Church of England Attendance Change by Diocese, 2011-16

The latest Church of England attendance figures are out, and full marks to the CofE for producing them in Excel format as well as the usual pdfs. So much easier to play about with.

The good news, however, ends there.

You can always tell if it's been an iffy year, because the press release accompanying the stats is on something other than whats happening in a normal church on a normal Sunday. This year it's the social media profile.

I've been blogging for years on what's happening in the Dioceses, and whether we are, at last turning the corner. Sad to report that the answer is no: at least, not based on the official stats. If anything, it's getting worse

In the last 5 years, only two dioceses have seen adult Sunday attendance grow - London continues to be the engine room of the CofE, but many of the Dioceses that were doing well last time round have seen a sharp drop in numbers. For numbers, read people (see Acts in the New Testament, does it all the time). The rate of decline across the CofE has increased, and to have 12 dioceses recording losses in double figures compares with 5 for 2009-14. 

Maybe the next generation will save us? Maybe not. Again, London is growing, again, nobody else is, and the figures towards the bottom of the table are catastrophic.

Perhaps the hope lies in non-Sunday worship? After all, millions of people now work on a Sunday, and the competition with leisure activities etc. is intense. Adult attendance Mon-Sat has risen from 112,000 to 122,000, so it is both growing, and a higher proportion of overall CofE attendance. However childrens midweek attendance has dropped like a stone - I'm hoping that's to do with a different recording system, but fear that it might not be.

There is wider cultural change too, away from Christendom and the culture that supported an established church. Baptisms, weddings and funerals taken by the CofE have dropped by 15, 21 and 28% respectively in the last 10 years. This in turn reduces the pool of community contacts and means local churches have to work harder to engage with the community, and move beyond dependence on the 'occasional offices' as a way of connecting with people.

One glimmer of hope in the figures is on p10 of the full report. Churches were asked to report on 'joiners' and 'leavers' during the year, and 80,000 people were reported as joining CofE churches. 32% of the adults and 58% of the children had never been church members before. That's encouraging, or does it just mean that we notice more when people join than when they leave?

There is probably a lot more to say in the detail, but I hope these stats are actually used for mission - I blogged on a previous occasion how the only people who paid any attention to membership figures were the finance department. A vicar who's seen their attendance drop by 15% in a year is more likely to get a call questioning whether they've under-reported to save on parish share (contributions to the Diocese) than whether they are ok and if they need any support.

Many Dioceses now have a mission strategy, including even Bath and Wells (I know, it's hard to believe at times), and it looks like we need it more than ever. But it shouldn't be a preservation strategy, even though God has probably used the ghastly stats above to kick the recalcitrant CofE out of its sniffiness about evangelism. We now need to get over our complacency about prayer.

Update: final thoughts - the 4,000 smallest churches have an average weekly attendance of 12, i.e. small enough to fit into a decent size front room. On average, CofE churches have a worshipping community of 75, with 54 of those present on any normal Sunday.  This means that on a normal Sunday 1/3 of the congregation is absent. How does a church work and thrive and grow in relationships with this dynamic?

Also, each vicar costs roughly twice the average salary (due to housing, training, pension costs), so 40 people giving the 'Anglican tithe' of 5% to their church could support one. Bump that up to 50 for other central costs (our Diocese has over 50 support staff, sorting out things like training, finance, safeguarding, schools). Then you've got to find money to run the church - resources, building costs, etc. If some of those church members are fairly new, it's not long before you get to the point that the average local church only works if it's overseen by a part-time vicar. Either that or it loses the building (the other major cost centre). We have roughly 7,000 vicars to 16,000 churches, so it has to be that way anyway. Despite no longer being able to sustain the '1 parish 1 vicar' model, CofE structures and expectations are still largely based on it. We're like a fat man after a successful diet still trying to wear the same clothes. Buildings, parish boundaries, the expectation (indeed the law of the land) of weekly communion, committee structures, recognition of lay ministry (Lay Readers are the main accredited role alongside clergy, following 2 years theological training, Deacons get lip service and little more) etc.remain largely untouched from 20, 50, 100 years ago. And every few years, your parish gets blessed with an enforced vacancy, just to stifle any growth you might have managed to muster.

