Well if stats from Melbourne are anything to go by…not good! Do you think we are doing something wrong?
MELBOURNE: 3.6 million people (2006), 248 Nationalities, 289 languages,128 religious faiths
THE CHURCH
- 300,000 people attend church weekly, another 300,000 attend about once a month.
- There are over 1700 local churches of more than 30 denominations and over 80 nationalities
- There are 60 Chinese, 52 Greek, 41 Italian, 35 Samoan, 30 Vietnamese, 24 Korean churches
- “NO RELIGION” up 20% in 10 years
- Under 34s: 1.2million (48%) in population BUT only 48,000 (4%) attend church(=16% of attenders)
- Over 55s: 819,000 (22%) of population and 20% (122,000) attend weekly (= 54% of attenders)
- About 5000 people come to faith each year, about 9000 people leave the Church
City population increasing at 90,000pa, here is a net loss of 4,800pa from church attendance.
Thanks Phil for these stats…I think 🙂
No Guarantees 
two things I wonder…
1. does that mean net loss of 4,800 out of 600,000 (represents 0.8% loss)? if so, maybe not that bad???
2. do these stats account for people leaving the church in order to save their faith (see jamieson “a churchless faith” thesis)? if not, maybe some of the 9,000 people leaving the “c”hurch are actually growing the “C”hurch AND there’s 5,000 coming in too????
just trying to throw a different spin on the notion of stats being super useful other than for representing the “truths” we need them to represent. I’m sure it cuts both ways.
I like where you are coming from. Good way of looking at it.
S
Considering Melbourne has thrown up the Religious Vilification Bill, & voted in late term Abortion, those stats don’t surprise me one iota. Just good to prove one’s inner hunch.