Church attendance in the Diocese of Oxford grew by 1.6% between October 2023 and October 2024, with child attendance exceeding pre-pandemic projections by 17%.
Smaller churches saw the strongest increases, and adding services boosted attendance by an average of 12 people per week. Growth in child attendance, particularly in Dorchester archdeaconry, was supported by new youth ministers and clergy prioritising family outreach. How can we continue building on these encouraging trends to support our church communities?
Dr Bev Botting (Data Analyst, Diocese of Oxford, with support from Dr Ken Eames (Senior Statistical Researcher, Church of England) and Ven Bob Jackson (Church Growth Consultant), have compiled a report for the Diocese of Oxford comparing church attendance in October 2024 with 2023 and 2019.
Jump to: Summary | Background | Response rate | Does attendance matter? | 2023 vs 2024 | 2019 vs 2024 | Different components of attendance
1. Summary
Whilst attendance in October 2024 has not continued the large percentage increases seen in the years since the pandemic, attendance as measured by the Average Weekly Attendance (AWA) saw a small increase of 1.6% between October 2023 and October 2024 overall in the Diocese of Oxford. This gives hope that it is possible to continue to grow our church through new initiatives and learning from one another.
The small increase in attendance of 1.6% between October 2023 and October 2024, was not reflected in a separate analysis comparing 2024 October attendance figures with those for 2019; this showed attendance in 2024 at 84% of the 2019 level, the same level as seen in 2023. This suggests that we have now reached the end of post-pandemic recovery.
If the pre-pandemic trends (from 2014 to 2019) had continued, our estimates show that in 2024 Adult AWA was less than 1% below the projected pre-pandemic trend. Child AWA exceeded the projected trend figure in 2023 and in 2024 was 17% above the projected trend.
The increase between 2023 and 2024 was lower for children than for adults.
The smallest and small churches saw the biggest increase between 2023 and 2024.
The increase was not seen across all archdeaconries, with Oxford and Dorchester seeing small decreases in AWA, showing the fragile nature of this small overall increase.
Despite an overall decrease in attendance, Dorchester saw an increase in their child AWA between 2023 and 2024. Largely the churches showing an increase were associated with a new youth minister or new clergy with an emphasis on working with children. Some of the churches in the Archdeaconry that saw the biggest decreases in child AWA were associated with losing a children and family worker or had moved into an interregnum during the period.
Between 2023 and 2024 the number of services held across the diocese remained at the 2023 level. However, some churches increased their number of services and others reduced them. On average if churches reduced their number of services between 2023 and 2024, this was associated with a fall in their AWA, whereas on average if they increased their number of services this was associated with an increase in their AWA by an additional 12 extra people per week.
Background to the report
The main purpose of this exercise was to compare attendance in October 2024 with 2023 and with the last ‘normal’ pre-pandemic year of 2019, to see what could be learned about how church attendance has changed over this period, and to help understand how the churches could grow and develop in the future.
This report is a mix of objective statistical analysis and some contextual discussion following conversations with colleagues in the diocese.
Response rate
This study links information for 486 churches in the comparison between October 2023 and October 2024. This represents 40 more churches than were available for analysis last year, and 60% of the 809 churches in the diocese. The comparisons between 2019 and 2024 link information for 446 churches, which represents 11 more churches than last year and 55% of all churches in the diocese. The total number of churches responding to our request for October 2024 data was even greater than this, but some responses could not be included in this study as either they had not responded in 2019 or 2023 (so their figures could not be linked) or a church had included figures for another church in one of the years but not the other. Finally, data was excluded from a few churches that had reported no attendance in either 2019 or 2024 but, knowing the churches, we believe it was unlikely they had no attendance during October.
The original response rate to our request to complete their October 2024 figures earlier than usual was 70%. This is a magnificent achievement in such a tight time scale and was an increase on the 65% achieved in 2023. We are very grateful to those involved in providing their church’s data. This result also shows the practicality of collecting and analysing any ‘Statistics for Mission’ data in a short time-period in the future.
An analysis of our previous early October 2022 analysis, compared with the final figures published by the national church in November 2023, showed that our early analysis of change in AWA between 2019 and 2022 had been within one percent of the final figure. We saw a similar close agreement between early estimates and final figures in October 2023. Therefore, we can have confidence in the methodology behind our early October analysis, especially as for 2024 it is based on more churches than were used in 2023. This year we have a high response rate, and we cannot see any biased pattern in the churches not responding, so we have confidence that our sample is representative of the whole diocese. Of course, when the full figures are published in late 2025, they may show slightly different patterns.
