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New National Church Life Survey data shows weekly church attendance at 1.3 million, major denominational reshuffles, and fewer local churches—revealing a landscape changing fast, yet still marked by signs of renewal.

Australia has a population of around 28 million people. Of those, just 1.3 million attend church weekly, or 4.6 per cent of the population. Compare this with American church attendance, with around 20 per cent of its 347 million people attending church weekly.

If you have been a regular churchgoer in Australia, you might recall filling in surveys for the National Church Life Survey (NCLS) over the years. Their newest report was released a few months ago: “Church Pulse Check 2021 to 2024”. It is always interesting to see what sort of figures they have come up with. The 28-page report offers this summary of 12 key findings:

#1 – In 2024, 1.3 million Australians attended church weekly. Attendance has largely recovered since COVID-19.

#2 – NSW & ACT had the largest number of weekly church attenders in 2024.

#3 – The Catholic Church had the highest number of attenders (44% of the weekly total).

#4 – Denominations have recovered to differing degrees since COVID-19.

#5 – Attendance in Protestant churches as a whole has been largely stable since 1991.

#6 – Pentecostal churches have had the greatest percentage growth in attendance since 1991.

#7 – The five biggest denominations have changed order.

#8 – The estimated number of faith commitments rose between 2021 and 2024.

#9 – The Catholic Church had the largest number of faith commitments across denominations.

#10 – There were around 10,600 local churches across Australia in 2024.

#11 – Most local churches were part of Mainstream Protestant denominations.

#12 – The Anglican Church had the highest number of local churches in 2024.

Let me look in a bit more detail at some of these findings. On point 7, they say this:

The five largest denominations accounted for over 80% of all church attenders in 2001 and in 2024. They were the Anglican Church, Australian Christian Churches, the Baptist Church, the Catholic Church, and the Uniting Church. In 2001 each of these denominations had 120,000 or more people attending their churches in an average week. Among Anglican and Protestant denominations, there have been significant shifts in the past few decades.

Australian Christian Churches (ACC, previously Assemblies of God) is the largest Pentecostal movement in Australia. When located in the context of all denominations, they moved from being the fifth largest denomination in 2001 to second largest in 2016 and continued to hold this position in 2024.

The Anglican Church moved from having the second largest weekly attendance in 2001 to being third in 2016 and fourth in 2024. The Baptist Church moved from having the fourth largest attendance in 2001 and 2016 to third largest in 2024, changing ranking with the Anglican Church. The Uniting Church, formed in 1977 from Methodist, Congregational and Presbyterian churches, was the third largest denomination in 2001. By 2016 and 2024 they had moved to fifth place.

As to the number of churches, we find this: “Fewer local churches since 2016: In 2021, the estimated number of local churches was around 10,600. This is 800 fewer than the number estimated across all participating denominations in 2016, which was 11,400.”

Five personal reflections

Let me offer some of my own thoughts on these findings.

One. With record-high immigration rates under the current Labor government, and so many of them being Muslims or those of other non-Christian backgrounds, it is not surprising to see Christians in general and church attendance in particular in decline in terms of the overall population.

Labor is intent on importing voters. Their own primary vote has been quite low in recent elections, with just a third of all votes. Importing so many people into the country who will likely return the favour by voting Labor is one easy way of ensuring that Labor stays in office.

Two. Obviously, assessing Christianity in a nation entails more than just looking at church attendance. And we have things like the national census, which also tries to measure religion in Australia. In recent surveys, they have featured the category “No religion”.

That, of course, can be quite misleading. Atheists, for example, happily claim them all. But many in that camp would be spiritual in various ways, as in those with New Age beliefs. And it can be said that we are ALL religious: we all have something that we put as our highest good, and so on. Even secular humanism has rightly been described as a religion.

Three. As I have discussed before, there is a very large cohort of those who are Christians, who love the Lord, and are most certainly part of the Body of Christ, but for various reasons are not going to church on a regular basis. My most-viewed, shared and commented-on article ever looks at this in more detail.

Four. Of course, the Covid years meant that the churches – like most other institutions – had to look at new ways of doing church – or at least of holding church services. Online services became the norm back then. While Australian church attendance is getting back to where it was before Covid, there would be so many believers still using various online Christian alternatives to actually going to a church building.

Five. As has been known for quite some time now, Christianity in the West is in decline. So many countries that were once majority Christian are now minority Christian. Secularism and the importation of those of other faiths are changing religious demographics in the West.

But the good news is, God is not finished with His church. It is places like Africa, Asia and Latin America where we find the greatest church growth and an increase in the number of believers. And often Christians from these areas are coming back to re-evangelise the West! So God is still at work in this world.

As always, we can thank the NCLS team, including the authors of this report, Ruth Powell, Sam Sterland and Miriam Pepper, for doing all the work in gathering data and putting these results together. You can read the entire report here.

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Republished with thanks to CultureWatch. Image courtesy of Adobe.