For a quarter century, the story of American churches has been a story of empty seats. Pastors preached to thinner crowds, congregations merged or shut their doors, and commentators wrote the obituary of organized faith. Then a new study landed, and even the researchers were stunned.
The Hartford Institute for Religion Research, working with Faith Communities Today, has found that median in-person worship attendance at American congregations has risen for the first time in 25 years. The report is titled “Signs of Rebound Amid Uneven Recovery.” It is the largest look at the question in years.
The study surveyed leaders at 7,453 congregations across 79 denominations and faith traditions. The surveys were collected between September and December 2025. That sample is large enough to take seriously.
The headline number is a median in-person attendance of 70 adults per congregation. That is up from a pandemic low of 45. It is also up from about 65 before the pandemic hit.
Context matters, and the context is sobering. In 2000, the median congregation drew about 137 worshippers. So the rebound, real as it is, still leaves the typical church with roughly half the crowd it had at the turn of the century.
The researchers did not expect this result. The report’s lead investigator, sociologist Scott Thumma, has said the team anticipated continued decline and withdrawal. They were pretty surprised when the 2025 data came in.
Surprise turned into skepticism. The researchers say they went back and checked the data very thoroughly before publishing. They wanted to be sure they were not fooling themselves.
The money tells its own story. Median congregation income climbed from about $120,000 in 2020 to about $205,000 in 2025, driven largely by a boom in online giving. Thumma has noted that giving has even outpaced inflation.
Morale is up as well. The study found clergy reporting a renewed sense of purpose and optimism, along with a rise in volunteerism. After years of discouraging news, many pastors say there is an energy in their congregations that had been missing.
So what is behind it? Thumma’s answer is the part that surprises people. He believes the main driver of the renewal was, counterintuitively, COVID itself.
The pandemic forced churches to adapt overnight. Congregations learned to stream services, launch online giving, and find new ways to minister when the doors were locked. Researcher Charissa Mikoski described the result as not just recovery, but adaptation and experimentation.
Here is where the celebration should be tempered. The researchers themselves insist this is not a revival. In their words, it is a story of recalibration, and they urge cautious optimism.
The recovery is also uneven. Nearly half of the congregations surveyed still reported declines in attendance. Churches with more than 250 weekly attendees were significantly more likely to report growth.
The smallest churches are struggling most. Among congregations with 50 or fewer attendees, about 40 percent reported losing a quarter or more of their attendance. The little church on the corner is still fighting for its life.
Thumma points to a consolidation that has been underway for more than a century and has accelerated lately. People are gathering in larger congregations, and the small ones are fading. That pattern may define the next decade.
Faith still plays an enormous role in American life. About 62 percent of adults in the United States identify as Christian, and roughly 30 percent are estimated to attend church weekly, which is about 100 million people. Those are not the numbers of a country that has abandoned its faith.
Yet the pressures are real. Attendance has been falling since the 1960s, driven by declining trust in institutions, culture-war battles, scandals, and the rise of Americans who claim no religion at all. Some forecasts suggest as many as 100,000 churches could close over the next decade.
The study’s authors also say there will be no return to the mid-20th century, when nearly half of Americans routinely attended a house of worship. That golden age is not coming back on its own.
