{"id":16196,"date":"2024-03-31T18:39:16","date_gmt":"2024-03-31T13:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/31\/easter-among-highest-attendance-days-for-churches-survey\/"},"modified":"2024-03-31T18:39:16","modified_gmt":"2024-03-31T13:09:16","slug":"easter-among-highest-attendance-days-for-churches-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/31\/easter-among-highest-attendance-days-for-churches-survey\/","title":{"rendered":"Easter among highest attendance days for churches: survey"},"content":{"rendered":"


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By Michael Gryboski<\/a>, Mainline Church Editor \"Twitter\"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/header>\n
\"Getty<\/source><\/picture>
Getty Images <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Easter Sunday is one of the highest attended Sundays for the vast majority of churches in the United States, according to a newly released report.<\/p>\n

A report<\/a> released Tuesday by Lifeway Research found that 90% of surveyed Protestant pastors listed Easter as either the most attended Sunday, or the second or third most attended Sunday.<\/p>\n

Broken down, 52% of pastors said that Easter was their highest attended Sunday worship, while 30% ranked it as the second most attended, and 8% ranked it as the third most.<\/p>\n

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By comparison, 81% of pastors surveyed said that Christmas was their highest, second highest, or third highest attended worship, and 51% identified Mother\u2019s Day in the same manner.<\/p>\n

The data for the report came from a phone survey of 1,004 Protestant pastors conducted Aug. 29 \u2013 Sept. 20 of last year, with a sampling error of plus or minus 3.2% at a 95% confidence level.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile many churches consider high attendance as something from their pre-pandemic past, seasonal changes have resumed,\u201d said Lifeway Research Executive Director Scott McConnell, as quoted in the report.<\/p>\n

\u201cChurch attendance is predictable again with periods of consistency in the fall and early spring, as well as holiday crowds at Christmas and Easter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0These percentages do represent a slight decline compared to 2011, when 93% said that Easter was one of their highest attended worship days, 84% said Christmas, and 59% said Mother\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

Sundays in which members who expressly asked to invite a friend to worship, by contrast, has been on the rise in ranking as one of the highest attended days, going from 14% in 2011 to 20% in 2023.<\/p>\n

Additionally, 18% of pastors ranked Sundays in which a church celebrates a homecoming or an anniversary of its founding as being the most, second most, or third most attended worship day.<\/p>\n

Lifeway Research\u2019s report comes as many have noted a rise in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated and do not attend worship services at all in a given year.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Gallup\u00a0reported<\/a> that 30% of Americans said they attend religious services on a weekly basis or nearly every week, while 11% reported attending about once a month, 25% reported attending \u201cseldom,\u201d and 31% said they \u201cnever\u201d go to services.<\/p>\n

This marks a decline from the early 2010s, when Gallup found that 38% of Americans attended weekly or almost weekly, and from the early 2000s, when 42% of Americans attended weekly or almost weekly.<\/p>\n

Follow Michael Gryboski on Twitter <\/a> or Facebook<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n