Is U.S. church attendance really rising again?

Yes. In a report released in April 2026, the Hartford Institute for Religion Research found that median weekly in-person attendance at U.S. congregations rose from 65 in 2020 to 70 in 2025, the first increase since its national tracking began in 2000. Hartford director Scott Thumma said it was the first upward movement in the four decades he has tracked attendance, and co-director Alison Norton called the headline "cautious optimism." Southern Baptist churches separately reported a 3.63% year-over-year attendance increase for 2025.

Is every church growing in 2026?

No, and that is the more important part of the data. 46% of U.S. congregations still saw attendance decline by at least 5% between 2020 and 2025, while 43% grew by at least 5%. Larger congregations were the most likely to grow and the smallest saw the steepest losses. Hartford's researchers describe much of the growth as redistribution: some churches are gaining at the expense of others.

Where is the growth coming from?

Mostly from other churches. In the Hartford Institute's survey of attenders, only 8% of people new to a congregation in the past five years had never attended one before. 69% had switched from another congregation, and 22% were returning after a long time away. For church leaders, that means the visitor walking into your lobby this summer is most likely already churched and actively comparing.

What does the switcher trend mean for visitor follow-up?

Switchers behave differently than seekers. They know what a church visit feels like. They evaluate quickly. They notice whether anyone reaches out, how fast, and what the message says. A generic "thanks for visiting" email from a switcher's previous church is exactly the email that pushed them to leave. Churches that retain switchers in 2026 are the ones whose follow-up workflow is visibly more thoughtful, faster, and more personal than the church the switcher is leaving behind.

How should small and midsize churches respond to this trend?

Three operational moves: (1) replace paper visitor cards with a digital capture that routes into a real follow-up list, (2) shorten the time from Sunday visit to first personal touch to under 48 hours, and (3) build a 30-day sequence that goes deeper than a welcome email — including a small group invitation and a real next step. None of this requires a bigger staff. It requires that the workflow exists and that someone owns each step.

Church Attendance Is Up for the First Time in Decades. Most Newcomers Are Switchers.

By the Passport teamPublished May 13, 20268 min read

In this article

The Hartford Institute's April 2026 report records the first rise in median attendance since 2000. The fine print matters more than the headline.

In April 2026, the Hartford Institute for Religion Research published the most surprising piece of U.S. church data in a generation. Median weekly in-person attendance at American congregations went up, from 65 attendees in 2020 to 70 in 2025. It is the first increase since Hartford's national tracking began in 2000, and director Scott Thumma said it was the first upward movement in the four decades he has followed church attendance.

Thumma said the team was surprised by the 2025 data and went back to check it before publishing. His co-director Alison Norton framed the finding as "cautious optimism." Religion News Service and Lifeway Research both covered it within the week.

It is a real reversal. After four decades of headlines about declining attendance, closing churches, and the rise of the "nones," the most-cited longitudinal study of American congregational life has just registered an inflection point.

But the headline is the least important part of the report.

Inside the Hartford analysis is the statistic that should reshape how every pastor and church leader thinks about the next twelve months. Of the people who were new to a congregation in the past five years, only 8% had never attended a congregation before. 69% were switchers, people who had been attending another congregation and moved to a new one. (See the full figures in our church visitor retention statistics.)

The American church is not, in aggregate, gaining new believers at scale. It is reshuffling them. And the churches that win the reshuffle are going to look very different from the churches that lose it.

What the Hartford Data Actually Says

The Hartford Institute has run the Faith Communities Today survey since 2000, and Scott Thumma has tracked congregational attendance for far longer. The April 2026 report draws on a survey of more than 7,000 congregations conducted in late 2025, with results compared against the 2020 baseline.

The five findings that matter:

Median weekly in-person attendance rose from 65 to 70 between 2020 and 2025 — a 7.7% increase at the median church.
This is the first measured median increase since national tracking began in 2000. The median in 2000 was close to 140, so the rise is real but small against the longer decline.
The distribution is split. 46% of churches still declined by 5% or more between 2020 and 2025; 43% grew by 5% or more. The median masks a sharply divided picture.
Only 8% of new attendees had never attended a congregation before. 69% came from another congregation, and 22% were returning after a long time away.
Southern Baptist data, released separately, shows a 3.63% year-over-year attendance increase in 2025, consistent with the Hartford finding in one of the largest U.S. denominational datasets.

The optimism is real. In 2020, 52% of congregations were declining and 34% were growing; by 2025 the split was 46% and 43%. Barna's tracking finds that Gen Z churchgoers now attend an average of 1.9 weekends a month, the highest of any generation in its data.

Something is happening. But what is happening is not what most pastors assume when they read the headline.

