South Central Jurisdiction Large United Methodist Churches Led by Clergywomen. Membership, Worship Attendance, Large Churches, UMC Clergy Women

Conferences from the South Central Jurisdiction
of the United Methodist Church

Clergywomen Leading Larger Churches

The charts below are based on data about the top 10 clegywomen led churches for worship attendance and membership for each year. Means and Medians are calculated for each year and comparisons are made across multiple years. The goal is to record changes in clergywomen serving larger churches.

In addition, tables are presented that display the number and percentage of clergywomen serving churches with 1000 or more members in each conference.

Church Membership

The chart above displays the size of churches served by clergywomen in several conferences in the South Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church.

1000+ Membership Churches by Conference in 2006

Conference	Number of 1000+ Member Churches	Number Pastored by Clergywomen	% Pastored by Clergywomen
Central Texas	42	0	0.0%
North Texas	34	3	8.8%
Northwest Texas	12	0	0.0%
Oklahoma	57	5	8.8%
Southwest Texas	26	1	3.8%
Texas	57	1	1.8%

1000+ Membership Churches by Conference in 2005

Conference	Number of 1000+ Member Churches	Number Pastored by Clergywomen	% Pastored by Clergywomen
Arkansas	27	0	0.0%
Central Texas	42	0	0.0%
Kansas East	11	3	27.3%
Kansas West	10	0	0.0%
Louisiana	28	1	3.6%
Missouri	26	1	3.8%
Nebraska	10	0	0.0%
New Mexico	8	0	0.0%
North Texas	34	3	8.8%
Northwest Texas	12	0	0.0%
Oklahoma	56	2	2%
Oklahoma Indian Missionary	0	0	-
Rio Grande	0	0	-
Southwest Texas	24	2	8.3%
Texas	58	2	3.4%
Total SCJ	346	14	4.0%

Worship Attendance

The chart above displays the total and median values for the top ten churches in worship attendance pastored by women in several conferences in the South Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church.

Definitions of Terms

Mean
The Mean is the average of the scores. It is calculated by adding up the scores and dividing this value by the number of scores.

Median
The Median is the midpoint of a series of numbers. The median is found by arranging values in order and then selecting the one in the middle. In the case of an even number of values, the median is calculated by taking the average of the two numbers in the middle. For example, to calculate the median of this group of numbers: 1, 4, 5, 7, 12, 20; take the average of 5 and 7, which is 6.

Medians can be especially useful when working with a statistically skewed series of values. For example, medians are often used to describe family income. If you had a group of 5 persons with annual incomes of 3 million, $35,000, $30,000, $25,000, and $20,000, the mean would be $622,000 and the median would be $30,000. The median would provide a better sense of where the group was as a whole than the mean. The mean value can be heavily impacted by a small proportion of the values.

Membership
These are persons who have formally joined a church. They are persons who have been baptized and have publicly declared their faith. Typically, this does not include any young children. The practice in many United Methodist churches is for those who are in sixth grade to participate in confirmation and to make a decision about if they are ready to profess their faith and join the church. The term Professing Members is often used.

Average Annual Worship Attendance
This value is determined by taking the mean of the number of persons at the principal weekly worship services for a year. For most churches this refers to their Sunday morning services. However, some churches include services that occur on Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon. When comparing years, keep in mind that extraneous factors can create variability. These include weather (icy roads, rain, . . .) and calendar issues like January 1 falling on a Sunday. (Worship Attendance statistics for a specific year are only attributed to a pastor when that person served the church for the full year.)