Church Attendance

“Baptists of past generations were famous, not only for the frequency with which they excluded members, but for the variety of offenses that were considered worthy of exclusion. One of those reasons receiving renewed attention is non-attendance.” - 9 Marks

“A majority of churches didn’t start holding in-person services again until June 2020. By September 2020, 87% met physically, but that dropped to 76% in January 2021, according to Lifeway Research studies conducted at the time. In August 2021, however, only 2% of churches did not meet in person at all.” - Lifeway

“A Pew Research study finds 64% of Americans who typically attend church at least monthly attended a religious service in person in September 2021—up from 43% in March 2021 and 33% in July 2020.” - Lifeway

“Two noticeable reasons stand out among the reasons young adults stop attending church for at least a year between ages 18-22: 32% dropped out because church members seemed judgmental or hypocritical 25% dropped out because they disagreed with the church’s stance on political/social issues” - Lifeway

“New research shows that Americans’ religiosity increasingly doesn’t line up with whether they officially belong to a congregation.” - C.Today

“DJ Soto began preaching in the world of virtual reality (VR) in 2016. He is the founder and bishop of Virtual Reality Church, a church that is intended to be radically inclusive and consistent with Christianity’s long history of adapting to new forms of media.” - C.Leaders

“The National COVID-19 Church Attendance Project (NCCAP) represents our efforts to try to see the bigger picture. By gathering as many individual church stories as possible, from all over the country, we aim to provide a broad sense of the impact of COVID on the church and what the path to recovery has looked like so far.” - C.Today

“To truly understand how healthy we are as a church we have to know how we are caring for the three circles of people we are called to shepherd; our neighbors, our followers and our disciples.” - C.Leaders

“Our information at this point is both early and anecdotal, but we are hearing from numerous pastors that many church members who were frequent in their church attendance are now once-a-monthers. This observation lends itself to many questions. Is this trend temporary, one that will improve as COVID concerns wane?” - Thom Rainer