The Switcher Economy

If 69% of the people arriving in congregations are switchers and only 8% have never attended church, then the visitor walking into your lobby on a Sunday morning in 2026 is, statistically, most likely to be someone who was sitting in a different church's pew not long ago.

This is a fundamentally different visitor than the one most retention playbooks were designed for.

A first-time churchgoer needs orientation. They do not know when to stand, what to do with their kids, how the offering works, or whether anyone will talk to them after the service. The retention conversation with a seeker is largely about removing friction and offering a relational entry point.

A switcher needs something different. They already know the mechanics. They came in with a frame of reference — what their last church did, what it did not do, what finally pushed them out the door. They are comparing. And the things they are comparing are the things their previous church got wrong.

Lifeway Research asked 1,001 churchgoers who had changed churches why they left. Three in five had moved house. Among the rest, the reasons included:

29% said their previous church was not meeting their needs. Within that group, 41% did not feel engaged or involved, 27% never became close to anyone, and 22% said no one seemed to care about their situation.
20% felt out of place.
27% became disenchanted with the pastor, and 26% with the congregation.

Some of those reasons are about doctrine or leadership, and no follow-up process will change them. But "never became close to anyone" and "no one seemed to care" describe what happens when nobody owns the weeks after a first visit. Switchers have lived through that somewhere else, and they walk into your lobby alert to the same patterns.

Which means the church that retains switchers in 2026 is not the church with the best preaching, the best music, or the biggest building. It is the church whose follow-up workflow is visibly, measurably more thoughtful than the church the switcher just left.

Why Most Churches Will Miss This Window

The reversal in attendance is happening across American churches as an aggregate trend, but it is not happening evenly. 46% of churches are still in decline. 43% are growing.

The churches in decline are not failing at preaching. Pastors who lose visitors are not less faithful than pastors who keep them. The variable that separates the two groups is operational, and it shows up in the same five places year after year:

1. The visitor card never gets entered

A switcher fills out a card on Sunday morning. The card goes into a pile. On Tuesday, the pile is on someone's desk. By Friday, half the cards are in a spreadsheet and half are in a tote bag. By the next Sunday, the visitor has gone to look at the third church on their list. This is the workflow problem at the heart of every visitor retention conversation.

2. The first touch happens too late

No study sets a deadline for the first follow-up touch, but the switcher data says the decision comes quickly. In Lifeway's 2023 survey of church switchers, 71% decided to attend regularly within three visits. A switcher who waits a full week between visiting your church and receiving any acknowledgment is already evaluating their next option.

3. The first touch is generic

A form email signed "The Welcome Team" is exactly what the switcher's last church sent. It signals — accurately — that the new church will treat them the same way the old one did. The difference between a generic email and a personal, specific email is the difference between being "in the funnel" and being seen.

4. The next step is unclear

After the welcome email, most churches default to "we hope to see you again Sunday." For a switcher actively shopping, that is not a next step — that is the absence of one. A clear invitation to a small group, a newcomers' class, or a specific upcoming event gives the visitor something to commit to that is smaller than full membership and larger than another anonymous Sunday.

5. No one owns any of it

The most common failure mode in small-and-midsize church follow-up is that no single person is accountable for any specific touchpoint. The pastor assumes the connections coordinator is on it. The connections coordinator assumes the small group leader will reach out. The small group leader was never told there was a visitor. The visitor hears nothing. Visitor retention fails at the assignment layer before it ever fails at the relationship layer.

The churches that will benefit from the 2026 attendance reversal are the ones that have already closed those five gaps. The churches that will not benefit are not making a content mistake. They are making an operational one.

What "Winning the Switcher" Actually Looks Like

Here is an illustration, not a measurement. Picture a midsize church that receives 12 first-time visitors in May and June combined:

With no system (a generic email a week after the visit): suppose one or two of the 12 come back regularly.
With a working follow-up workflow: suppose four to six do.

Nobody has published a controlled study of that gap, and your numbers will differ. The point is that the difference sits almost entirely in the operational layer, which is the part a church controls.

A practical version of the switcher retention workflow, in the order it happens:

Sunday morning: digital visitor capture. Replace the paper card with a 30-second mobile form that routes submissions into a single list visible in real time.
Sunday afternoon (within 6 hours): personal text from the pastor. Two or three sentences. From the pastor's actual phone, with the pastor's actual name. A text gets read the same day far more reliably than an email does.
Tuesday: short personal email from the connections team. References one specific thing from Sunday. Offers one — and only one — low-commitment next step. Signed by a real name.
Day 10–14: personal invitation from a small group leader or volunteer. Variety of voices matters. The pastor cannot be the only relational thread.
Day 21–28: a final, low-pressure pastor email. No guilt cycle. An invitation to a specific upcoming event or to reconnect if they have questions.

