Easter, Christmas and Mother’s Day are the three most attended Sundays in U.S. churches. According to a recent Lifeway Research report, Easter has the highest attendance of them all.
The survey found that 90% of pastors “identify Easter as the day their church has its highest, second-highest or third-highest attendance for worship service.” This is followed by Christmas (81%) and Mother’s Day (51%). Attendance for all three holidays is down from 2011: Easter, from 93% to 90%, Christmas, from 84% to 81% and Mother’s Day, from 59% to 51%.
Congregations with more than 100 members are more likely to say Easter is a highly attended service (93%) than smaller churches with less than fifty members (44%). Churches with a membership of 250 or more agree that most Christians go to church on Easter (98%).
Along denominational lines, the Easter service tops the list for Lutherans (98%), Methodists (95%), Presbyterian/Reformed (87%), Pentecostal (84%) and Restorationist Movement pastors (78%). The survey found that non-denominational churches are more likely to have increased attendance on Easter compared to Presbyterian/Reformed churches (64% v. 45%).
“On any given Sunday, a large minority of a congregation may not be present for worship,” Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research, said. “Easter is the day when the most church members get to church—and for a good reason: No other theme is as profound to a Christian than celebrating that they died with Christ and as Jesus was raised to life, so too Christians are now alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Read the full report here.
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
