YES, the churches we attend are seeing less new faces. In the cases in our area of the South, we KNOW of even regular attendees used the Covid era for a chance to change to other churches. We have a few new faces but only because another church in the area was closed……I know of one AOG in the Eustis, FL area that is seeing NEW FAces and is growing, My son has started attending there and is thrilled at the services and fellowship!We miss him but he is ‘on-fire’ and that is what counts….. PS this is a good post. I would like to know if anyone reading this is/ or has seen GROWTH after Covid________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/
We are seeing growth after Covid. In our most recent membership class we had 34 join in our church family. That being said, everything is different after covid. To not recognize that fact, and adjust to the new normal, is to cripple the growth potential that is out there. We have become much more focused and intentional on connecting people into our church family. We have adjusted our follow up process, and personalized our connection with new people who come. It’s working. I honestly can’t say 100% whether our new visitors numbers are more, less, or about the same. I know that we are continually seeing those new faces, and covid caused us to up our game in connecting people into the church family.
Great! That is encouraging… ________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/
Per a Barna reportreleased in August, this may be related to the generation(s) a church targets. [S]ince 2019, the percentage of Millennials reporting weekly church attendance has increased from 21percent to 39 percent. Among Gen X, attendance has increased 8 percentage points (24% to 32%). While Boomers show an increase in their attendance during the pandemic in 2020 (31% weekly), recent numbers show a decrease in attendance (25% in 2022).________________
During Covid we actually saw growth even though we were only doing parking lot church. After the lockdown was over we continued to see growth. Unfortunately the growth has not been sustained, and we are at a loss to understand why. My personal opinion is that during Covid and immediately after, there was a certain level of fear and uncertainty about the future, which caused some to seek a church to attend. Once things returned to some semblance of normalcy, people reverted back to their pre-Covid lives________________“Hell will be filled with people that didn’t cuss, didn’t drink, and may even have been baptized. Why? Because none of those things makes someone a Christian.”
Our church was closed for ten weeks at the beginning of Covid (March-May 2020). We re-opened before any other church in our county. Many stayed closed for another year! We got a lot of their members who never went back once they re-opened!