Each touch is small. The sequence as a whole is what holds.

For a church that does not currently have this workflow in place, the path is not "send more emails." It is to choose a single tool that can hold the list, schedule the touches, and route the right person to the right action. Guest follow-up software built for that job outperforms the most heroic pastor working from memory, and so does a church management system used for the features that actually drive retention.

The Strategic Question for 2026

The Hartford data has handed every American church the same strategic question, whether they realize it or not.

If 69% of newcomers are switchers, then every congregation is now competing on retention. Not on preaching style, not on music, not on building. On the question of whether someone who walks through your doors once is reached on Monday with an acknowledgment that they were seen, and on Tuesday with an invitation that respects their time, and on day fourteen with a relationship that makes the next Sunday feel inevitable.

The churches that win the next twelve months will be the ones that recognize this and build the workflow before the summer attendance settling-in window closes. The churches that lose it will spend 2026 wondering why the reversal everyone is talking about did not show up in their numbers.

The reversal is real. It is also a redistribution. And redistributions reward operations, not optimism.

What to Do This Week

The most practical next step for a pastor or church leader reading this:

Pull last month's visitor list. How many visitors? How many got a personal touch within 48 hours? How many are still on the list with no recorded follow-up?
Identify the one place the workflow breaks. It is almost always the same place across churches: cards collected, never entered. Fix that one step first.
Assign owners. Sunday-afternoon text — owner. Tuesday email — owner. Day-14 small group invitation — owner. Names next to touches, in writing, visible to the team.
Audit the first email. Read it as if you were a switcher who just left a church that sent the same kind of email. Is it personal? Specific? Does it ask too much, too soon? Rewrite it once and use it for the rest of the year.

None of this requires a bigger staff. None of it requires a bigger budget. It requires that the workflow exist and that someone owns each step before the next switcher visits.

The Bottom Line

For the first time in decades, American church attendance is rising. That is genuinely good news, and the Hartford Institute deserves credit for documenting it carefully.

But the growth is not coming from a wave of new believers. It is coming from people who are leaving one church to find another, and who are evaluating the next church by the same operational signals that pushed them out of the last one.

This is a window. It will close. The churches that build a real visitor retention workflow this summer will spend the next decade benefiting from a reshuffle that is happening with or without them. The churches that do not will keep wondering why the headline did not match the offering plate.

The work is small. It just has to happen before the next first-time visitor walks in.

See how Passport captures every visitor and runs the full 30-day follow-up sequence automatically

Start your free trial — No charges today, setup in under 30 minutes.

Passport is church management software built for visitor retention. Our platform replaces paper visitor cards with a 30-second digital capture, schedules the full 30-day follow-up sequence across text, email, and personal invitation, and gives pastors a clear view of who has been reached and who still needs a touch — so the switchers and seekers walking through your doors in 2026 actually stay.

Frequently asked questions

: Yes. In a report released in April 2026, the Hartford Institute for Religion Research found that median weekly in-person attendance at U.S. congregations rose from 65 in 2020 to 70 in 2025, the first increase since its national tracking began in 2000. Hartford director Scott Thumma said it was the first upward movement in the four decades he has tracked attendance, and co-director Alison Norton called the headline "cautious optimism." Southern Baptist churches separately reported a 3.63% year-over-year attendance increase for 2025.
: No, and that is the more important part of the data. 46% of U.S. congregations still saw attendance decline by at least 5% between 2020 and 2025, while 43% grew by at least 5%. Larger congregations were the most likely to grow and the smallest saw the steepest losses. Hartford's researchers describe much of the growth as redistribution: some churches are gaining at the expense of others.
: Mostly from other churches. In the Hartford Institute's survey of attenders, only 8% of people new to a congregation in the past five years had never attended one before. 69% had switched from another congregation, and 22% were returning after a long time away. For church leaders, that means the visitor walking into your lobby this summer is most likely already churched and actively comparing.
: Switchers behave differently than seekers. They know what a church visit feels like. They evaluate quickly. They notice whether anyone reaches out, how fast, and what the message says. A generic "thanks for visiting" email from a switcher's previous church is exactly the email that pushed them to leave. Churches that retain switchers in 2026 are the ones whose follow-up workflow is visibly more thoughtful, faster, and more personal than the church the switcher is leaving behind.
: Three operational moves: (1) replace paper visitor cards with a digital capture that routes into a real follow-up list, (2) shorten the time from Sunday visit to first personal touch to under 48 hours, and (3) build a 30-day sequence that goes deeper than a welcome email — including a small group invitation and a real next step. None of this requires a bigger staff. It requires that the workflow exists and that someone owns each step.