbers and it's dropped another 6% since 2020.
Thank you, David. That explains a lot of it. I'm very surprised that they did not make a retro extrapolation to normalize the data. At looks as though it ends up running close to the Wisconsin statewide average in most years. The main birth rate charts in the stats are very misleading as presented.
The majority of students attending WELS schools are not the children of WELS members. As you'd expect this means school enrollment and youth confirmations have been moving in opposite directions.
Thanks for that! I read in Pr Hein’s article that there is decreasing enrollment. Many of the WI schools utilize school choice, so it may not be as marked there.
But I notice that when confirmation is tied to an academic class, children of non-members are included in confirmation quite easily, and sadly often lost quite easily (perhaps part of our back-door losses referenced).
I'm not sure "fertility implosion" is an accurate statement. Note this snippet from Pr. Hein's article in Forward in Christ. “Young WELS couples don’t have children anymore.” Actually, when we compare annual marriages to births, the data demonstrates WELS couples have about the same number of children today as a decade ago. WELS simply has substantially fewer young adult members. The real challenge isn’t a crashing fertility rate but young-member retention. Backdoor losses, particularly among 25- to 34-year-olds, are the largest strategic issue in WELS."
That lines up exactly with the experience in our congregation. About 75% of our congregation's children are children of adult confirmands. It's not that cradle-WELS people aren't having kids, but they are outnumbered by adult confirmands in the childbearing demo.
This amounts to 6 of our 7 baptisms this year being to couples not married in the WELS. I imagine it would be difficult to collect the data, but I really wonder if baptisms becoming increasingly weighted to children of adult confirmands is a trend synod-wide.
The fertility decline is not a short term problem, but one that has been plaguing the church for a hundred years. Yes, there are losses of young adults. I expect there always has been. But if each generation begets fewer children, there will be fewer young adults in succeeding generations. One cannot reap what has not been sown.
The likeliest explanation is simply a change in reporting. WELS reports before 2020 are not publicly available, and reporting format changed in 2020 and 2021. I wager if you compare congregational-level data in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, you'll find some kind of major change in the implied underlying data-generating process: maybe before 2020 a bunch of churches had imputed values or were straight-lining, or maybe a bunch of congregations didn't report in 2020, or maybe the reporting forms changed, etc, etc.
That is possible, but the author only mentions a change in data collection starting in 2015, when WELS began collecting demographic data about age in years evenly divisible by five. I cannot find any footnotes or reporting showing a reporting shift that begins in 2020.
Note that they don’t offer excel sheets for 2020, and don’t offer any detailed data for 2019– that’s highly suggestive they changed something in the process
A statistic within the statistics is the "four years of rising attendance and record adult confirmations" (4100). One of the thematics in the WELS/ELS/LCMS dialogs has been the statement that WELS has a greater percentage of "church growth" and contemporary music practices than ever before. I don't have their statistical annual, but I would guess that much of the attendance and adult confirmation growth comes from those congregations (large/growing). Can that be verified one way or the other? WELS isn't burdened with oppositional diatribes - missional vs. liturgical viz. - as is the LCMS. So if and as those congregations are less pressed about on all sides and allowed to do what they do, could it be that the less liturgical movement within WELS is productive to the conservative Lutheran theological cause?
Anecdotally, the evidence is that rising attendance and adult confirmations are correlated with the wave of youngsters searching for confessional / conservative denominations / congregations. They are eschewing CoWo and are very done with the woke race and gender wars. So, there is quite strong evidence for gains for Latin Mass Catholics, EO churches, and confessional Anglican and Lutheran churches. This can be seen in some hard data from the Front Range where the CoWo congregations are really struggling.
The 2019 drop is odd.
Pastor Hein also noted the decline in weddings in our congregations. This, along with the admission that calculation of births includes baptism of non-member children, makes me wonder how much the data is and will continue to be affected by pastoral discretion in performing weddings and baptism of non-members as they come around for these services. I hear stories of more reservation here.
By this I mean, I wonder if numbers have been inflated in the past, and may begin to change to more accurately reflect membership characteristics.
(I also noted this article by Pastor Hein.)
https://forwardinchrist.net/year-of-challenges-and-grace/
Thanks, Leah. Past inflation is possible and probably likely. If that is the case, I'm surprised an adjustment was not made to bring prior "uncertain" years into line with the more reliable recent data.
I do have some additional raw data incoming that may help to explain it.
I admit I’m guessing based on anecdote, and I guess I wouldn’t expect it to be acknowledged at a syndodical level. Looking forward to further analysis!
I can attest in my own congregation that Covid served as an impetus to actually clean up membership rolls. There were more than a dozen "on the books" members who had moved or started attending other churches (in some cases years ago) that were finally followed up on and stopped reporting. It may have been close to a quarter of on-paper membership. Anecdotal, but I imagine similar things were happening in other congregations. Iirc, our pastor had a number of pastor friends that were doing the same.
I have access to the WELS data by congregation from the 1990s through 2024. The change in 2020 was a shift from reporting child baptisms to reporting births. Child baptisms fell 37% from 2000-2019. In 2020, the Synod separated out the 1,060 children of adult confirmations/professions in another category. There's still ~750 missing child baptisms not accounted for by the change in methodology.
What's interesting is the 37% drop in WELS youth confirmations between 2000-2020. No methodology change in those youth confirmation numbers and it's dropped another 6% since 2020.
Thank you, David. That explains a lot of it. I'm very surprised that they did not make a retro extrapolation to normalize the data. At looks as though it ends up running close to the Wisconsin statewide average in most years. The main birth rate charts in the stats are very misleading as presented.
Does the 37% drop in confirmation align similarly with a drop in parochial school enrollment?
The majority of students attending WELS schools are not the children of WELS members. As you'd expect this means school enrollment and youth confirmations have been moving in opposite directions.
Thanks for that! I read in Pr Hein’s article that there is decreasing enrollment. Many of the WI schools utilize school choice, so it may not be as marked there.
But I notice that when confirmation is tied to an academic class, children of non-members are included in confirmation quite easily, and sadly often lost quite easily (perhaps part of our back-door losses referenced).
Thanks for your insight!
I'm not sure "fertility implosion" is an accurate statement. Note this snippet from Pr. Hein's article in Forward in Christ. “Young WELS couples don’t have children anymore.” Actually, when we compare annual marriages to births, the data demonstrates WELS couples have about the same number of children today as a decade ago. WELS simply has substantially fewer young adult members. The real challenge isn’t a crashing fertility rate but young-member retention. Backdoor losses, particularly among 25- to 34-year-olds, are the largest strategic issue in WELS."
That lines up exactly with the experience in our congregation. About 75% of our congregation's children are children of adult confirmands. It's not that cradle-WELS people aren't having kids, but they are outnumbered by adult confirmands in the childbearing demo.
This amounts to 6 of our 7 baptisms this year being to couples not married in the WELS. I imagine it would be difficult to collect the data, but I really wonder if baptisms becoming increasingly weighted to children of adult confirmands is a trend synod-wide.
The fertility decline is not a short term problem, but one that has been plaguing the church for a hundred years. Yes, there are losses of young adults. I expect there always has been. But if each generation begets fewer children, there will be fewer young adults in succeeding generations. One cannot reap what has not been sown.