Christmas church attendances are peaks on the plateau

In January or February each year incumbents and churchwardens fill in forms about church attendance the previous year.  This is not new, although from 2001 the forms required more information.  One year later the Church of England publishes totals for the whole church and for individual dioceses.  A press release puts a gloss on the figures, but it is rare to find a subsequent headline which omits to refer to declining attendance: for example, the Church Times on 1st February this year headed its article in large bold print “Attendance slides, but several dioceses buck the trend”.  What are we to make of these statistics?

The weekly numbers are collected for October so the pattern of Harvest services, other national events, and the weather (there were gales one year) can affect things.  At the same time some parishes fail to complete the forms - and it’s not always the same ones - so inevitably estimates for the missing ones have to be made.  For all these reasons its better to look at trends over a long period than a single year.

So let’s take the last 150 years.  In 1851, when the population was 369,300, a count on Mothering Sunday gave the total in the parish churches now a part of this diocese as 154,800 (42% of the population).  When the other denominations are added 72% of the population was worshipping that Sunday.  Let’s fast forward to this century.  By 2001 the population has grown to 2,701,000 of whom 68% declare themselves Christian.   On Sunday 1st October 2006, 41,900 people were in parish churches; that’s 1.6% of the population, or 2.3% of those who are Christian. But last month we discovered that in this diocese about quarter of worshippers are Anglicans, so from this we postulate that perhaps 9% of Christians were worshipping that day.  Way back in 1851 most, if not all people, would have said they were Christian, so over the last 150 years the proportion of Christians at worship somewhere on a Sunday has fallen from 72% to 9%.  That illustrates as well as any other statistic the changed circumstances in which we are to bring The Good News.

So what are the more recent trends?  One indicator is the size of Electoral Rolls in the years when they are renewed. This table gives some of those years:

Clearly the decline in the 60s and 70s has slowed considerably and with a roll in 2006 increased to 51,100 we wait to see how much this falls at the renewal in 2007.

Finally, for a long time the church has collected details of the estimated adult attendance on a “normal” Sunday.  Whilst there can be debate around “what is a normal Sunday?”, this graph shows the most recent trends after smoothing out all the bumps.

Again the decline appears to have slowed a great deal in recent years.  Next month we can look at some of other aspects of the decline on Sundays and examine how recent initiatives have the potential for increasing church membership.

Let’s end with an encouraging trend which has greatly intrigued the media.  This table shows the notable increase in attendance in this diocese at Christmas since 2001.  The question is; did this trend carry on into 2007?  In a few months we should know. Keep the forms coming in!

Print this page
Bookmark this page