When Westminster United Methodist Church in Houston resumed in-person services late last year, after a seven-month halt due to COVID-19, there were Sundays when only three worshippers showed up, according to the pastor, Meredith Mills.
Since then, attendance has inched back up, but it’s still only about half the pre-pandemic turnout of 160 or 170, Mills estimates.
“It’s frustrating,” she said. “People just seem to want to leave home less these days.”
Some houses of worship are faring better than Mills’ church, some worse. Polls by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows how dramatically church attendance fell during the worst of the pandemic last year, even as many say they are now returning to regular service attendance.
Among mainline Protestants, just 1 percent said in a May 2020 poll that they were attending in-person services at least once a week. In the new poll, 14 percent say they’re doing so now, compared to 16 percent who say they did in 2019.
Among evangelical Protestants, 37 percent now say they are attending services in person at least weekly, while 42 percent said they did that in 2019. In the May 2020 poll, just 11 percent said they were attending services in person that often.
Among Catholics, 26 percent attend in person at least weekly now, compared with 30 percent in 2019. In the 2020 poll, conducted as many bishops temporarily waived the obligation for weekly Mass attendance, 5 percent were worshipping in person at least weekly.
At St. Ambrose Catholic Parish in Brunswick, Ohio, the six services each weekend drew a total of about 3,800 worshippers before the pandemic, according to the pastor, Bob Stec. Current weekend attendance is about 2,800, Stec says, with 1,600 or more households joining online worship.
Elsewhere, churches large and small have taken hits in attendance.
John Elkins, teaching pastor at Sovereign Grace Fellowship in Brazoria, Texas, says 25 to 30 people have attended services recently, down from around 50 before the pandemic.
“For some, I was not political enough,” he said via email. “Some wanted more activities, some just stopped going to church.”
Sovereign Grace, a Southern Baptist church, had never offered online worship before the pandemic. When in-person worship was halted for a month in 2020, leaving online worship as the only option, Elkins said he did more crisis counseling for congregation members than ever before.
At the much larger First Church of God in Columbus, Ohio, there was a near-total halt to in-person worship between March 2020 and September of this year. On two Sundays in September 2020, worshippers were invited back to the church to test the feasibility of in-person services.
“But it was obvious they were still uncomfortable — they came dressed like they were working at Chernobyl,” said the senior pastor, Bishop Timothy Clarke, evoking hazmat suits appropriate for confronting a nuclear disaster.
Pre-pandemic, the predominantly African American church held three services each weekend, including one on Saturday evenings, with average total attendance of 2,500. Now there’s a single service on Sunday, and only 500 worshippers – with masks and proof of vaccination — are allowed into a sanctuary that can seat more than 1,500.
The return to in-person worship “gives us a sense of connection and community,” Clarke said. “But you also have safety.”
At All Saints’ Episcopal Church in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, average Sunday attendance dropped from about 140 pre-pandemic to as low as 30 before climbing back, reaching 120 earlier this month. The Rev. Steven Paulikas credits a mandatory mask policy.
“Mask wearing puts people at ease about their health and allows them to do what people come to church to do — worship God,” he said.
Attendance is down sharply from pre-pandemic levels at St. Barnabas Lutheran Church in Cary, Ill., which halted in-person, indoor worship for more than six months in 2020. Instead it held drive-in services in the parking lot.
Before the pandemic, about 115 people would attend one of two services offered on Sundays, said the pastor, Sarah Wilson. Now there’s one service, and attendance is down by more than half.
