Good News as Church Going Rises
There has been a rise in people locally going to church. The latest figures for church attendance at churches within the Diocese of Hereford shows a small rise in attendance and a large rise in people joining electoral rolls. The figures are for 2010.
The figures show a 2% rise in average weekly attendance and average Sunday attendance at services but the surprise is the more than 5% rise in those people putting their names on Electoral Rolls, the list of local or committed parishioners who vote for the Officers of their local church.
“This is good news again and having looked back, there are more people in our churches than there was ten years ago at the start of the new millennium. The constant refrain of churches shrinking is not true here,” said Anni Holden, spokeswoman for the Diocese. “It’s also good to know that people are returning to Electoral Rolls, which can show commitment to your local church even if you do not go along every week.”
The latest local church attendance figures from the Church of England for 2010 show that approaching 1.7 million people continue to attend Church of England services each month, and around 1.1 million attend one of the Church of England’s 16,000 churches as part of a typical week.
The figures additionally highlight for the first time the results of innovative Church initiatives, such as the Fresh Expressions movement and the Archbishops’ Council’s Weddings Project. Following extensive work by the Weddings Project and the introduction of the 2008 Marriage Measure, marriages in the Church of England increased by four per cent in 2010.
“We do not yet have the local figures for marriages in church but we have consistently had seven hundred plus weddings in this Diocese over the last ten years, which appears unaffected by the rise of secular venues,” added Anni. “Our beautiful historic churches, generally in stunning settings, probably has something to do with that!”
The full statistics are available online at:
http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics.aspx 9 out of 10 Church of England parish churches completed attendance counts, which have been verified across all 16,000 Church of England churches by the Research and Statistics Department of the Archbishops' Council.