Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 In a recent report from Christianity Today, there are some alarming statistics about church attendance. Here's what it means for your church and what you need to know. You are listening to the Reach Right podcast, the show dedicated to helping your church reach more people and grow. But hey guys, I'm Thomas.
Speaker 2 00:00:20 And I'm Ian.
Speaker 0 00:00:21 Hey. And today we're talking about post Pandemic Church statistics and attendance statistics after the pandemic. I think it should be a, a good conversation because I don't know if you know this or not, but fewer people are going to church after the pandemic. It's kind of everywhere. So I'm being sarcastic, I assume. Yeah, <laugh>, you probably do know something about that, but yeah, the data actually backs it up. So if you're sitting there feeling like, oh my goodness, you know, we we're, how do we get back to where we were? Right. Um, the sad reality is almost nobody, or at least on averages speaking, very few churches are at their 2019 levels here in 2023. Uh, yeah. And I think it's, uh, you know, it's kind of telling There's a lot to it though. Yes. We just, uh, saw some stats on that, uh, and we wanted to dig into some of those and have some conversation around it.
Speaker 2 00:01:08 Yeah. And there's always hope, uh, obviously for churches, uh, churches are still growing, but this has of course, impacted attendance. The pandemic did. And, uh, and there's the hope is in just understanding, um, kind of what has happened, the trends and everything, and, uh, just that'll kind of give, churches should give churches guidance on strategies and things. They can, yeah, they can do a little different maybe.
Speaker 0 00:01:32 Yeah. So all this is from a Christianity Today study, uh, that they found. And so we'll put a link in the notes here so you can take a look and know that we're not just pulling this out. But yeah, I don't, we uncovered some, uh, I think some pretty interesting questions, I think around this, right, Ian? Yeah. Anything we want to dive into?
Speaker 2 00:01:47 Yeah, so I guess first one would be just, you know, how did the pandemic, uh, affect overall religious attendance and we, I guess use that broad word religious attendance, cuz this is just not tracking one specific kind of church or denomination or whatever, right. So Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:02:03 Yeah. It's not, it's not just referring to evangelicals, although, you know, there is some information on this, on, uh, based on denomination and, uh, some of that kind of stuff. But really, uh, there is not a single demographic of Americans that we could find that did not lose church attendance, uh, after the pandemic here. So this is the true for people that identify as liberal. It's true for people that identify as conservative. It's true for people that are old. It's true for people that are young. It's true for people that are married, that are unmarried, east west, all over the country, poor wealthy, across the board in every single category. Fewer people are going to church. And so my my thought on this is that I, I think it's easy to sometimes say that this is just a matter of the habit being broken, that like, yeah, people used to go to church every Sunday, they got out of the habit and now they have to get back back into it.
Speaker 0 00:02:59 Yeah. And that's kind of like my pastoral mind wants to say, yeah, that's, that's the ticket. It's just that, uh, I, I believe in what we do as a church and this is what we're all about, so people will come back. We just have to keep working and keep waiting on that. Yeah. Yeah. I think that it was the sign of something bigger that was already kind of in the works. Yeah. I think even without a pandemic, almost all these categories would be down, maybe not down quite as drastically, but I think that the pandemic gave people an excuse or I guess a reason, uh, to not show up and not have the guilt that usually comes with showing up to church, not showing up to church week in and week out. And so not coming back doesn't really carry that same level of guilt because over three years they maybe lost touch with some of these people and Right. People stopped looking for them at church every Sunday. And so, uh, I guess you could say in a sense it's a habit thing, but I think it was a sign of something bigger that was kind of bubbling under the surface already.
Speaker 2 00:03:54 Yeah, no, I, I agree. I think we've kind of got a sense of that for sure. And we were seeing some of these things happen pre pandemic too, as far as some of the stats and, and how attendance was, was going. So who never attends church now?
