The U.K. Church in 2020: If Trends Continue

On Sunday, 8 May 2005, all 38,000 churches in England were invited to complete a form regarding both the number of people in church that day and the number attending in an average week. At the time of writing, the census results were not due until September 2006, so it was not yet known whether they would show any change in the general decline of church attendance.

Ascertaining the state of the church, however, is not limited to such exercises. Many figures had been in the public arena for years and could be projected forward using normal statistical methodology. This assumes that present trends will continue—something that is almost never entirely true.

The article therefore asked what the church in the U.K. might look like in 2020 if existing trends continued, and what might be learned from that exercise.

Church membership

Church membership in the U.K. reached more than ten million people in 1930, or 29% of the population. By 1980 it had fallen to 7.5 million, or 13% of the population, while the overall U.K. population had increased by ten million during the same period.

Following the trend used in the original projection, membership would decrease from 7.5 million in 1980 to 4.6 million in 2020, and from 13.4% to 7.2% of the population—an average decline of 1.2% per year. The analysis projected free churches declining at 0.7% annually, compared with 1.6% for Anglican and Catholic congregations, and associated the difference with growth among Black Pentecostal congregations.

Church buildings

There were just over 50,000 church buildings or congregations in 1980, a number projected to fall below 44,000 by 2020. This was regarded as one of the more stable elements in the forecast, with new congregations replacing older ones. At publication, Methodists were closing as many churches each year as all other denominations combined. The article anticipated further change if financial pressures caused rural Anglican churches to close.

Church ministers

In 1980, there were 36,000 ministers in the U.K., most of them full-time and stipendiary. The projection put the 2020 total at 32,000, a decline of 0.3% per year. Behind that figure, however, the article identified a changing ministry landscape, with more women, part-time workers, and non-ordained people serving. These changes were linked both to financial pressure and to vitality among ethnic-minority churches using more part-time staff.

Church attendance

The greatest changes were expected in church attendance. Unlike membership—which denominations define differently—attendance could be defined in a similar way across denominations and examined by age and gender. This article focused on age.

The U.K. church had already been losing young people for some time. During the 1990s, half a million children under 15 stopped attending, with significant implications for the church’s future.

The projected average annual decline in attendance was 2%, but it varied considerably by age. Attendance among people under 20 was projected to decline by 5.2% per year, while the 20–44 group declined by 2.9%. The article argued that the younger trend needed to be reversed if the church was to survive and thrive.

The oldest group, aged 45 and over, declined by only 0.5% per year in the projection. Yet its share of total attendance rose from 39% in 1980 to 73% in 2020. The concern was that, if three-quarters of churchgoers were over 45, the perception of the church as an older people’s institution would become much harder to change.

Four responses proposed in 2005

The article concluded that this glimpse of a possible future should motivate churches to keep the projections from becoming reality. It proposed four priorities for the U.K. church of 2005.