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Current Church Trends

By Peter Brierley.

Religious Trends No 7 was finally published in May 2008 a little later than originally planned.  As a consequence of complimentary copies being sent out, articles about some of the figures in it appeared in both The Times and The Daily Telegraph on 8 th May 2008.  Some readers of Ministry Today may have seen these articles.

The basic figures given in Religious Trends were not new - they were first published in 2006.  What was new was that the 25 year period of measuring church attendance (1980-2005) was extrapolated to 2050, a length that some felt was unacceptable, especially the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.  The 2005 English Church Census counted people in church on an average Sunday.  Each Church Census has used the same measurement in order to provide comparability of data, not just over time, but between denominations. 

Comparability

The Church of England, however, uses Usual Sunday Attendance much less these days in favour of Average Sunday Attendance (measured over a month) or Average Weekly Attendance (including those coming mid-week), or Average Monthly Attendance (which includes those coming, say, just once a month).  These other measurements all give higher figures than the Usual Sunday Attendance, but using these just for the Church of England means a lack of comparability with other denominations, and Religious Trends gives data on all 275 denominations in the UK, not just the Church of England.

Irrespective of the measurement, however, numbers attending church in the Church of England (except for Christmas) have declined in recent years, so the trend apparent in the Religious Trends figures was not radically different from that being generally experienced.  There are some positive factors also which have happened since the 2005 Census.  “Back to Church” Sundays are becoming increasingly popular and a valuable means of increasing numbers.  If the experience of the Diocese of Manchester is repeated across the country with 50% of those coming back to church staying on for at least 6 months, then a further 10,000 people need to be added into churchgoing numbers for 2007.  Likewise the increasing numbers of Fresh Expressions across the various denominations are seeing more people attending (although some of the early numbers of these were included in the 2005 Census).

Ageing congregations

The long-term problem, however, is not the level of attendance (however measured) but the make-up of that attendance, especially by age.  The problem for Anglicans (and even more so for Methodists and the United Reformed Church) is the percentage of people attending who are over 65 years of age.  The 2005 Census showed that 35% of Anglicans are over 65 years of age.  Furthermore, this percentage is increasing - it was 19% in 1979, 22% in 1989 and 29% in 1998.  This has to be taken seriously.  Using the Census figure of 871,000 Anglicans attending church on a usual Sunday, 35% is 305,000 people, and if used on a larger number calculated by other means then an even higher number will be over 65.  Also many of those coming “Back to Church” are older people.

The Government Actuary’s Department publish figures of the rate of mortality in what are called Life Tables .  They show that 2.7% of men aged 65 to 74 die every year, 7.5% of men aged 75 to 84 and 19% of men aged 85 and over, with these being 1.7%, 5.2% and 16% respectively for women.  What this means simply is that older people increasingly get promoted to glory, as the Salvation Army describes it.  We all know old people die, and if you have a lot of old people in your church, a lot of people will die over the next 20 years or so.  It was this fact which the Religious Trends forecasts were highlighting.

The situation is much better for Baptists, only 25% of whose churchgoers are 65 or over, a percentage which is increasing more slowly than for the Anglicans as Figure 1 indicates.

Figure 1: Percentage of churchgoers 65 and over since 1979

            Baptists also have more people attending under the age of 20 (26%) than are 65 and over, so can reasonably expect new people joining the church as members to roughly match those dying.  This ratio (under 20 percentage divided by 65 and over) varies quite considerably as can be seen from Figure 2.

Figure 2: Ratio of churchgoers under 20 to those 65 and over, by denomination, 2005

 

Figure 2 shows that there are two denominations where the youth considerably outweigh the elderly - the New Churches and the Pentecostals.  The Orthodox and Independent denominations have a fairly positive proportion of young people, with the Baptists and Smaller denominations almost equal.  But the Anglicans, United Reformed Church and the Methodists have serious problems with their proportions.  The overall proportion is 0.8 (that is, the number of young people is four-fifths of the number of older people), against a population figure of 1.5 (that is, the number of young people is half as many again as the number of those 65 and over).

Cohort analysis

There are two other relevant factors in looking at age comparisons.  One is generational.  In Pulling out of the Nosedive (the book commenting on the 2005 Census) a “cohort” analysis is given.  This  looks at how many people aged, say, 30-39, are still in church 10 years later when they are 40 to 49.  This analysis shows that those now aged 65 and over have been coming to church most consistently ever since they first started coming 40+ years ago in many cases.  Younger people are more likely to drop out, or, in practice, come much less frequently.  That simply means that Sunday numbers, again however measured, will tend to get smaller if this habit of infrequent attendance continues (as all the evidence shows it does).

