Church Survey Indicates Declining Church Caused by Lack of Pastoral Care

A recent report released by the Ecumenical Research Committee has attempted to reveal the reasons behind the declining church attendances in the UK. The year-long survey named "Let the People Speak" is based on 14,000 responses across the UK via letter and email. The survey concluded that a lack of apologetics and reduced pastoral care are the most significant factors for the reduction of church attendances.

The questionnaire focused upon: reasons for attendance amongst churchgoers, reasons for the decline in church numbers, things that could be done to encourage people who have never been to church, and the decline in clergy visits.

Surprisingly, 73 percent of those surveyed either implicitly or explicitly referred to a lack of explanation for belief, known as apologetics, prominent in other nations but not within Britain and Ireland, as a reason for declining numbers.

The next most commonly blamed aspect was the decline of home visiting and reduced pastoral care. 80 percent of those surveyed referred to this subject as a reason for declining numbers.

In addition, a majority of people expressed a dissatisfaction towards current day church services. Four aspects were reportedly required to be fulfilled in order "for worship to be appealing to non-churchgoers as well as helpful to regular churchgoers", including the manner in which church services are conducted, the form of liturgy used, the sermons and addresses delivered and the sense of fellowship experienced.

The response to the questionnaire was very active because the questionnaire was constructed with open-ended questions that demanded a written response, rather than just ticking boxes, so as to encourage free-thinking. It was also distributed to a wide variety of denominations, age groups, and ethnic backgrounds to reflect as many opinions as possible.

The researchers, ERC, said that around 900 response letters began with "Thank you so much for the opportunity to express our views", or "Why hasn't a survey like this been done before, so we can speak?" or "At last someone is listening, thank you so much."

Overall the survey reflected that the churches in Britain need to be more open to different and varying views, and a great need was highlighted to listen directly to the congregations whom they were serving.