By Michael Gryboski, Editor
Presbyterian Church (USA), the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States, lost over 26,000 members and 128 congregations in 2025, according to a new report.
A “Narrative Summary” of statistics released ahead of the PCUSA’s 227th General Assembly was emailed to The Christian Post on Monday, showing a decline of 26,845 members from 2024 to 2025, with the denomination’s official membership number being 1,019,003 by the end of last year.
The summary was part of the Annual Statistical Report, prepared by the Office of Statistics and Rolls in collaboration with Research Services.
Although the denomination continued its decades-long decline, the report described 2025 as its “slowest rate in a decade.” Membership fell by about 2.6% last year, well below the average annual decline of 4.6% over the previous 10 years.
Regarding member demographics, the report found that 60% were over the age of 55, including 35% who were aged 71 or older. By contrast, only 4% of members were aged 18 or younger.
The denomination also reported having 8,304 congregations at the end of 2025, which is 128 fewer than in 2024. Nearly all of these losses involved dissolutions of churches.
PCUSA reported launching 11 “newly organized congregations” last year, but also had 12 congregations that were “dismissed to other denominations,” according to the summary.
In recent decades, the PCUSA has seen a sharp decline in its membership, dropping from more than 2.5 million members in 2000 to just over 1 million members as of last year.
One contribution to the decline has been the theologically liberal direction of the denomination, which has prompted hundreds of congregations to disaffiliate in protest.
In 2010, for example, when the PCUSA General Assembly voted to allow regional bodies to ordain non-celibate homosexuals, about 300 congregations opted to leave the denomination in response, forming the theologically conservative ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.
PCUSA dipped below the 2 million member mark in 2011, according to numbers released in 2012, with then-PCUSA Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons saying at the time that it came down to “[a]t least two challenges.”
“The first and primary need is to continue to increase our efforts to live out the Great Commission and share the good news of Jesus Christ,” stated Parsons. “The second is to connect with the growing number of the ‘Spiritual But Not Religious.'”
In May 2025, PCUSA’s Interim Unified Agency reported that the denomination lost nearly 49,000 members in 2024, going from approximately 1.094 million in 2023 to approximately 1.045 million.
The Rev. Tim Cargal, who oversaw the report, told Presbyterian News Service last year that, at the current rate of decline, the PCUSA will dip below 1 million members by the end of 2025.
“Like all ‘milestone’ numbers, that will certainly garner a lot of attention, and deservedly so,” Cargal explained at the time. “However, net losses do not tell the whole story.”
“The broader American societal trends are of declining religious participation across denominations and faith traditions, but even in that context, the PCUSA is continuing to bring people into Christian community.”