Is the Church of England growing?

Last Friday, the statistics unit of the Church of England released an ‘early snapshot’ of attendance figures, based on the returns from the count that happens in churches in October last year. The headline looked promising:

Attendance at Church of England churches grew for the fourth year in a row last year, preliminary figures show.

Before looking at some of the details, it is worth reflecting on this process of collecting statistics. Some will object to the whole exercise; I have clergy friends who refuse to engage in this at all, since weighing pigs does not make them any heavier. My response is: no, but weighing your pig does tell you whether it is growing fatter or thinner, and might lead you to take action as a result. Others will object to the obsession with numbers, saying that it is people and the gospel that matters. The difficulty with this is that these numbers are people, and counting them tells you about whether the C of E is fulfilling the basic mandate that Jesus gave to all his followers to ‘go and make disciples…’ (Matt 28.19). All through Acts, Luke recounts the work of the Spirit in directing, encouraging, and equipping the apostolic community, and the repeated refrain is that ‘the Lord added…the word grew…’ and so on. And for these reasons, the Archbishops’ Council expresses its goals in terms of numbers as well; it is in one sense legally obliged to do so, since charity trustees must act for the good of the charity based on evidence—and numbers are evidence.

We should also note that it is often the historic denominations, the ones most commonly in decline, who have historic central resources to undertake this kind of exercise. The ‘new’ churches don’t have the resources, and are busy doing other more productive things. This leads to a skewed impression in the media, since these new churches never send out press releases, so it is only the decline of the historic denominations which hit the headlines—though we will return to this in a while.

The full figures have previously been released in the Autumn, a full year after the numbers were counted, but for the last couple of years the early figures have been released, and these have been found to be representative of the fuller picture.

To understand the figures, you need to be aware of the four metrics the Church uses:

1. Average Weekly Attendance (AWA) The average number of people attending all services (not just Sundays) in a typical week. This includes: Sunday services, midweek services, and school services if they’re acts of worship. This is used to reflect total weekly church activity and reach.

2. Average Sunday Attendance (ASA): The average number of people attending church services on Sundays. This includes all Sunday services (morning, evening, and so on) but it excludes midweek services.

3. Usual Sunday Attendance (USA) (less commonly used today): Historically, this was a more informal estimate of how many people usually attended Sunday services. It was often self-reported or estimated, rather than calculated over specific data periods, but it has largely been replaced by ASA for more consistent reporting.

4. Worshipping Community Attendance (WC): The number of individuals (not the weekly average) who attend services regularly, not necessarily every week. It is defined as the number of people who attend at least once a month or are otherwise known to be part of the worshipping life of the church. This reflects the breadth of engagement, not just weekly attendance; it is a controversial figure statistically, but it compensates for the fact that you might have the same number of people attending, but they might attend slightly less frequently. This would show as a decline in the above statistics, even though the same number of people are coming.

So what did the figures say? Here are the summary paragraphs from the press release:

The overall number of regular worshippers across the Church of England’s congregations grew to 1.02 million in 2024, a rise of 1.2 per cent, according to an early snapshot of the annual Statistics for Mission findings.It was the second year in a row in which the Church of England’s “worshipping community” – the combined number of regular members of local congregations – has stood above a million since the Covid-19 pandemic.The numbers in the pews on a typical Sunday [average Sunday attendance] was up by a further 1.5 per cent to 582,000 in 2024, extending rises over recent years.And overall in-person attendance across the week [average weekly attendance] edged upwards by 1.2 per cent in a year, and stood at just over 701,000 last year, according to the early figures.

(Note that the USA is not given here.)

The big question here is whether we are continuing to see recovery from the loss of attendance during the Covid lock down and the closure of church buildings, or whether there is a change to the underlying trend. This is best assessed when the numbers are presented graphically, as on the right—which a friend has kindly done for me (thanks Amanda!). The three graphs are plotted on the same scale so that you can compare them.

All three graphs confirm the comment in the press release:

While the overall figures show that in-person attendance has not fully reached pre-pandemic levels, the figures suggest it is moving closer to the pre-pandemic trend.

