No shows: mainline worship attendance

Many people assume that there has been a steady decline in worship attendance for all the mainline denominations since the mid-1960s—the era when most of them began to see their memberships decline. But trends in attendance—usually thought to be a better indicator of church vitality than trends in membership—have actually followed their own patterns.

For example, the Episcopal Church re­ported higher attendance in 2000 than in any year since 1991, the year the denomination began recording attendance figures. The United Methodist Church re­ported worship attendance figures in 2000 that were higher than those in the mid-1980s. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America had relatively flat attendance rates in the years before 2001, and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the 1990s had several years showing modest gains in attendance.

But the years following 2001 have shown a deep recession in worship attendance.

Read the rest of the story from the Christian Century here.

Editor

Katharine E. Harmon, Ph.D., edits the blog, Pray Tell: Worship, Wit & Wisdom.

Please leave a reply.

Comments

4 responses to “No shows: mainline worship attendance”

  1. Jeff Rice

    In the United States in the days and months after September 11, 2001 one might have anticipated our society undergo an alteration of priorities, perhaps placing more emphasis on our relationships with God and with each other. It seems the opposite has occurred.

    Reply
  2. Todd Flowerday

    Things are often a little deeper than they seem. It might also be that lazy Christians assumed they would get their due after 9/11. So much for the Pat Robertson method of evangelization: blame, then wait for them to come. Clearly American Christians were all listening to President Bush when he said to keep shopping.

    Reply
  3. Jack Rakosky

    This study uses the Key Informant method, i.e. someone well informed (e.g. the pastor) answered questions.

    We know from a previous post that Protestant congregations often keep weekly attendance records and that in that study that attendance varied in liturgical churches with the liturgical cycle.
    https://praytell.blog/index.php/2010/07/19/the-liturgical-year-and-average-church-attendance/

    IF the church kept weekly records, how did the informant decide that attendance was declining?

    Studies that have interviewed People that show they overestimate their weekly church attendance. Only half the people who say they attend weekly actually attend each week. The other half are people who attend less often. Their norm is weekly attendance but they don’t always make it. The article alludes to this possibility.

    Perhaps what has happened in liturgical churches is that people are coming to the conclusion that they just don’t need to attend all the time in Ordinary Time. They still answer yes to weekly church attendance because they know they go most of the time and are there on the really important Sundays.

    The pastors may be catching up with the downside of this liturgical year behavior in their Key Informant reports, noticing that there are less people there on many ordinary Sundays. Church people sometimes divide churchgoers into the weekly people and the Easter/Christmas only people. The changing behavior of the large in between group may be key factor.

    Reply
    1. Cody C. Unterseher

      Of people “coming to the conclusion that they just don’t need to attend all the time in Ordinary Time,” there’s an old joke about [insert your favorite mainline denomination here] being the only ones that God trusts to “take the green Sundays in summertime off.”

      Reply

Posted

in

,

by

Editor

Tags:

Discover more from Home

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading