Church of England sees regular attendance rise but churchgoers struggle to make traditional Sunday services

The number of overall churchgoers rose in the past year, despite a decline in attendance at traditional Sunday services, the latest figures reveal.

The Church of England’s annual survey said that the number of those attending at least once a month grew by around 2,000 to 1.138 million churchgoers last year.

At the same time, regular Sunday attendance fell by 2.9 per cent to 756,000 and regular weekly attendance also fell by 2.9 per cent to 895,000.

Various clerics told The Telegraph that people’s busy modern lives – which increasingly mean working across seven days of the week – were partly behind the Sunday decline.

However, that hasn't phased regular attendees, who have taken advantage of new initiatives to hold services at more convenient times and places for congregants.

Reverend Linda Tomkinson, who started the Freedom Church Mereside in Blackpool two years ago, spends her Sunday mornings at a prayer tent at a nearby car boot sale to address worshipers.

She also holds her Sunday service at 4.30pm so parents can attend after taking their children to sports or doing their Sunday shop.

The service now attracts a congregation of 35 regulars whereas only around three of the congregation had attended a service before the church was founded. 

“Rather than just opening the doors and expecting people to come to us we are going and engaging with them where they are,” said Rev Tomkinson.

“Where we are, we could see people were going to the car boot sale on Sunday morning in their droves so rather than compete with it we thought we would go to it and bring faith there.”

The Rt Rev David Walker, the Bishop of Manchester, partly attributed the general decline in Sunday attendance to the frenetic pace of modern life.

“It is changing life patterns,” he said. “I am old enough to remember when nothing much happened on a Sunday but things have changed radically. 

“Frankly people are very tired by Sunday. Even if you don’t have to go to work (on Sunday ), with people of working age holding down a job, people just want a rest. 

“Which is why some churches are moving to have more activities mid-week. I think we need to be more flexible around that.”

Another way the Church is trying to reach its increasingly fragmented flock is via social media. 

For instance the Church’s Royal Wedding prayer and videos for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were watched more than five million times online.

The figures also showed that Christmas services were enjoying a resurgence as last year more people attended than in any year since 2007. Festive worshipers grew further to their largest number in a decade to 2.68 million in 2017, a yearly increase of 3.4 percent.

Combined with figures for special services in churches during the Advent period, including carol services, there were nearly eight million attendances over the festive season.

Rt Rev Walker said he felt Christmas’s rising popular was partly due to people feeling they could connect with their faith without the pressure of having to attend weekly.

He said: “One of the big things with Christmas is it doesn’t have to have a long sermon, it can be about the hymns, the traditional readings, the lights.

“My mother-in-law was always scared to go to church in her village as she thought she would be expected to go the next week. At Christmas you can go with a lot of other people and the vicar won’t be banging on your door the next Sunday.”