Joiners and leavers

The other factor is that obviously numbers will not decline if more people join the church than leave through death or other reasons.  Are people joining the church today?  Yes, undoubtedly they are, through Fresh Expressions, Alpha and other courses, being born to a churchgoing mum, and in other ways.  In Nosedive this number is estimated at 1,000 new people joining the churches (across all 37,500 churches in England ) every week .  That has to be good news - and it is!  Maybe the number has increased a bit since 2005 - even better news.  But unfortunately the number who left the church every week between 1998 and 2005 was at least 3,000 every week, perhaps three-quarters of whom are deaths.  One step forward, 3 steps back.  This latter number is set to get much higher 20 or 25 years hence because of the deaths of existing churchgoers, and while the 1,000 a week coming in might increase, it would have to increase very substantially to overtake the numbers leaving.

There is a further verification of this last uncomfortable fact.  One of the values of long-term measurement of church attendance is that one can assess the numbers coming in and going over a longer period.  Numbers joining the church in the 1980s and 1990s averaged 2,000 every week.  In other words, despite our best efforts with Fresh Expressions, Alpha, etc. we are collectively simply not evangelising anything like as much as we were 10 or 20 years ago.  What has gone wrong?  Many would say they have lost their confidence in sharing their faith.  Maybe Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code and Richard Dawrkins’ The God Delusion have had a more insidious effect than we realise.

The challenge

The problem that the figures in Religious Trends highlight is that we have perhaps 10 or 15 years to turn the church round if we are not to lose our critical mass (about 5% of the population) and make it even harder for the next generation to win their generation for Christ.  The projections to 2050 assume current trends will continue (although not in a straight line) - it would be really great if that forecast was shown to be totally wrong in say 20 years time because we then had 50,000 Fresh Expressions groups instead of the 5,000+ today and 2 million attending Alpha every year then instead of the 200,000 in 2007.

Muslim comparisons

The articles in the secular press compared the numbers attending church with those attending mosque.  Two surveys, one in 1986 and one in 2006, have measured the frequency of mosque attendance, and came out with similar answers.  Roughly half, 50%, of Muslims attend a mosque once a year and about a quarter, 25%, once a week.  Religious Trends focuses almost entirely on membership not attendance, so the relevant Table gave the figures for the 50% who attend once a year, as the best available estimate for “active members” (as it always has done and as it likewise counts those of other faiths).  Unfortunately, both The Times and The Daily Telegraph quoted the 50% figures perhaps not realising that this distorts the comparison.  However, even had the 25% figure been used for Muslim mosque attendance, mosque attendance would still exceed church attendance by 2050 if present trends continue (1.3 million to 0.9 million).  The challenge to change the trend continues!

Not all depressing!

It might be easy from the above to assume that everything in Religious Trends is depressing and negative and declining.  Not so!  What it is meant to present is the “big picture” and to attempt to draw conclusion from that helpful for strategic planning.  It shows that in the UK in 2006 there were 48,000 churches, 35,000 ministers, 5.7 million church members (9% of the population of 61 million) and 3.8 million attending on an average Sunday (excluding N Ireland, but 6% of the population).

Over the period 2000 to 2006, these figures had changed, respectively, by dropping 1% (400 fewer churches), increasing by ?% (200 more ministers), dropping by 5% (0.3 million fewer members) and by -14% for churchgoers (0.6 million fewer attenders).  Such broad figures indicate:

• Churches are growing smaller on average (fewer churches closing than people going);
• Attendance is dropping much faster than membership, which might suggest nominalism is increasing, but actually it is the frequency of attendance which is diminishing;
• The increasing number of ministers is not stopping the fall-out!  The increase comes from the much larger number of Pentecostal ministers, many of whom are part-time, to cater for the needs of burgeoning black churches.
• People still value church membership, even if attendance is not as regular as it was.

The figures are also forecast to 2010, and show that in some areas the Baptists are increasing their strength in church life.  For example, in the year 2000, Baptist membership was 3% of the total; by 2010 it will be 4%.  In 2000, the number of Baptist ministers was 7% of the total; by 2010 it will be 9%.  In church attendance, Baptists were 7% of the total in 2000, but will be 8% by 2010 if present trends continue.  How do these trends compare with other denominations?  Only the New Churches and Pentecostals are similar.  This doesn’t mean that Baptists are thriving, but simply that they are not doing nearly as poorly as other denominations, including the big institutional churches, which must be some comfort!

Women ministers

While the Anglicans have agreed at their July Synod to allow women Bishops, Religious Trends gives details of women ministers.  The proportion has grown from 8% in 1992 (the first year in which the number were counted) to a projected 18% in 2010, assuming present trends continue.   The Baptist proportion has increased five-fold in this period, however, the fastest rate of growth except for the New Churches.  Figure 3 shows the changing percentages by selected denominations:

Figure 3: Percentage of women ministers, 1992 to 2010, selected denominations

The United Reformed Church will have the highest percentage by 2010, having rapidly grown  their proportion, while the Salvation Army, who from the beginning have always emphasised women’s ministry, will drop slightly from 56% of female officers in 1992 to 52% by 2010.  The Methodists will be the third largest then, with 40% women.

