A year IN THE LIFE OF OUR CHURCH

Each year, more than 600 congregations receive an email, asking them to gather numbers, ideas and information about all that their faith community did the previous year, and report that information back to Synod via the community life return and financial return.

Trying to understand how and why our congregations gather, celebrate and support one another and the community is a vast task, which makes this gathered information all the more important.

Your answers equip the presbyteries and mission team to direct resources to the places that need it most, and help the synod understand where congregations are growing, need resourcing, and how teams can be best resourced.

The data shows us that in the past five years, the single largest reason congregation members have stop attending their regular church is because of ill health – even before COVID. We also know that online attendance more than doubled between 2020-2021.

Over the next few years, we’re hoping that the number of people no longer attending church will go down, and the number attending online will go up, as COVID has shown ministry teams ways to “do church” using alternative methods they may not have previously been equipped to do.

Volunteers continue to be crucial to running our churches, and in 2021 we saw just over 80 per cent of roles being completed by volunteers within our congregations and faith communities. This suggests that resourcing our volunteers with training is a crucial area for the missions teams to be considering when arranging events.

The answers can also tell us where our questions may not be reflecting lived experience. When the survey questions have changed from the year before, it may be because we’ve looked at the data and realised from the results that the question has been worded in a way that isn’t intuitive, and has needed editing for recipients to understand the true question being asked.

The 2023 returns will be sent out next month.

Worship format 2022

Other 9%

Congregation: age profile

Congregation: cultural diversity

Congregation: main income sources Congregation: