Latest Church of England Attendance Stats: Making mud seem clear

The latest set of CofE attendance stats has done its job: passed with benign/no headlines, and little quizzing of the facts behind the official press release:

Overall in 2012, on average 1.05m people attended Church of England churches each week showing no significant change over the past decade. Figures for all age average weekly attendance show around 1 in 5 churches growing, and just over this number declining with 57% remaining stable.

In 2012 the Church of England conducted over 356,000 services of baptism, wedding and funerals at an average of about 6,700 each week - almost 1,000 per day - marking the rites of passage in people's lives in communities across the country.

There's plenty to celebrate and be proud of, but lets have a look at the actual stats. Look away now if you're in Lincoln diocese. Here is the Adult Weekly Attendance (the CofE's favoured measure, average number of adults attending a service in any given 7 days) change from 2003-2012. Please read on after the table below before calling for your bishop's resignation....

2003-2012 Adult Weekly Attendance Change
London	1.2%	Liverpool	-13.6%
Southwark	-0.4%	Carlisle	-13.7%
Newcastle	-3.1%	Southwell & Nottingham	-13.7%
Sheffield	-4.7%	Chichester	-13.8%
Europe	-5.4%	Exeter	-13.8%
Coventry	-6.1%	Portsmouth	-13.9%
Birmingham	-7.4%	Oxford	-14.3%
Guildford	-7.5%	Leicester	-14.4%
Manchester	-7.5%	Wakefield	-14.7%
Gloucester	-8.4%	York	-15.0%
Rochester	-9.2%	Salisbury	-16.0%
Chelmsford	-10.0%	Worcester	-17.7%
Bath & Wells	-10.1%	St. Edms & Ipswich	-20.0%
Lichfield	-10.1%	Ripon & Leeds	-20.2%
St. Albans	-10.2%	Sodor & Man	-20.4%
Canterbury	-10.4%	Blackburn	-21.2%
Ely	-10.7%	Peterborough	-21.7%
Durham	-11.2%	Bradford	-22.0%
Chester	-11.6%	Hereford	-23.8%
Total Church of England	-12.3%	Norwich	-24.9%
Winchester	-12.4%	Truro	-27.0%
Derby	-12.6%	Lincoln	-35.8%
Bristol	-13.6%

So far so consistent, compare and contrast with last year, or with the overall picture since 1990. 

But: the CofE has changed its method of collecting stats for this year, after finding several problems with the data in previous years. That's one thing that explains why it takes 18 months from when this data is collected (October) to when it's published. In brief, we have been overestimating attendance so far. So whilst the 2003 figures for the chart above are in the 'old money', the 2012 figures are more rigorous, and therefore lower. This exaggerates the decline in the figures, but that's not to say the decline isn't still there. 

(If you want the details, parishes which had 1 or 2 services a month, with, say 20 attending, were counted as having an AWA of 20, even though the people attending may attend other churches on the weeks with no service at their local. So there's been a lot of double counting, particularly in areas with lots of small churches that meet infrequently, e.g. rural dioceses like Lincoln)

Frustratingly, there are no revised figures available before 2008  - the official stats portal on the CofE site still has the old figures in its handy spreadsheet of diocesan stats. So it's impossible to independently check the statement that there's been 'no significant change over the past decade'. We can't do any fair comparisons for years up to 2007, all that can be said is that any comparison which uses the old data before 2008 will make things look worse than they really are. But that shouldn't be an excuse: only 90% as bad is still bad. 

But we can look at the data for 2008-12. Is the Titanic showing any signs of turning?

No.

 

Adult AWA Change 2008-12
Leicester	10.4%	Rochester	-4.8%
London	4.8%	Guildford	-4.8%
Bristol	4.8%	Salisbury	-5.3%
Sheffield	2.6%	Canterbury	-5.7%
Exeter	2.0%	Portsmouth	-6.0%
Durham	0.0%	Hereford	-6.6%
Newcastle	-0.8%	Europe	-6.6%
Norwich	-1.9%	Birmingham	-6.6%
Derby	-2.0%	Gloucester	-6.8%
Southwell & Nottingham	-2.1%	St. Albans	-7.2%
Carlisle	-2.3%	Southwark	-7.4%
Coventry	-2.3%	Chester	-7.8%
Chichester	-2.5%	Peterborough	-8.8%
Liverpool	-2.7%	Wakefield	-9.2%
Lichfield	-2.7%	York	-9.3%
Oxford	-3.2%	Truro	-9.8%
Worcester	-3.3%	Manchester	-9.9%
Ely	-3.4%	Bradford	-10.0%
Winchester	-3.5%	Sodor & Man	-10.0%
Chelmsford	-3.9%	Blackburn	-11.4%
St. Edms & Ipswich	-4.0%	Ripon & Leeds	-12.5%
Bath & Wells	-4.2%	Lincoln	-20.4%
Total Church of England	-4.2%

Five Dioceses growing, one static, the other 38 declining. And sadly even on the revised stats Lincoln is in trouble. Overall CofE attendance has fallen 37,000 in this 3 year period. That doesn't look like 'no significant change' to me, but maybe I'm working on the wrong definition of 'significant'?  

It's also worth saying that there are no surprises in the top 5. All are intentional about church growth.

Year on year, (2011-12) the stats show growth in a few more Dioceses, but even then it's difficult to draw conclusions. Our Diocese, Bath and Wells, shows a 1500 rise in attendance for 2011-12, yet I know for a fact that reported membership fell in those years in Bath and Wells by 1300 people, 5.6%. So what's going on there? 

The commentary in this years stats is fairly open about how much estimating they've had to do, and the shortcomings in the collection system. There's also an attempt to look at a new measure of membership, joiners and leavers, rather than attendance, though measuring this has problems of its own. 

Until all the silt is cleared out of the system, it's hard to do any proper analysis beyond this: the Church of England stats up to 2012 shows no signs that we are pulling out of the slow nosedive. I really hope that not many people believe the press release on this one: yes there are good signs in the CofE, but we are still in crisis and until we completely understand that, we aren't going to make the radical changes we need to. 

back to the Lent blogging fast. Sorry God....