Is U.S. church attendance really rising again?

Yes — for the first time in roughly four decades, according to data released May 1, 2026 by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. The median weekly in-person attendance at U.S. congregations rose from 65 in 2020 to 70 in 2025. Researchers Scott Thumma and Alison Norton describe the finding as "cautious optimism," not a revival. The Southern Baptist Convention reported a parallel 3.63% year-over-year attendance increase in its 2025 data.

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%. The median number went up, but the distribution is wider than ever. The story of 2026 is not "the American church is back." It is "some churches are gaining at the expense of others."

Where is the growth coming from?

Mostly from other churches. According to the Hartford data, only 8% of new attendees are first-time churchgoers. 69% are switchers — people who were already attending another congregation and chose to move. The remaining share comes from returnees and other categories. This is the single most consequential statistic for church leaders to internalize in 2026: 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.

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A pastor and a connections team member reviewing a tablet showing a visitor follow-up list in a bright, modern church office, with a printed attendance trend chart on the desk beside them, lit by cool diffused daylight from a nearby window in the 5500-6500K range

Church Attendance Just Rose for the First Time in 40 Years. 69% of the Growth Is Switchers — and That Changes Everything.

May 12, 20268 min read

The Hartford Institute's May 2026 report is the first attendance reversal in four decades. The fine print is more important than the headline.

On May 1, 2026, the Hartford Institute for Religion Research published the most surprising piece of U.S. church data in a generation. For the first time in roughly four decades, median weekly in-person attendance at American congregations went up — from 65 attendees in 2020 to 70 in 2025.

The lead researcher, Scott Thumma, told reporters that the team verified the numbers multiple times before releasing them. His co-director Alison Norton framed the finding as "cautious optimism." The Washington Times, Christian Standard, and Lifeway Research all picked up the story 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.

Passport automates this entire follow-up sequence so your team doesn't have to remember. See how it works →

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

Buried four paragraphs into the Hartford analysis is the statistic that should reshape how every pastor and church leader thinks about the next twelve months: of the new attendance, only 8% is people who are new to church entirely. 69% is switchers — people who were already attending another congregation and decided to leave it for yours.

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 the early 2000s, and Scott Thumma's team has tracked congregational attendance for far longer. The May 2026 report draws from their most recent national survey, 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 in roughly four decades of national congregational tracking.
The distribution widened. 46% of churches still declined by 5% or more; 43% grew by 5% or more. The "average" number masks a sharply divided picture.
Only 8% of new attendees were first-time churchgoers. 69% came from another congregation; the remaining ~23% were returnees, irregular attendees becoming regular, or other categories.
Southern Baptist data, released separately, shows a parallel 3.63% year-over-year attendance increase in 2025 — consistent with the Hartford finding across one of the largest U.S. denominational datasets.

The optimism is real. The number of growing churches has not been this high since the early 2000s. Bible sales are up 41.6% since 2022. Spiritual app downloads are up 79.5% since 2019. Gen Z attends church more often than Millennials did at the same age, and young men in particular are returning at rates that surprised even the people running the studies.

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

The Switcher Economy

If only 8% of the growth is new churchgoers and 69% is switchers, 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 a month 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.

The most-cited reasons people leave a church, across Barna's longest-running attrition research, are remarkably consistent:

"I felt invisible."
"No one followed up."
"I went six weeks and never had a real conversation with anyone."
"I tried to get plugged in and could not figure out how."
"I joined a small group and it fell apart."

Every one of those reasons is a workflow failure, not a theology failure. Switchers are, by definition, people who experienced one of those failures somewhere else. They are walking 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 gap is wider than it has been at any measured point in the data.

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

The retention research is unambiguous: the first follow-up touch needs to happen inside 48 hours. Past day three, response rates drop. Past day seven, they collapse. A switcher who waited a full week between visiting your church and receiving any acknowledgment is already evaluating their fourth 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

The math of switcher retention is not mysterious. If a midsize church receives 12 first-time visitors in May and June combined, retention rates separate the experience as follows:

At baseline (no system, generic email a week after the visit): 1–2 of the 12 return regularly. Net new members at six months: 0–1.
With a working follow-up workflow: 4–6 of the 12 return regularly. Net new members at six months: 2–4.

The gap is not 10x. It is 3–5x. And it is almost entirely closed by the operational layer.

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. SMS open rates are 98%; nothing else competes for the first touch.
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. A church management system used for the 30% of its features that actually drive retention outperforms the most heroic pastor working from memory.

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 growth is 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 four 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 →

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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.