But of course this ‘pre-pandemic trend’ was one of straight-line decline. So, yet again, overall attendance figures have still not even reached the level we would expect if decline had continued at the rate as before—that is, if all our efforts in investing in church planting and rejuvenation, and having a more urgent focus on mission and evangelism and the making of disciples, had not resulted in any slowing of decline, let alone a reversal to overall growth.

That is worth pausing on for a minute to take it in. We have not yet reached the attendance numbers at the expected level of decline.

The last graph, WC, looks as though there might be hints of a change in trend. But the other two suggest otherwise; the curve since 2021 is concave, not convex or on a straight line, showing that the year on year ‘recovery’ growth is diminishing, and statistically this is what you would expect if the numbers were drifting back to the previous trend, rather than changing it.

So what is going on? There are certainly things happening in different parts of the C of E, but what is leading to this overall picture of what appears to be an underlying trend of continued decline? These are the things that strike me, and which I have gleaned from various conversations in the last week.

The first is that, with current levels of migration, the country’s population is growing but about 1% a year—so you need to knock that off these statistics to get a real sense of actual growth. Many migrants are coming from areas where Christianity is the norm, and some areas of the country, especially those with cheap and poor housing, will feel the benefit. One clergy friend, in a poor area in the north of the country, told me: ‘our own congregation had 5 or 6 GMH in 2019 and now has c. 80!’

Some anecdotal research suggests that Covid accelerated decline in church attendance particularly in white British communities, especially in the north, but that ethnically mixed areas, cities, and places in and close to London have been more resilient.

Many parishes are struggling to recruit incumbents, or are appointing candidates who are not up to the job, and whom they would not have appointed if there were a choice. Another friend reported hearing a suffragan bishop commenting about how few people were applying for posts and how the bishop had to work hard to persuade some parishes to accept a candidate who, in better times, they would never have considered. The mix of longer vacancies and fewer effective incumbents means decline; as I reported seven years ago (!) research by the Church House team demonstrates that having stipendiary ministers who are competent and intentional about growth is the single biggest factor in whether a church grows or not.

The real challenge here is that the collapse in the number coming forward for ordination training means that this lack of leadership will be felt for years to come—and the effect is probably only just beginning to bite. Perhaps those seeing the importance of lay leadership in church planting were not so foolish after all?

Within the Church, there is a huge differential in where growth and decline is happening. I know of many Anglican churches which are growing, planting, and grafting into existing churches or buildings. At our clergy chapter yesterday, many had tales of seeing people coming for baptism, both children and adults, where numbers had previously been low. And yet in other contexts there is decline and even collapse. I heard this week of a challenging rural context, where a good appointment was made for incumbent a few years ago, but this person has now left—the job of juggling a multi-parish benefice with too many buildings and little vision for growth, and with an elderly age profile, was too much. And it will be very difficult to make another appointment.

The age demographic alone in many rural areas, where church attendance has historically been disproportionately high, means that many Anglican churches will simply disappear in the next decade. This will keep a downward pressure on the overall figures—but also means that there is a radical change in the configuration of the Church of England, shifting it from being more rural and ‘middle of the road’ with large liberal elements, to being more urban and suburban, and more evangelical, charismatic, and ‘orthodox catholic’.

And if you want to see the variability across the country as a result of different diocesan leadership, just compare Southwell and Nottingham, where I am, with Canterbury. Last year, the numbers of children attending in this diocese had returned to 2019 pre-Covid numbers. In Canterbury, the numbers are 50% of what they were.

But here is the big puzzle posed by context: what about the ‘quiet revival’ and its impact in the Church of England? Why are we seeing continued decline, when there is credible news of people, especially young people, coming to faith or expressing interest and curiosity?

Some Church of England churches are certainly experiencing this—but many are not. The headlines of the C of E continue to put people off; let me give you some examples.

For some reason, while we are still waiting for the serious theological work to be done, the LLF process (looking at questions of marriage and sexuality, in case you’ve been living on Mars for the last few years) still continues on, despite having lost its key staff member in Church House. A ‘consultation’ is happening in dioceses, though it is not clear what this will achieve, and the early feedback is that it feels shambolic. And, bizarrely, the Business Committee has included in the July Synod agenda a Private Members Motion asking for the House of Bishops to remove any requirement of clergy to uphold the Church’s doctrine of marriage in their own lives—despite the fact that theological work is being done on this very questions over the summer, and that it will report to Synod next February.

