Christian Century: No shows
The decline in 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 (see graph below). The losses in worshipers year after year were more dramatic than what data from the previous decade would have predicted.
David A. Roozen, reporting on the findings of the 2008 Faith Communities Today survey of American congregations of all types, points out that the "erosion of vitality" holds not only for "oldline" Protestants but also for evangelical Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox and "other world religions." The new century has brought a "retreat for America's congregations," according to Roozen. …
… There is one exception to the trend: churches averaging 1,000 or more in worship are still showing growth in most years, with 2008 marking their largest attendance figures ever. For the past four years, the only tier of United Methodist churches in which at least half of the churches showed an attendance increase is the group of churches averaging 1,000 or more in worship during the previous year.
No one knows the reason for the overall attendance drop, but three possible explanations are: …
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