Jump to: Summary | Background | Response rate | Does attendance matter? | 2023 vs 2024 | 2019 vs 2024 | Different components of attendance
Does attendance matter?
The mission of the Christian church is not so much to attract crowds to worship events as to make disciples and serve the Kingdom. But how do we know if we are fulfilling our mission effectively?
Counting attendance is one important pointer, an indicator of the numerical size of the Body of Christ. It helps monitor our success in holding and making disciples. It can show where we are making and where we are losing disciples. It can inform and challenge churches and dioceses about how we go about our mission in the future. Church attendance numbers do not tell us everything, but they can tell us quite a lot.
How does attendance in 2024 compare with 2023?
There has been a very small increase in attendance as measured by AWA in our diocese of 1.6% between October 2023 and 2024. The measure ‘Average weekly attendance' figures are the average over the first four weeks of October, including weeks where the number is zero. If this increase was seen across all our churches in the diocese, it would represent an extra 500 people attending our churches. This may not be 500 people new to church; instead, it may be people coming to church more frequently each month, for example.
Linking final data for our diocese from October 2023 with our early sample for October 2024 gives the following percentage changes between the two years:
% change AWA 2023 to 2024
| All age | 1.6% |
| Adult | 1.7% |
| Child | 1.2% |
The small increase in AWA between 2023 and 2024 has been higher among adults, with the AWA for adults increasing by 1.7% between 2023 and 2024, compared with an increase of 1.2% for children.
How does attendance in 2024 compare with 2019?
Last year I reported that overall attendance in October 2023 was 84% of the October 2019 figures. This comparison enabled us to measure recovery in attendance following the pandemic with the last attendance figure immediately before the pandemic. Attendance in October 2023 also represented a further recovery compared with October 2022 of 5.6%, or an average of an extra 3 people attending each church each week.
The small increase in attendance of 1.6% between October 2023 and October 2024, did not further increase the 84%, partly due to this being a slightly different sample of linked church information compared to 2023. These figures are shown in Figure 1 below. Therefore, this suggests that we have now reached the end of post-pandemic attendance recovery.
Nevertheless, between 2023 and 2024 we have seen some churches grow their congregations of adults and children in different ways. Further growth in attendance is possible and will be through new initiatives and learning from those churches that have introduced new initiatives and seen growth.
Jump to: Summary | Background | Response rate | Does attendance matter? | 2023 vs 2024 | 2019 vs 2024 | Different components of attendance
How have the different components of attendance fared between 2023 and 2024?
Size of church
In this analysis I grouped churches by quintile of diocesan AWA attendance in 2023 (1= 0.25 to 9, 2=9.25 to 19.25 ,3= 19.5 to 34.5, 4=34.75 to 74.75, and 5= 75 and higher(of which in our diocesan sample 17 are over 200, and of these 4 are 300-500, 2 are 501-700 and 1 Oxford church, St Ebbe’s, is over 1000).
However, these equal sized groups are different from how people generally view ‘size of church’, so I also analysed the information by whether the churches were smallest (up to 9.0), small (9.25 to 34.5, medium (34.75 to 74.75, large (75 to 149.75) or largest (150 or higher). As a result, the highest quintile included both large and largest churches, and the 4th quintile equated to ‘medium’ churches.
Our previous report showed that the attendance recovery following the pandemic varied by church size – the smaller the church, on average, the stronger the recovery. The changes in attendance for each size of church by both classifications is given below. In both cases, the smallest churches saw an increase in attendance of about one third. However, in part this is due to a statistical phenomenon known as ‘regression to the mean’ which means that the smallest churches can only stay the smallest or get larger, and the largest churches can only stay the largest or get smaller, whereas those in the middle categories could move in either direction.
The small churches saw a small increase of 1%, but when separated into deciles those in decile 2 saw an increase of 5% and those in decile 3 saw a very small decrease. Overall, those in deciles 4 and 5 saw a small increase, but when the decile 5 figures are separated into large and largest churches, the large churches saw a small decrease in comparison with the largest churches seeing an increase. This reinforces the message that while overall there is a small increase in attendance between 2023 and 2024, this varies by different characteristics and the changes are not always an increase.