Marriages

Religious Trends also gives a mass of detail on the family life of the nation.  One of the trends is the declining number of marriages, down from 268,000 in England and Wales in 2000 to 233,000 in 2007, a drop of -13%.  Of these 2007 marriages, 64,000 took place in a Registry Office, a number which has halved from 125,000 (a drop of -49%) in these 7 years.  The number of church marriages in 2007 was 73,000, a decline of a quarter, -25%, from 97,000. 

Part of the reason why marriages in both Registry Offices and Churches have declined is because of the increasing popularity of marriages in what are called “approved premises”, alternative locations such as hotels, National Trust properties, clubs, etc., which totalled 96,000 in 2007, more than doubling from the 46,000 which were held in such in 2000.  However, another reason is that “marriage has become less popular” as the British Social Attitudes Survey 2007/2008 edition identified, as cohabitation is becoming increasingly popular.   This feature of modern British society is increasing very rapidly as Figure 4 indicates.

Figure 4: Percentages cohabiting by age, 1998 and 2003

Women under 30 tend to cohabit more than men, but a greater percentage of men over 30 cohabit than women, not every cohabited cohabiting with someone their own age..  Some churchgoers also cohabit.  In 2001 a series of congregational surveys in Anglican churches in one Diocese put the percentage at 2%, a figure which has almost certainly increased since then.  How do churches welcome people whose personal lifestyle many church leaders feel is not Scriptural?  Faithful life-long commitment to each other (without actually being married) is much more common among black churchgoers, who see this as a custom of their home society.

Christian youth organisations

The collective importance of Christian youth organisations such as Urban Saints (formerly Crusaders), Boys’ Brigade, Girls’ Brigade, MAYC, YMCA, etc. may be seen in that their rate of decline in numbers (down from a total 320,000 of the larger Christian youth organisations in 1990 to 220,000 by 2010 if present trends continue) is a much smaller drop (-32%) than the -71% decline in overall churchgoing numbers of young people aged 6 to 19 in the same period. 

The two figures are not totally comparable - the youth organisation numbers include N Ireland whereas the church attendance figures do not, and the youth organisation figures also include those who do not attend church.  Nevertheless the difference between the two figures is so large that it shows that belonging to a Christian youth organisation is likely to keep young people in a faith environment (to put it no stronger) longer than those who do not belong to such an organisation.

A similar conclusion was reached on the impact of Christian residential holidays for young people.  A “before and after” study on the impact of such showed that the more frequent attendance the greater the child’s understanding of the Christian faith.

Psychological type

A fascinating initial summary of a series of research projects by Professor Leslie Francis on psychological type is also given in Religious Trends No 7.  Part of the detail given compares the four broad strands of the Myers-Briggs analysis for male clergy, male churchgoers and men in the population, the results of which are shown in Figure 5:

Figure 5: Psychological type of male clergy, churchgoers and the population

The results show that in two respects male clergy and churchgoers are very similar - the proportions who are extrovert and “sensing” (liking concrete, practical detail), and that while the first is similar to the population at large, the second is less like - more of the population like looking at the big picture, tolerating change, than those connected with the church.

In one area, male churchgoers and men in the population were very similar, in the “judging” area, or the proportion who prefer to live in a planned, organised way, but these two groups were much smaller than the proportion of clergy who like living that way (55% to 70%).  Could this be another reason why some clergy find change so difficult?

There was, however, one area where all three groups were different.  Two-thirds, 65%, of men in general like to take “decisions through objective balance, emphasising logic and reason”.  Only half, 53%, of male churchgoers wanted to take decisions in that way, and only a third, 34%, of the clergy.  The other two-thirds of the clergy prefer taking “decisions through an emphasis on personal values and people’s needs”.

Alpha works!

Total worldwide attendance at Alpha courses by the end of 2007 was 10.6 million people, spread over 260,000 Alpha courses, with an average of 40 people in each.  While growth has not been totally smooth, it has been rapid, as Figure 6 indicates.

Figure 6: Numbers attending Alpha UK and worldwide, 1993-2007

The percentage of people joining churches which use Alpha courses who come through Alpha has increased from 12% in 2003 to 16% in 2006.  Other research shows that other teaching courses, like Christianity Explored or Emmaus, also yield many who join the churches (roughly half the percentage for Alpha courses because these other courses are overall fewer in number).  

The challenge for looking at “the big picture” remains, as does the importance of taking diverse pieces of information to understand that picture better.  In the innovative and strategic thinking which church leaders need to do, a firmer understanding and a surer programme can be outworked, by which, despite the negatives, the church of God in this country will yet prevail against the gates of hell.