by Ian Paul, Psephizo
Last Friday, the statistics unit of the Church of England released an ‘early snapshot’ of attendance figures, based on the returns from the count that happens in churches in October last year. The headline looked promising:
Attendance at Church of England churches grew for the fourth year in a row last year, preliminary figures show.
Before looking at some of the details, it is worth reflecting on this process of collecting statistics. Some will object to the whole exercise; I have clergy friends who refuse to engage in this at all, since weighing pigs does not make them any heavier. My response is: no, but weighing your pig does tell you whether it is growing fatter or thinner, and might lead you to take action as a result. Others will object to the obsession with numbers, saying that it is people and the gospel that matters. The difficulty with this is that these numbers are people, and counting them tells you about whether the C of E is fulfilling the basic mandate that Jesus gave to all his followers to ‘go and make disciples…’ (Matt 28.19). All through Acts, Luke recounts the work of the Spirit in directing, encouraging, and equipping the apostolic community, and the repeated refrain is that ‘the Lord added…the word grew…’ and so on. And for these reasons, the Archbishops’ Council expresses its goals in terms of numbers as well; it is in one sense legally obliged to do so, since charity trustees must act for the good of the charity based on evidence—and numbers are evidence.
We should also note that it is often the historic denominations, the ones most commonly in decline, who have historic central resources to undertake this kind of exercise. The ‘new’ churches don’t have the resources, and are busy doing other more productive things. This leads to a skewed impression in the media, since these new churches never send out press releases, so it is only the decline of the historic denominations which hit the headlines—though we will return to this in a while.