Archdeaconry
Further evidence of the fragility of the increase seen in AWA between 2023 and 2024 is shown by the change in AWA between 2023 and 2024 by Archdeaconry.
Within an overall increase of 1.6% across the diocese, Berkshire saw a 5.4% increase, Buckingham a 1.7% increase, Dorchester a 0.6% decrease and Oxford a 2.4% decrease.
The large increase in Berkshire was due to an increase in adult attendance as their child AWA fell by 2.1% over the period. When considering the ten churches with the largest increase in AWA between 2023 and 2024, all had an AWA in 2023 of over 110. Eight of the ten churches reported more services on average each week in 2024 than in 2023, and three of the churches had been in interregnum in 2023: an induction service for one of these churches had contributed to their increase in AWA in 2024. Of the ten churches with the largest decrease in AWA, seven were classified as large or largest. Eight churches reported fewer services on average each week than they had held in 2023.
Dorchester saw a decrease of 2.3% in adult AWA between 2023 and 2024 but an increase in child AWA of 12.7%. Of the 20 churches with the biggest increase in child AWA between 2023 and 2024, 8 reported more services on average each week in 2024 than in 2023. Four of the churches had begun to work with a new children and families worker or a childrens’ minister during the year. Of the ten churches with the biggest decrease in AWA between 2023 and 2024, two had lost a children’s worker during the year, and eight reported fewer services on average than they had in 2023.
Oxford archdeaconry saw an overall decrease of 2.4%, with a small fall of 0.7% in adult attendance and a large fall of 14.5% in child attendance. Oxford archdeaconry, however, is much smaller in terms of number of churches than the other archdeaconries, so large changes seen in just one or two large churches can affect the AWA of the archdeaconry. Much of the fall in adult attendance is due to one church having an unusual large memorial service in 2023 which inflated their adult AWA by over 100; the large fall to 2024 was as their adult AWA returned to a more usual level. Similarly, the large fall in child attendance was largely due to a fall of one third in the child attendance in one church from 151 to 108.
Change in number of services
In the first analysis in this series, comparing 2019 October AWA with that in 2022, we saw that the decrease in AWA between the two years was associated with a similar fall in the number of Sunday services offered by churches. So, one explanation for the fall in AWA was that rather than there being fewer people at each service, the average number of adults at a Sunday service was the same as it was in 2019; the total might be down because there were fewer services.
Between 2022 and 2023 the number of services offered across the diocese did not change, still being at 82% of the 2019 number, so it was suggested that one explanation for the increase in AWA between 2022 and 2023 was due to small increases in the average attendance at each service rather than in the number of services offered.
Between 2023 and 2024 the number of services held across the diocese remained at the 2023 level. However, some churches increased their number of services and others reduced them. On average if churches reduced their number of services between 2023 and 2024, this was associated with a fall in their AWA, whereas on average if they increased their number of services this was associated with an increase in their AWA by an additional 12 extra people attending per week.
In October 2024, 25% of the churches in our sample no longer had at least one Sunday service each week. This was less than 1% higher than in 2023 based on the same sample of churches. None of the large or largest churches in 2024 had fewer than one service per week on average. In 2024 20% of our churches held exactly one service each week on average and 55% held two or more services on average each week.
Comparison with 2019
Last year I reported that overall attendance in October 2023 was 84% of the October 2019 figures. This comparison enabled us to measure recovery in attendance following the pandemic with the last attendance figure immediately before the pandemic. Attendance in October 2023 also represented a further recovery compared with October 2022 of 5.6%, or an average of an extra 3 people attending each church each week.
The small increase in attendance of 1.6% between October 2023 and October 2024, did not further increase the 84%.
Longer time trends
Figures 3 and 4 show October 2024 attendance data together with projected pre-pandemic trends. These trends are not telling us what would have happened if there had not been a pandemic, but they show what would had happened if the pre-pandemic trends (from 2014 to 2019) had continued. The 2024 figures are estimated from our sample of linked 2023 and 2024 information and assume the remaining churches in our diocese show the same overall average changes in Adult and Child AWA.
These estimates show that in 2024 Adult AWA, while still being below its 2019 level, was less than 1% below the projected pre-pandemic trend. Child AWA, however, exceeded the projected trend figure in 2023 and in 2024 the Child AWA was 17% above the projected trend. However, it should be noted that child attendance was declining at a faster rate than adult attendance prior to the pandemic.