Speaker 0 00:04:10 <laugh>? Yeah. I mean this is one of those things where that's, those are growing groups across the board too. And so it's like, what's really amazing is that pre pandemic, I have some of the numbers here in front of me that, um, uh, all Americans, uh, 30, uh, 25% of them identified as never going to church. Like they never attended church after the pandemic. That number is up to 33%, never go to church there. Yeah. So that's a, you know, it might seem small. That's 8%. It's not a huge, but that's a huge shift that we're talking about millions and millions of more people that now say they never go to church. Yeah. And there's, there used to be kind of a stigma with that. And it's much higher, you know, based on groups. So people that identify as liberal, uh, yeah. Before the pandemic, it's 31% of them never went to church. Now 46% never go to church. Okay. So nearly half of people that identify as liberal, but even on the conservative end. So people that identify as conservative, 14% of them before the pandemic never went to church and now 20% of them never go to church. Uh, so Wow. A huge shift in those areas.
Speaker 2 00:05:14 That's interesting. That's interesting. Now you mentioned at the beginning, uh, when we started that, you know, this is affected all kinds of people and you know, age and everything, but was there one like specific age group that uh, this has affected at, you know, attendance has been affected with more?
Speaker 0 00:05:31 Yeah, I mean, so it's affected everybody. So old and young is all the same, but the numbers, uh, in the, for young people, so let's call it, it wasn't by generation, but it was just people under 30. Uh, those numbers were really stark. So 30% of people under 30 self-report that they are now attending church less regularly. Gotcha. 70% say they're attending the same or more than they were pre pandemic. So, ah, on that end, it's very high for, uh, the younger among us, uh, in our age demographic in that 30 to 50 age. Ian. Yeah. Uh, 24% say that they're attending less frequently, and it just kind of goes down from there. 19% of people that are, uh, 50 to 64 and over 65, 16%, uh, are attending less frequently. I think there was some hope for a while that, uh, that we would see a shift there because, um, the, because older people, as we all know, were more susceptible to Covid and some of its implications there. And so Right. They were the most likely to not be at church right away, like in the middle of the pandemic. Yeah. Uh, but they have actually risen and they are now leading the charge. They are, while they're still down 16% now they're 16% less likely to go to church now than they were before. Yeah. Uh, it is, it's, I guess it's a good thing that some of the older among us are, are going more often at least.
Speaker 2 00:06:51 Oh yeah. Absolutely. Well, good. So I mean, guess all of this here, you know, what are churches take away from this? You know, what, what, what can they do? What, uh, what should the focus be?
Speaker 0 00:07:03 Yeah. If I were to give someone some advice, I just think that it's, we have to look at new wineskins, right? I think that this is something that is, if you're, if you're still in that boat of waiting for the pre pandemic world to return, and I, I talked to fewer and fewer pastors that think this way, but I do still encounter some that are thinking this. It's not coming back. And we may not even say it with our mouths, but if we're still doing things exactly the same way we were in 2019, I think we're missing a huge opportunity. Yeah. I think that online ministry, and that doesn't necessarily mean having your services fully online and Right, right. And doing everything. And that kind of, I I'm talking about just taking the internet and taking the ability to reach people during the week, taking that more seriously.
Speaker 0 00:07:47 That is the big opportunity because we're not going back to that. Listen, yeah. Since 2019 and through the pandemic, this is when this rise of short form video has really exploded. Yeah. And that is a huge opportunity that churches have right now to disciple people, whether they come to your church or not. You can disciple people in 52nd chunks on TikTok or Instagram reels or YouTube shorts. That's a huge opportunity for churches. So I think the moral is we're not going back to that time. So what are we gonna do Yeah. To reach people and disciple people in this new post pandemic world. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:08:22 That's good. And I think just, uh, being able to shift and, and pivot, um, you know, adapt all of that, um, pastors and ministry leaders should be ready for.
Speaker 0 00:08:32 That's it. Yeah. I hope this has been helpful. If it has, let us know. You can rate, reviews, subscribe, do all those things. It means a lot to us. Helps us to get the word out there about this reach Right. Podcast. Uh, thanks guys for being a part of the Reach Wright family, and we'll see you next.
