Church of England celebrates continued post-pandemic growth

Church of England attendance has grown for a fifth yr in a row, in keeping with an early snapshot of official figures published today. 

Last yr, Church of England congregations were attended by an estimated 1.023 million regular worshippers. In 2019, before the outbreak of the pandemic, regular worshippers stood at 1.11 million. 

It is the fifth yr in a row that attendance on Sunday and across the week has risen – and the primary time that the Church has enjoyed five years of unbroken growth in attendance since current records began. 

These are the preliminary findings of the annual Statistics for Mission report. The full report shall be published within the autumn. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, said: “It is so encouraging to see the ways in which God is at work in our Church.

“With more people coming to services on Sundays and throughout the week, in addition to during Advent, Christmas and Easter, it shows a craving for meaning and connection in our often busy and fractured world.

“I give thanks for the clergy, lay people and volunteers who each week make people feel welcome in every parish across our country.”

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services last yr enjoyed strong attendance numbers, with 1.96 million joining in services on lately – up 5.5%. The remainder of the Advent period also enjoyed an increase of two.0 per cent to 4.8 million in attendance. 

Similarly, Easter attendance rose 7.8 per cent to 1.03 million. 

Weekly attendance at Church of England services saw a slight increase of 0.7 per cent on the previous yr to an estimated 707,000.

This continues to be below the 854,000 individuals who attended Church of England services and acts of worship each week in October 2019, before the pandemic began. It is nonetheless a 15.5% increase on 2021 figures when the country was beginning to emerge from Covid. 

Average Sunday service attendance stood at 590,000 last yr – up 1.6 per cent on 2024 but still below the 690,000 attending in 2019.

Debbie Clinton, the Church of England’s Director for Vision and Strategy, said: “Each of those numbers represents a person journey of religion in Christ, and we have a good time one other yr that shows increasingly more people gathering to worship in local churches, including many for the primary time.

“From our rural villages to our post-industrial towns, in parishes across the country, churches are reaching out to their communities and sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ. Our 2025 statistics are a testament to their hospitality and faithfulness.”