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Statistics show increased giving and ordinations

15 September 2006

Church Statistics 2004/5

 

I - Finance

Average weekly giving by Church of England parishioners hit the £5.00 mark for the first time in 2004. Statistics released today show that direct giving to parish churches averaged exactly £5.00 per electoral roll member per week and tax-efficient giving increased to an average of £8.00 per subscriber per week. The number of parishioners subscribing to tax-efficient giving through Gift Aid was a record 518,000.

“Achieving £5 a week is quite a milestone,” said John Preston, the Church’s National Stewardship and Resources Officer,  “and shows that church members give generously to charitable causes compared with the population at large. But it is still somewhere short of the five per cent of disposable income recommended by the General Synod since 1978. Average giving to the church is now just over three per cent of average incomes.

“The five per cent aim was based on the Christian tradition of tithing or giving away 10 per cent of income and the recommendation was to give half of that to the Church in thanks for God's gifts and half to other charitable works.”

The total income of Parochial Church Councils in 2004, the figures show, rose to £759million. Total expenditure rose to £726million, of which more than £45million was devoted to charitable giving by the PCCs, eight per cent of their recurring expenditure of £568million.

 

II – Vocations

Official Church Statistics, published today on the Church of England website, also show increases in the number of clergy being trained and ordained. The Church ordained 505 new clergy in 2005 (267 men and 238 women), the highest number since 2002. At the same time, 578 future clergy were recommended in 2005 for ordination training, maintaining the upward trend since the mid-‘90s. In 1994, 408 candidates were recommended for training.

A new table in this year’s statistics shows there are 20,259 ministers licenced by Church of England dioceses, including clergy, readers and Church Army officers: one minister for every 2,500 people in England. The total does not include some 1600 chaplains to prisons, hospitals, the armed forces and in education, nor around 6500 retired ministers with permission to officiate.

 

III - Attendance

Attendance figures for 2004 were provisionally issued in January and have not changed. They show a mixed picture for trends in church attendance (PR3/06 ).

Regular Sunday church attendance fell by one per cent – largely offsetting a similar increase the previous year. But weekly and monthly churchgoing held steady and the number of children and young people at services rose by two per cent.

The new statistics confirm that more than 1.7 million people attend Church of England church and cathedral worship each month while around 1.2 million attend each week – on Sunday or during the week - and just over one million each Sunday.

The figures for 2004 show that:

· Average Sunday attendance fell by one per cent to 1,010,000, largely offsetting a similar increase the previous year. (2003: 1,017,000; 2002: 1,005,000).

· Average weekly attendance held steady at 1,186,000, following the previous year’s one per cent increase. (2003: 1,187,000; 2002: 1,170,000).

· Average monthly attendance also held steady at 1,707,000, following the previous year’s one per cent increase. (2003: 1,704,000; 2002: 1,682,000).

· The average number of children and young people at services rose by two per cent to 235,000. (2003: 230,000; 2002: 229,000).

The traditional ‘usual Sunday attendance’ measure held steady at 903,000, following a two per cent drop the previous year. (2003: 901,000; 2002: 919,000).

 

Other features of the 2004 statistics:

Sixteen dioceses* saw annual increases in their church attendance figures for 2004.

Seventeen dioceses saw growth in their church attendance figures over the two years 2002 to 2004 **. Over the most recent two years for which figures are available, overall national church attendance levels grew slightly by one per cent.

Over the two years 2002 to 2004 church attendance among adults grew in sixteen dioceses while in almost half, 21 dioceses, attendance at worship by children and young people grew. Over this two year period the national increase in church attendance among adults was one per cent and among children and young adults attending worship was three per cent.

Separate figures for children and young people attending other church sponsored activities were collected for the first time in 2002/3 and revealed that comparable numbers of children and young people under sixteen years of age attend activities other than worship connected with the church. Over a typical month 375,000 children and young people attend such activities compared to 437,000 who attend church services.

Attendance at festival services on Easter Day/ Eve and Christmas Day/ Eve 2004 remained at 1.5 million and 2.6 million respectively. Despite Christmas falling on different days each year and Easter being a ‘moveable feast’, church attendance levels on these occasions have remained constant over recent years and considerably higher than attendance at weekly church services.

In 2004, the parish electoral rolls stood at 1.3 million continuing the small annual increase of two per cent as people are steadily added to the roll by parishes until the major revision every six years. The size of the parish electoral rolls although similar overall to adult church attendance over a typical month, masks very different practices across the Church of England parishes and dioceses.

The number of baptisms in 2004 remained at a similar level to 2003 while the pattern of decline in confirmation numbers continued. The number of funerals decreased while the number of marriages increased slightly.

 

Notes:

 

· *The 16 dioceses that saw annual increases in their all age weekly and monthly church attendance figures for 2004 are Bath and Wells, Birmingham, Blackburn, Bradford, Canterbury, Chester, Coventry, Derby, Durham, Ely, Exeter, Lichfield, Lincoln, London, Wakefield and Winchester.

· ** The 17 dioceses that saw an increase in their all age weekly and monthly levels of church attendance over 2002 to 2004 are Blackburn, Canterbury, Chester, Chichester, Coventry, Derby, Durham, Ely, Guildford, Hereford, Leicester, Lichfield, London, Peterborough, Sodor and Man, Winchester and Europe.

· Other key statistics are: 72 per cent of people in England are Christian (Government census 2001) 86 per cent of adults have attended a church/place of worship in the past year (ORB 2005).

· Church attendance at Christmas has increased by around a third in the past four years, according to research published in December 2005. See PR96/05. This research is supported by anecdotal evidence from Christmas 2005. See PR05/06.

· Cathedral attendances have also increased in recent years. See PR53/06

And cathedrals saw increased numbers at Easter 2005.

 

· In the tables relating to attendance at church services the following measures of church attendance are used:

Average Sunday attendance: the average number of attendees at Sunday church services, typically over a four-week period in October.

Average weekly attendance: the average number of attendees at church services throughout the week, typically over a four-week period in October.

Each of the above measures are provided separately for adults and children/young people aged under 16 years. The highest and lowest counts over the four-week period are calculated as follows:

Highest Sunday/weekly attendance: the sum of the highest Sunday (weekly) attendances over the four-week period. The 'highest' figures on the accompanying tables are proxies (in fact under-estimates) for monthly attendance levels.

Lowest Sunday/weekly attendance: the sum of the lowest Sunday (weekly) attendances over the four-week period.

Attendance figures are only included where local churches held at least one church-based service (which included adult presence) during the week under examination.

The traditional usual Sunday attendance (uSa) measure is interpreted differently across the dioceses and is therefore not regarded as statistically accurate as a comparison.

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