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Belonging and believing

Is church attendance going up?

Picture of a church

A new way to measure churchgoing

In a recent report Tearfund boldly declared, that after 50 years of decline that "Churchgoing is not in decline" after all. You have to understand that they are not saying that the direction of traditional measures of churchgoing has reversed, but that they have devised a new method of measuring churchgoing that shows it's growing.

In their description of how they do it Tearfund state that there are a "Significant increases in church attendance among UK adults (aged 16+) from September 2007 to September 2008:

  • at least annually +5% 21% to 26%
  • at least monthly +2% 13% to 15%
  • at least weekly +1% 9% to 10%

A change from 9% to 10% means a growth rate of 11%, however the provisional attendance statistics released by the Church of England(CofE) in January 2009 show no sign of an 11% growth rate in weekly attendance. While the "Usual Sunday" attendance is actually down from 871,000 in 2006 to 868,000 in 2007, the "Average Weekly Adult" attendance was up to 940,000 in 2007 from 937,000 in 2006 (a rise of just 0.32%).

Note that by weekly, monthly or annually we are not necessarily talking about Sunday worship services. What Tearfund are using is a measure of people attending activities in a church building, but neither they nor the activities are constrained to being either Christian or worship. This is what Tearfund says "The research questions were framed deliberately to exclude attendance for weddings, baptisms, funerals and other invitation-only events so as to concentrate on voluntary attendance." So by their measure church attendance includes any voluntary activity on any day of the week. This is more restrictive than the CofE, that has included weddings and funerals in weekly attendance statistics since 2000.

In the Tearfund report we have not only lost the sense of the the Church being the gathering of believers, but also the need to keep the seventh day as a day of rest and a time of worship. Keeping the Sabbath as a day for believers to keep in obedience to God is no longer the objective, and so the criteria for being church has been redefined.

Fresh Expressions - liberal theology with attitude and spin

As with spin doctors those that promote this redefinition of church use a euphemism to disguise their agenda, they say the church is changing shape or it is a mission shaped church. The idea of redefining church comes from something called "Fresh expressions of Church." which is a euphemism given to the flavour of the Emerging Church adopted by the CofE and the Methodist Church. Like many new ideas the Emerging Church originated in the USA as a response to something theologians call "post-modernism." As far as fresh expressions is concerned think of it as a re-branding of liberal theology for the 21st century into a more aggressive form that uses spin and other modern marketing techniques.

Emerging Church

By embracing the post-modern world view the Emerging Church has made an "Escape from reason" as Frances Schaeffer predicted in a book by that name. They make many contradictory claims without being bothered by the first law of logic, that something can't be true and false at the same time. So for example Brian McLaren in his book "A generous orthodoxy" he claims to be a liberal and a conservative or a catholic and a Methodist. Its a have your cake and eat it world where making truth claims (like "No one comes to the Father except through me.") are banned except when they want to do it. Its a mad hatter's tea party on steroids. Steve Chalk named his book "the Lost Message of Jesus" as if for 2000 years all the theologians in the world had missed the point. In this book he describes the idea that Jesus took the punishment for our sins on the cross as "cosmic child abuse" (page 182) and proposes that the idea of "original sin" be replaced by "original goodness"(page 67).

Picture of book cover for Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church The Emerging Church movement in the UK is behind the split between Spring Harvest and Word Alive, because Steve Chalk (who is on the leadership team of Spring Harvest) is one of the main advocates of the Emerging Church in the UK. Steve's denial that on the cross Jesus took the punishment we deserved has opened up a fault line for the Evangelical world in the UK. For those who would like to know more we suggest you read Don Carson's book "Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church" which includes a chapter that covers both Brian McLaren's book "A generous orthodoxy" and Steve Chalk's book "The Lost Message Of Jesus" or "Why we're not Emergent(by two guys who should be)" by Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck. A good online sermon (video or audio) on the Emerging Church by Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle USA can be found here.

What is church?

If you want to measure church growth then you need to start with an understanding of what church is. The Greek word Jesus used for Church in Matthew 16:18 was "ekklesia", which means "the called out ones." It refers to people that have made a confession of faith like that of Peter in Matthew 16:16 it is an unmerited gift given to them by God the Father. What we have is Jesus declaring that He would build His own people, and to be His you must have faith in Him.

This is no luncheon or youth club that happens to meet in the church building during the week, nor is it the family members and friends that attend a wedding or funeral held in the church building. Yet these are the activities and many more (fresh expressions) like them that become church in its new shape. This is not simply moving the goal posts to get better figures, it is a redefinition of what we mean by church away from its historic and biblical roots.

The problems of measuring Church growth

The question is whether membership or attendance is the better measure of church growth if what we are after is the growth in the number of practising Christians. This chart shows a statistic the CofE calls "Usual Sunday attendance" and electoral roll(membership) data for the CofE between 1996 and 2007. The "Usual Sunday attendance" statistics are typically estimated by parishes on what they regard as a normal or usual Sunday. It includes all ages and all Sunday services.

CofE attendance and electoral roll

Source: Curch Of England provisional stats 2009

Downloadable chart: "CofE attendance and electoral roll"

Use of membership

If our aim is to measure practising Christians, membership data would seem the most appropriate. In the CofE new electoral rolls have to be compiled every 6 years and this usually results in a significant fall, as in 2002 when it fell 13%. Even in a congregational church there is often a panic revision of the members list when it comes to electing a new minister. The fact that membership lists are usually out of date makes them a poor indicator of church growth.

It's also true that membership of the CofE is much less restrictive than many congregational churches. While being on the electoral roll in a CofE church only requires the prospective member to fill out a form, many Baptists will insist in not only believer's baptism, but also an interview with a deacon and an election at a members meeting. The large differences between membership criteria for denominations is another reason why membership lists is not a reliable indicator of church growth.

Use of church attendance

The alternative is to measure church attendance. The chart shows the usual Sunday attendance for all ages. While attendance has the advantage of being much simpler to count, it is inherently a much wider measure as it does not say anything specific about what sort of faith they have. People may attend church for all sorts of reasons, so they may be:

  • a member of the fellowship seeking to worship
  • a member of the fellowship ministering their services
  • an unbeliever seeking their belief
  • child brought along by a believing parent
  • a nominal Christian at Christmas or Easter
  • a spouse or friend of a member

Even with its disadvantages attendance is the preferred measure of church growth, however not being perfect does not stop it from being useful.

Weekly or Sunday attendance

This data is taken from the CofE statistics for Parochial church attendance plus the provisional attendance statistics released in January 2009. The chart compares weekly to average Sunday attendances for all ages and adults. The weekly figure for adults is about 13% higher than the average Sunday adult figure. It shows that both have declined over the period 2000 to 2007. Both the weekly and average Sunday attendances are inflated by about 20% by including children who are probably too young to be believers.

Cofe Weekly verses Sunday attendance

Source: Church Of England website

Downloadable chart: "Cofe Weekly verses Sunday attendance"

For those that want to put a false gloss on church attendance the use of weekly statistics that include children will give a 40% increase without saving a single soul. It's all a question of perception brought about by a little spin. So often the truth is the casualty in the 21st century world we live in and that includes the church.

It's still true that Sunday attendance is the mark of a believer and that will not change. Adopting a measure of church attendance that seems to fit in with today's secular culture is another step in secularising the Church. We see the world transforming the church and wonder why it has lost power.

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