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.