Attendance and Giving Rebound, But Churches Still Struggling Post-Pandemic
NEW YORK — Many U.S. churches are rebounding from the pandemic, but many challenges remain, a new report reveals.
The study, funded by the Lilly Endowment and led by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, released on Monday offered a snapshot of this evolving landscape.
This latest study shows a few encouraging signs that a rebound is taking place, but challenges remain. For example, technology has allowed churches to stream services, but most favor in-person worship. At the same time, there is a sense of discontent among the clergy.
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“It is apparent that congregational dynamics are still in a state of flux,” said Scott Thumma, who directed the project. “Churches, and especially clergy, continue in a recovery phase. Even though aspects of church life are rebounding, the destiny of many faith communities is still uncertain.”
The pandemic forced churches across the country to close — as a result of executive orders issued by governors or by judges — when in March 2020 there was a COVID-19 surge across the world. In the United States, public worship was deemed a nonessential activity in most states, while casinos and liquor stores remained open. Even when coronavirus numbers dropped, masking, social distancing and the ability to attend church virtually led to attendance drops.
But the 16-page report pointed to several positive signs, including a rise in attendance, an uptick in donations and more people volunteering within their church communities. The challenges, on the other hand, include an aging demographic among clergy and congregants, a lack of willingness to embrace change and concerns about how to integrate those who attend still insist on attending virtually.
The report — based on 58 Christian denominational groups and 4,809 responses — was conducted via an online survey throughout the first five months of this year. To track comparisons, this latest survey draws on three prior reports from the summer of 2021, winter of 2021 and spring of 2022.
Challenges continue given a late summer COVID surge with hospitalizations up and some people masking again. Both are a reminder that the virus remains a concern.
Attendance and income up, but …
Using a different way of measuring by looking at attendance change from 2020 to 2023, overall, these churches are on average 9% below their prepandemic worship size. But, attendance patterns vary widely depending on the congregation.
For example, in over 50% of churches, combined worship attendance — both in person and virtual — is down, but 33% of churches are now above where they were prepandemic. In addition, 16% of current attendees are new to the congregation since 2020. This follows a decades-long pattern that shows an average increase of about 5% of new attendees each year.
At the same time, overall giving is up based on income figures. In 2020, the average house of worship among those surveyed had a median income of $120,000. By comparison, this latest survey showed median income to be $170,000 — up nearly 42% from three years ago. Even after adjusting for inflation, this still represents a remarkable increase of over 25% since the first year of the pandemic.
The report found that the “more a church emphasized online and electronic giving, the greater their per capita giving rose.”
“This is also true with the 2023 survey,” the study added. “Congregations without online giving have a per capita annual giving of $1,809, those with ‘a little use’ see giving rise to $2,052, ‘some use’ jumps to $2,388 and ‘a lot of use’ results in per capita giving of $2,428 – almost a 30% increase over those not using it.”
Churches still face hurdles
Not everything is looking up for churches. The report found that “essentially, the pre-pandemic and current patterns are nearly identical.” One-third of the 4,809 churches show they have grown in attendance since 2020, while just over 50% report a slight or severe decline from where they were prior to the pandemic.
The typical church, the report found, had 33% of attendees over 65. While not a dramatic rise, the 2021 and 2023 surveys show these trends continuing. At the same time, the average age of clergy increased by a year.
In March, Pew Research Center found that in-person engagement in religious services declined slightly since 2019, a symptom of the growing secularism among the U.S. population.
The share of all U.S. adults who say they attend religious services at least once a month was down from 33% to 30% over that same span. At the same time, the share of U.S. adults who take part in religious services in some way (in person, virtually or both) in a given month remained steady since the pandemic.
In fact, another big challenge was technology and how to integrate those who attended church via Zoom or another online streaming service.
“Hybrid worship with its virtual participation is one such innovative adaptation,” the Lilly Endowment report found. “This model of offering worship services both in-person and virtually across multiple platforms is here to stay in many congregations. The recent data suggests that nearly three-quarters of churches have adopted this model, and that percentage seems to be stabilizing. A very small percentage of churches (2%) are entirely online but 73% offer both in person and virtual worship. This is an astonishing change in a very short time given that only 20% of these churches said they offered online streaming worship in 2019.”
Clemente Lisi is the executive editor at Religion Unplugged. He is the author of “The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet’s Biggest Sporting Event” and previously served as deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and a longtime reporter at The New York Post. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.