Church AGM last night went very smoothly. It is not the same without a half hour controversy over the position of the bishop's chair, but we somehow we managed to get by without this. Yesterday was spent doing the annual church statistics, something which I enjoy doing more than I would normally let on. I was trained to be a statistician once. I like manipulating all the figures and looking for trends. This year is harder than most because our pattern of Eucharists has changed. More lay-led services mean fewer communions and that has always been the primary count in the past. Fewer communions no longer indicates declining attendance. In fact, attendance has remained much the same as last year, against a pattern of church decline in Scotland generally and in the local area. I also got interested in the number of communions per Eucharist, which is now rising once again, and stands at its highest since the early 1970s. This is a pleasing figure for me, indicating that I am having a more effective ministry each year. I also looked at the number of communions per communicant member. This comes out at about 21, indicating that communicant members come, on average, less than once a fortnight, which is considerably less than most of them think they come.
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