Signs of growth in the Church of England

 In May, the Church of England gave us a sneak preview of its annual summary of church attendance. Statistics for Mission is usually published in November for the preceding year and is a detailed statistical summary of the congregational counts made by each parish in the Church of England. For the past few decades, these have made dismal reading.

This time, the press release had a strongly up-beat tone and noted the third consecutive year of growth, although the numbers were still below the pre-pandemic levels.

The key headlines were a rise in the average weekly attendance across the whole church of five percent and an increase in average weekly attendance by children of six percent.

The good old Church of England’s statistical boffins used a somewhat creative measure to benchmark this - referring to the pre-pandemic trend level. I assume this means the attendance levels that would have been expected in 2023 based on the trend (of decline) from before the pandemic. On this basis, the 2023 attendance figures showed a gap of just under seven percent from the pre-pandemic trend level. To put it more simply, however, attendance in the Church of England is not only still lower than before the pandemic, but it is lower than we would have expected had the pre-pandemic decline have continued uninterrupted.

It is important to note just how low these figures were. It felt like a major point when the average weekly attendance fell below one million for the first time a few years ago. These figures revealed that it was just 685,000 last year.

When the pandemic hit, the Church of England reacted by recommending (ordering?) the closure of its churches. Many feared that this would irrevocably break habits and behaviours of church attendance, particularly among families who have plenty of other potential activities to fill up their Sundays with. There was a danger that the church would never recover. These statistics show that three years on, we still have a long way to go. 

The press release from the Church of England only contained a few snippets of the full data set that will emerge later in the year. At that point, more detailed analysis will be possible and the picture may appear different. However, there is some encouragement in the data released already. But if our aim is not just to recover to pre-pandemic trend levels (i.e. continued decline) but to reverse the decades long fall in membership and actually grow the church, then we have an awfully long way to go. 

When we get the full data set we may be able to discern more about the underlying trends and the question will be whether this recent increase in numbers is simply a slow post-pandemic bounce back or whether the low point of 2022 forced churches to innovate, re-connect with their communities and the fruit of that is genuine momentum behind growth.

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