Either the system will collapse under its own wait (scroll up - maybe we're witnessing that already), or we need a decisive shift away from ancient buildings, paid clergy, or an over-clericalised theology and practice of church that stifles lay leadership. Or there'll be a miracle. I'd argue we need both.

update: a few more links at Thinking Anglicans.

PS if you're sharing this on Facebook, please could you tag me in, would be good to see the debate on FB as well as on the blogs.

update 2: At over 7000 views this is now the third-most read post on this blog (out of nearly 2600 posts). That is already more than the average Adult attendance in 2 Dioceses (Sodor and Man and, ironically, Hereford), and also exceeds the number of men confirmed in the CofE last year (6581). As a sign of the times, Facebook is the source for nearly 2/3 of the visits here, comfortably outstripping Twitter and other blogs. 9.50pm make that 9500 views, why so many visitors?

Update 3 Jeremy Marshall has some very perceptive analysis on his blog, worth a read if you are more interested in how we respond to all this.

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.

Strategic Celebration

I'm currently reading through some papers on church growth strategies, for a conference hosted by the Centre for Church Growth later this month. There's lots of helpful and quotable stuff, but I was struck particularly by this:

One vicar said, “I have been here for twenty years, in which time the church has grown hugely and this in a diocese that has shrunk numerically more than almost any other. Yet until our new Diocesan Bishop called on me the other week nobody from the diocese had ever shown the slightest interest in how or why we had grown or whether there might be any lessons or inspiration for others.”

So one key strategy element should be to identify, honour and learn from churches that have been growing numerically, spiritually or in effective service of their community. Bishops and others should seek to learn the lessons and pass them on, and diocesan communications should tell the story and highlight the lessons for the rest of the diocese. Stories should be told in diocesan conferences and synods. All this changes the culture through highlighting what is now seen to be important, improves morale through celebrating what is going well, and spreads good practice through inspiring others. (emphasis mine)

As at the church level, so at the individual level. As leaders we're so used to fire-fighting and problem solving that we forget that a key leadership role is identifying and celebrating success, faithfulness, and fruitfulness. It was great to be in on a meeting this afternoon, talking about some excellent work with younger people in groups of 7-8, and agreeing that it was more important to do that in-depth work well than to grow the numbers but sacrifice the quality. 

In the spirit of that first paragraph, I had a look at our diocesan membership stats in Bath and Wells. A worrying fact - of the 38 churches larger than ours in the Diocese, only 1 grew in any meaningful way last year, 3 were stable, and the rest lost members, some quite dramatically (Did I hear you say 'clergy vacancy?' you'd be right). Trying to find a church that's our size that hasn't plateaued or fallen away is quite a challenge. I was hoping to find some churches I could make contact with and say 'tell us how you're doing it'. But it looks like the questions may have to be a bit different!

All Age Attendance 2001-2010, by Diocese

This is a bit of a test post, since I've had to use 4 different file types* to come up with the above table, starting with last weeks Church of England attendance stats for 2010 (pdf). I'm planning a post for Wednesday with the data for adult and childrens attendance separately, and perhaps a bit of commentary.

If there's any other amateur number crunchers out there, it would be helpful to combine these figures with Bob Jacksons for the 1990s to give the cumulative 1990-2010 figure. My sense is that a drip drip of yearly declines of 1-2% is never enough to distract General Synod from talking about sex for long enough to engage with mission (alert: tongue in cheek comment) (no, not tongue in cheek in that sense, please concentrate).

At least one Diocese has seen adult attendance shrink by 20% in both decades, a cumulative 36% drop. It would be bonkers if they were still trying to make things work in the same way as back in 1990, wouldn't it? ...........?

For info, this is based on the 'average weekly attendance' figure, which is the headline one the CofE likes to use. I'm sure that's nothing to do with the fact that it's higher than the other ones, and so keeps the headline figure above the 1m mark. There doesn't appear at first glance to be a massive difference in the outcomes by the different measures, but life's too short for me to do a thorough comparison by diocese!

(*Geek corner: pdf to Excel - almost by hand - for number crunching, Excel to powerpoint slide, powerpoint slide to Word, saved as picture from Word. There must be an easier way)