I recently studied the 1999 year-end reports of the nine recently chartered congregations and discovered the following:

They averaged 48 persons on profession of faith. 

They averaged 23 persons by transfer from other United Methodist churches.

They averaged 15 persons by transfer from other denominations.

The average net gain in 1999 was 82 members. The church reporting the largest gain reported 229. The church reporting the smallest gain reported a net gain of 21.

They averaged 17 baptisms per church.

Their average membership is 279 members, and their average worship attendance is 248 persons, which means 89 percent of their membership attends worship services.

The largest membership reported was 822 persons with 701 in worship.

The smallest membership reported was 113 with 112 in worship.

These nine new churches account for 2,506 of the membership of the Florida Conference. Approximately 60 percent of the membership is by profession of faith.

Our new churches are reaching new people for Jesus Christ. What is exciting is that we have 15 additional congregations and 12 missions that have not yet chartered. They are hard at work inviting persons to be Christian disciples. My guess is that we have an additional 3,500 persons worshipping who are not reported in our annual numbers. This bodes well for the future of our conference.