Now typical Cof E service has just 50 in the pews
FEWER than 50 worshippers attended the average Church of England Sunday service last year, the latest Anglican headcount has revealed.
The longest-standing measure of weekly attendances recorded a total of 722,000 in the pews on a ‘usual Sunday’ – 15 per cent down in a decade.
Averaged out, that amounts to just 49 in each congregation.
Numbers have fallen by more than half in under 50 years, and by more than a third over the past 25 years.
Church leaders put a brave face on the evidence of decline, pointing to big congregations at Christmas,
‘Downward pattern in attendance’
apparent stability in the number of occasional attendees, and a doubling of the numbers who look at church messages on social media, with 2.44million monthly hits on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
The Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Dame Sarah Mullally, said: ‘While there is a downward pattern in Sunday attendance, the fact that membership figures are stable shows that for many people, being part of the Church is more than just a matter of what they do on a Sunday morning.
‘We are also reaching more people than ever through social media, providing a Christian presence to those who might not otherwise walk through the door of a church.’
Last year’s figures show 1.14million people in the ‘worshipping community’, a term introduced in 2012 to cover ‘those who attend church reg- ularly, for example once a month or more, or would do so if not prevented by illness or temporary absence’.
However, the CofE statistics bulletin said the figure – the basis of the claim that membership is stable – has ‘not been collected reliably for long enough to offer robust information about trends’.
Figures provided by churches said that 83,000 people had joined their worshipping communities, and only 59,000 had left. Other measures showed decline, with the numbers of children attending services falling by a quarter over the past decade.
Bishop Mullally said: ‘ Millions encounter the Church in their daily lives, through its commitment to the most vulnerable from food bank provision to night shelters, lunch clubs and community cafes.’
Blackburn cathedral has begun selling its own-brand gin to raise funds. The gin, called Cathedra, costs £45 a bottle.