Church of England: Not Levelling Out

If you don't like stats and bad news, look away now.

Yesterday the Church of England published its annual attendance stats for 2011, there were some encouraging signs, though as British Religion in Numbers points out, there were plenty pointing the opposite way too. The headline was that average weekly attendance was broadly flat 2010-11, some indicators (baptisms, Christmas) were pointing upwards, and the Church of England was actually doing ok, thankyou.

Wanting to compare with more than one years data, I used the very handy little Excel sheet that the CofE have made available with all the 2001-10 data. (The other statistical upside of comparing over more than one year is that the 2010 stats appear to have been revised downwards between their first publication last year, and their use as a point of reference this year. If you use the figure currently on the Excel sheet, we're actually looking at a 2.2% decline 2010-11, rather than the reported 0.3% decline, so I'm seeking clarification.)
 
Here's two tables on Adult Average Weekly Attendance, i.e. the average number of adults attending CofE services across a 7 day week. Firstly, comparing 2011 with 2008. As you can see, the 'levelling out' is fairly minimal even in the short time frame of 3 years:

Adults a.w.a change	3 yr (08-11)	Lichfield	-5.1%
Bristol	9.0%	Carlisle	-5.2%
Exeter	5.2%	Salisbury	-5.5%
Newcastle	1.3%	York	-5.5%
Norwich	0.7%	Guildford	-5.7%
Coventry	0.6%	Chester	-5.8%
London	-0.4%	Rochester	-5.9%
Derby	-0.7%	Wakefield	-6.0%
Sheffield	-1.3%	Chichester	-6.0%
Leicester	-1.3%	Portsmouth	-6.7%
Gloucester	-1.5%	Ely	-6.8%
Oxford	-1.5%	Europe	-6.8%
Hereford	-1.7%	St. Albans	-7.5%
Winchester	-2.0%	Manchester	-8.3%
Chelmsford	-2.7%	Birmingham	-9.7%
Ripon & Leeds	-3.1%	Sodor & Man	-10.8%
Southwell & Nottingham	-3.4%	Southwark	-11.0%
Liverpool	-3.6%	Truro	-11.1%
Durham	-3.7%	Bath & Wells	-11.4%
Peterborough	-3.8%	Bradford	-13.6%
St. Edms & Ipswich	-3.9%	Canterbury	-13.7%
Total Church of England	-4.9%	Blackburn	-14.3%
Worcester	-4.9%	Lincoln	-14.9%

3 Dioceses are growing, 4 are broadly flat, and the other 37 are shrinking. This is bad.

And here's the same data compared over 10 years, with the change 2001-11

Adults a.w.a	10 yr (01-11)	St. Albans	-10.6%
London	8.5%	Rochester	-10.8%
Hereford	0.2%	Bristol	-11.0%
Europe	-1.3%	Guildford	-11.1%
Newcastle	-3.9%	Peterborough	-12.2%
Ely	-3.9%	Wakefield	-12.9%
Manchester	-4.4%	Norwich	-13.9%
Ripon & Leeds	-5.3%	St. Edms & Ipswich	-13.9%
Coventry	-5.3%	Lichfield	-14.6%
Southwark	-5.4%	Birmingham	-15.7%
Derby	-5.8%	Chester	-16.0%
Gloucester	-6.1%	Salisbury	-16.0%
Exeter	-6.1%	Bath & Wells	-16.8%
York	-7.7%	Lincoln	-17.3%
Winchester	-8.0%	Sheffield	-17.5%
Chelmsford	-8.0%	Liverpool	-18.3%
Leicester	-8.3%	Canterbury	-18.5%
Oxford	-8.6%	Sodor & Man	-19.5%
Carlisle	-8.7%	Portsmouth	-19.8%
Chichester	-9.2%	Worcester	-19.8%
Southwell &Nottingham	-9.4%	Bradford	-22.0%
Total Church of England	-10.4%	Truro	-22.6%
Durham	-10.6%	Blackburn	-23.8%

This is very nearly as gruesome as the table in Bob Jacksons 'Hope for the Church' looking at Diocesan attendance change in the 1990s. The stats on children and youth are slightly better than this across both 3 and 10 year comparisons, but still heading downwards in most places, and in the Church of England as a whole.

I'm going to a conference organised by Jackson next week, on what makes for an effective Diocesan growth strategies. By the look of the above, we need them, and few more so than my own diocese.

So again BOILING FROG ALERT TO THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

Each year a small decline looks 'manageable'.

But if you take a longer view, we cannot sustain (and in many places we are not sustaining) a model of church, leadership, parochial system, clergy, ordination, sacraments, mission etc. which worked fairly well for several centuries but works no longer.

It may be that this is just the baseline that Justin Welby needs to bring about some radical changes, but the more we console ourselves with the few rising stats, the more we will miss the bigger reality, and the less motivated we will be to do anything about it. The Guardian's Andrew Brown seems to get this better than many Anglicans.

Update Weds lunchtime: the effect of the downwards revision of the 2010 stats means the following:
1. Reported all-age weekly attendance, using original 2010 figures:
2009   1,130,580
2010   1,116,080  (-1.3%)
2011   1,091,484  (-2.2%)  i.e. an accelerated rate of decline, year on year.

2. Reported all-age weekly attendance, using revised 2010 figures as issued yesterday:
2009 1,130 580
2010 1,094,600  (-3.2%)
2011  1,091,484 (-0.3%)

Revising the 2010 figures downwards means that decline 2009-10 was under-reported, and I'm not aware of any reference to this in the data. There are some genuine oddities in the original 2010 figures (e.g. a big jump in Canterbury attendance, which may explain the drop in 2011 reported yesterday), so there probably was some ironing out to do, but that's quite a significant bit of ironing.

Update May 16th: I've spoken to someone involved with the statistics, and yes there's been some double checking of the 2010 stats and ironing out of anomalies (e.g. double counting of some congregations, with Fresh expressions both recorded in the stats of the parish church, and on their own separate stats form). More effort is going in to getting the stats accurate, (and a new membership/joiners/leavers measure is being trialled in a couple of Dioceses), but the revision downwards wasn't reported. We'll simply have to wait and see whether the same level of revision hits the 2011 figures in 12 months time.