Solid Rock church is packing them in!
THE Solid Rock Church in Drogheda is bucking the trend with services so busy the church has had to add another to it’s Sunday schedule.
While many people are turning away from religion and fewer and fewer people are attending Church on a Sunday, the Solid Rock is growing in popularity and has seen its numbers increase hugely in recent years and months.
In fact, the Church is so popular it is struggling to accommodate the growth in it’s congregation, despite the fact the auditorium at the Church can cater for 400 people.
‘A popular perception is that religion is on the decline as Ireland becomes increasingly secular,’ Nick Park, Senior Pastor with the Solid Rock Church.
However, across the country many Evangelical and Pentecostal churches are bucking this trend and are having to add extra services on a Sunday to cater for the increased numbers attending church.
The Solid Rock Church is one of those, so much so that from Sunday, October 29th it is running two identical worship services - one at 10am and one at 12pm.
Pastor Nick explained: ‘We have over 400 seats in our auditorium, but it has been getting increasingly crowded on recent Sundays. Moving to two services enables us to accommodate further growth without having to spend a small fortune in extending the building. Despite Ireland becoming increasingly secular, we are finding that people in Drogheda are attracted by expressions of faith that are presented in a contemporary and relevant way.’
The latest figures from the 2016 census show that the numbers practicing religion in Ireland are declining, both nationally and in County Louth.
The figures show that Catholicism remains the predominant religion, accounting for 81.6% (105,186) of Louth’s population in April 2016.
This was down from 106,845 five years previously.
As with the State overall, the next largest group was those with no religion. In 2011, the 5,414 people with no religion comprised 4.4% of the county’s population. By 2016, this had increased to 9,747 people comprising 7.6% of the county’s population. Their average age was 33.1 years, making them 3.3 years younger on average than the county’s population overall.
The 2,079 Church of Ireland members in the county made up 1.6% of its total population. On average, Church of Ireland members in Louth were 1.8 years older (38.2 years) than the overall population in the county.
Muslims (1,825) and Orthodox completed the top five. (1,471)