A detailed report into Sydney Anglican church attendance shows a 6.7 per cent decline against a 2013 baseline using church attendance figures of adult attenders.
The report commissioned by the diocesan (region) Standing Committee for this year’s Synod (church parliament) details the changes year by year. “The Diocese experienced wafer thin growth between 2013 and 2017. Total attendance figures against the 2013 baseline were up in 2014 (+109), 2015 (+345) and 2017 (+206). Attendancenumbers then began to decline sharply. Total attendance against the 2013 baseline declinedprogressively through 2018 (-819 or 1.7%) and 2019 (-2,069 or 4.3%), to a post-Covid low in 2022 (-7,898 or 16.5%). In 2023 we have experienced some recovery in attendance against the 2013baseline (-3,209 or 6.7%).”
The report is a “like for like”” report: it excludes results from churches that have commenced since 2013 which would have includes an extra 2,331 adult attenders. A footnote suggests that if the 11 parishes that had not submitted their 2023 data had done so there would be a slight improvement in the figures.
Sydney is a large diocese, and the report found that decline or growth was uneven across Sydney and Wollongong.
• Northern Sydney had a decline of 2,134 attenders, or -14.4%
• Wollongong had a decline of 1,336 attenders, or -15.2%
• South Western Sydney had a small decline of 107 attenders , or -1.6%
• Western Sydney had a small increase of 338 attenders, or +3.5%
• South Sydney was virtually steady with an increase of 30 attenders, or +0.4%
Measured against population change, the results in “Wollongong (-22%), Northern (-20%) and South
Western (-12%) regions are even more stark. In the Western Sydney (-9%) and South Sydney (-3%)
regions, while raw numbers went up, the percentage of the total adult population in our churches
went down.”
Four mission areas (smaller local divisions grew) in attendance against population. Attendance grew in the Outer Inner West by 17% against population, in the Blue Mountains by 7%, and in both the Hills
and Blacktown mission areas by just 1%.
The report does not include information that can be used to identify individual parishes and cites confidentiality as a reason.
The effect of Covid on 2023 attendance appears to be slight. Pre covid attendance in 2019 was 45,732, and in 2023 44,592.
The report says that Sydney Anglicans have neglected their stats, and have lacked the will to examine what is going on.
“We have dropped the ball when it comes to tracking, reporting and analysing numbers. There has
been no recent transparent high level watch or analysis of overall Diocesan attendance and
salvations. Regular reporting of growth in the Diocese has relied on questions in Synod, rather than
there being a culture within our Diocese of genuine willingness to track and assess the data to enable us to assess how we are going and whether we are doing things well in regards to people becoming Christians / newcomers and attendance.”
“Reporting on kids and youth attendance is even worse. In our assessment we restricted our work to
adults because the significant change made in 2019 to the way in which under 18s data was collected and recorded meant that it was not possible to compare results before and after that year and data for kids and youth has been inconsistently recorded year to year and parish to parish.”
The data in this report is likely to inform a lively debate in the Synod.
Here are some links to the report so you don’t need to wade through the Synod papers!
The main report https://bit.ly/AttendancePatterns
Details https://bit.ly/AttendanceAppendixB
Details of mission areas bit.ly/AttendanceAppendices