Christopher Landau explains, in a Twitter thread, why this is so important with his customary clarity:

Why would clergy entering into same-sex marriages risk splitting the church, in a way that clergy entering civil partnerships has not?First, we need to appreciate one reason why the compromise of the last twenty years or so has (imperfectly) endured. The tendency of ‘conservatives’ to assume that all clergy are living within the stated discipline of the church is (I think) a key, overlooked factor.Ever since the House of Bishops concluded that civil partnerships were not inherently contradictory to church teaching, and thus clergy were permitted to enter them, two increasingly divergent responses have emerged.One group continues to teach the traditional teaching of the church, and I would suggest has continued to work alongside openly gay colleagues on the assumption that there is a shared, ongoing commitment to this teaching.Another group has tended to downplay the church’s continuing teaching on sexual ethics, has quietly ignored it, or has campaigned for that teaching to change – even though many such clergy entered training having assented to ‘Issues in Human Sexuality’.Given the stance in ‘Issues’, it was hardly disingenuous for ‘conservative’ clergy to assume that all clergy were – to paraphrase the ordination service – fashioning their own life and that of their household ‘according to the way of Christ’.Serving clergy entering same sex marriages (as the Jeremy Pemberton employment tribunal case proved, even as far as the Court of Appeal) would indicate a fundamental change to the church’s own understanding of its legitimate discipline.Whatever one’s view, it is surely difficult to describe this as a minor change, or merely something that requires (as ‘Together for the CofE’ has suggested) a ‘pastoral response’.There needs to be a depth of honesty: changing this aspect of clergy discipline would be indicative of a change in conviction about the nature of marriage. Otherwise the Pemberton ruling makes no sense.And to change the current stated teaching on marriage would have implications for everyone, and their deeply personal decisions about what it means faithfully to live out their Christian call – not least in a culture profoundly confused about sex.We are in danger of seeking to change pastoral practice for some clergy, without first having changed the teaching (or doctrine) that logically informs such practice. Not for the first time, I am praying for theological coherence!

Secondly, some insist on pressing issues around ethnicity by deploying ideas from critical race theory and ‘racist anti-racism’, and making claims about the legacy of slavery and reparations which do not stand up to scrutiny. So we are appointing ‘racial justice officers’ in dioceses where there is no evidence of there being an issue with racial justice, and make appointments which have been shown not simply to be ineffective but to actually make the problems worse. It is claims that the £100m being set aside for Project Spire (on reparations) is not depriving parishes of badly needed resources—when it obviously is, since this is money that cannot be drawn on. And the whole Project is clearly outwith the Church Commissioners’ charitable aims. These approaches are deeply divisive and demotivating.

Thirdly, we still have senior leaders in the Church saying things in public which are just so unhelpful to church growth and mission. This is the comment by a cathedral dean on Facebook this week:

Dear Friends, I have been reflecting on my faith, ministry and life and want to say unapologetically, that I am an inclusive, liberal, progressive, liberationist (read justice, inclusion, Liberation Theologian/priest). Jesus is my model and total inspiration. Feel free to call me woke if you wish. I seek to build bridges with all traditions and communities who seek equality, justice, peace and the flourishing of all people.

I would not claim there are no virtues expressed here. There is plenty of support for questions of justice and peace in Scripture. But it is interesting that this person sees Jesus as ‘model and inspiration’ rather than ‘Lord and saviour’. The gospel expressed in these terms looks, to many people, like a humanist, political, and left-liberal project. There is an interesting question to be debated about whether the teaching of Jesus is compatible with such an approach. But we need to note that there are no signs whatever that ‘inclusive progressive’ churches are part of this ‘quiet revival.’ As I explored with Dr Rhiannon McAleer in our discussion, the churches which are growing are those which offer a sense of experiential encounter with God—and those which offer (in David Goodhew’s words) ‘full fat faith’ which is distinctive and counter cultural, and not merely replicating a political position that people can find elsewhere.

God is doing something in our country. People, especially young people, are being stirred up to ask questions about faith. But the Church of England, through the foolishness of its leadership, appears to be doing its best to sidestep this by continuing to press divisive and demotivating issues.

Something needs to change.