Saturday Lagniappe: ‘Church Worship Attendance Is… Up! (For the First Time in Years)’ And More
Church Worship Attendance Is… Up! (For the First Time in Years)
A new Hartford Institute report shows median in-person worship attendance increasing from 65 to 70 since just before the pandemic. That five-person gain may sound small, but it represents a 7.7% increase and moves the median congregation above its pre-pandemic level. Still, the story requires careful interpretation. This is not a return to the church landscape of 2000, when the median congregation had 137 in worship. It is better understood as a modest but meaningful inflection point—encouraging enough to notice, but not strong enough yet to call a trend.
The Missing Person in Worship Planning
Worship is a central part of the life of every kind of congregation, and there is a range of mindsets to bring to the planning of worship. It may be to do the kind of worship our church always does in the best way possible. It may be to communicate a distinctive message for a season or a sermon theme.
Another important way to begin planning is from the perspective of the worshipers and especially those attending for the first time.
Are You Glad When Passing the Peace Ends?
I first learned about the ancient practice of passing the peace in seminary. Since then, whenever I have been part of a service that included it, even when practiced poorly, I have kept in mind its place in the church’s history and liturgical tradition. It grows out of biblical sources such as the greeting of Jesus in John 20:19, “Peace be with you.” By the mid-second century, the practice was common in Christian worship, normally prior to the Eucharist. Later the custom faded but was revived in the mid-twentieth century. It was this revival of interest that was included in the study of worship when I was in seminary.
The passing of the peace had not been part of the United Methodist communion liturgy prior to 1972, but it was included in “A Service of Word and Table” adopted in that year. While some churches use the passing of the peace only when the Eucharist is celebrated, it is common for the practice to occur in every worship service in many churches. In the Episcopal Church, when the 1979 Book of Common Prayer replaced the 1928 edition as their official liturgical book, the new edition included the passing of the peace. While some thought this must be a new element of worship, they soon learned of its place in liturgical history.
Are Altar Calls Biblical? 4 Mistakes That Quietly Distort the Gospel
The sermon ends, the music softens, and the pastor asks people to come forward. For millions of Christians, that is how church is supposed to close. Some can still name the night they walked the aisle.
But a familiar habit can hide a serious question. Is your altar call helping people trust Christ, or is it quietly adding something to the gospel that was never there?
An altar call can point people straight to Jesus. Handled carelessly, it blurs the very message it exists to deliver. Most of the danger sits in habits pastors rarely stop to examine. Below is what an altar call is, where it came from, four ways it goes wrong, and how to invite people to Christ without your method getting in the way.
Altar calls are far more common in Baptist, Methodist, and other churches whose practices were influenced by the revivals of the nineteenth century than in Anglican and Episcopal churches where they are extremely rare.
Anglo-Catholic parishes embody ‘appreciation for the mystical’
Worship at St. Thomas’s Anglican Church, a historic Anglo-Catholic parish in downtown Toronto, invariably provokes one of a few strong reactions from newcomers, rector Fr. Nathan Humphrey says.
Some people, he says, ask him, “Wow, where has this been all my life?” Others who come from Protestant or evangelical backgrounds can have a strong knee-jerk reaction against worship that seems to them “too Catholic,” even “weird” or “idolatrous.”
“I don’t think anybody ever comes to the service at St. Thomas’s and has the attitude of ‘meh,’” Humphrey says. “A good Anglo-Catholic parish worth its salt won’t ever result in a ‘meh’ reaction from somebody who comes through the doors, because there’s always a particular identity that it’s conveying.”
As Rob Smith observes in his book Leading Christians to Christ: Evangelizing the Church (Morehouse Publishing, 1990), it is not uncommon to find in churches with this kind of ambience, churchgoers who, while they have fallen in love with the church’s ambience have not fallen in love with the church’s Lord. They are converts to the church’s ambience but not to Christ. To be fair, a church can adopt all of the elements associated with so-called “contemporary worship” and experience the same problem.
Want to Reach the World? Evangelize the Church.
But so is the reverse: the world needs the church to be evangelized.
10 Signs You Belong to a Healthy Church
Good lighting, a tight band and a confident preacher are standard equipment at churches of almost every size now. A livestream lets you preview a dozen congregations from your couch before you visit one.
Church health shows up in places a camera rarely goes. Watch who is allowed to tell the pastor no. Notice what happens when a member disappears for three Sundays. Ask whether the person beside you in the pew could explain the Gospel to a coworker on Monday.
Here are 10 biblical signs of a healthy church, one question to ask about each, the red flags that should concern you and what to do if your church comes up short.
Catholic, evangelical leaders condemn public execution plan of Fort Hood gunman
‘The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people,’ Archbishop Paul S. Coakley said in a statement.
This is the kind of thing one might expect in a Communist country like North Korea or an Islamist country like Afghanistan or Iran. Such public executions are designed to intimidate the population and to suppress opposition to the regime. They are not meant to be a deterent to crime. It shows the direction in which the present administration seeks to take the United States.
Anglican Watch Raises Alarm Over Cathedral of St. John the Divine Finances, Spending Priorities
Anglican Watch, the unofficial watchdog of the Episcopal Church, today raised serious concerns about the finances and spending priorities of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York, citing financial information showing a multimillion-dollar structural deficit alongside substantial expenditures for an Episcopal credit union, plans for a $ 70,000 kitchen renovation at the dean’s residence, and the proposed outsourcing of two full-time maintenance positions.
Financial information reviewed by Anglican Watch projects approximately $ 10.2 million in FY26 revenue against $ 17.7 million in expenditures, producing an operating deficit of approximately $ 7.6 million before an endowment draw.
Purgatory and the Anglican Tradition (Part 1)
Among Anglicans, few words provoke as much suspicion as “purgatory.” Article XXII is cited, and the matter is deemed settled. But that conclusion mistakes the specific target of the article.
Anglican formularies reject the “Romish” doctrine concerning purgatory—a specific medieval system of indulgences, pardons, and quasi-legal penalties. They do not require Anglicans to deny the existence of an intermediate state between bodily death and the great day of resurrection, nor do they prohibit belief in the continued perfecting of the faithful departed who will rise on that last day with bodies beyond sin and death. The Reformers were condemning a corrupt economy of salvation, not the biblical vision of a purifying transition from death to life.
The Renewed Pastor: Dale Sellers on How to Stay Healthy When Ministry Demands Keep Changing (Ep 138)
The good news is that pastors are staying in their churches longer than ever before. The bad news is that pastors are aging and there aren’t as many young pastors coming in. This makes pastoral and church renewal more important than ever before.
AI is changing pilgrims’ journeys, but sacred journeys have always adapted to new technology
From the printing press to smartphone apps, technology has continually transformed the experience of sacred journeys. A scholar of trails and walking explains the history.