Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by AI).
A new national report offers the most comprehensive look yet at how America’s churches have fared since COVID-19 — and the picture is more hopeful than many expected.
By FāVS News Staff
Main Points
ATLANTA — At Emmanuel Baptist Church in Pullman, Washington, attendance has climbed from roughly 250 in 2019 to 350 in 2025, growing every year since 2020.
“Definitely higher energy in the church,” said Pastor Joel Moore, the church’s pastor. “It feels like we are truly past the pandemic’s effects. The feeling here is that we are all on the same team, working together.”
Emmanuel Baptist’s story is not universal — but it is no longer unusual. A new national report released Friday at the annual Religion News Association conference finds that America’s faith communities are showing meaningful signs of recovery five years after the pandemic upended congregational life. The gains are uneven, and the long arc of institutional decline has not reversed. But for the first time in decades, more congregations are stabilizing or growing rather than shrinking.
“What it is not is a story of revival or return to a previous era of sort of congregational glory in the United States,” said Allison L. Norton, co-investigator for the EPIC study, in her introduction on the research findings at the RNA Conference. “The long-term trajectory of gradual decline in American congregational life is still in place.”
Attendance rebounds for the first time in decades
Perhaps the report’s most striking finding involves worship attendance. Median in-person attendance dropped sharply during the pandemic, reaching a low of 45 in 2021. By 2025, that figure had risen to 70 — surpassing pre-pandemic levels. It marks the first positive gain in median attendance in 25 years, since the Faith Communities Today project began tracking the figure. Even so, the current median remains far below the 137 recorded in 2000.
“Directional change and momentum matters for many congregations and churches,” said Scott Thumma, principal investigator of the study. “This is the first evidence in a long time for congregations generally that the trajectory and decline narrative might actually be shifting even if it’s modest.”
The recovery is not uniform. Evangelical Protestant congregations are the only group to show net growth over the past five years, up 2%, while Mainline Protestant churches experienced the steepest decline, at 20%.
Larger congregations — those with more than 250 attenders — are most likely to have grown, while the smallest congregations, those with 50 or fewer, were hit hardest, with 40% reporting declines of 25% or more.
That denominational split is visible even within a single region. While Emmanuel Baptist, an evangelical congregation, grew steadily throughout the pandemic years, Manito Presbyterian Church, a Mainline Protestant church across the state in Spokane, declined.
The Rev. Scott Starbuck estimates his congregation at Manito Presbyterian is down about 10% to 15% from pre-pandemic levels.
“Some people wanting to be in a different congregation because of programs or location were able to make that move easier because of the COVID disruption,” he said. “Others left our congregation due to our response to COVID, their reassessment of life and family priorities during COVID or simply life changes such as relocation and death.”
But those who remained, Starbuck said, arrived with greater intentionality.
“My sense is that the people we have gained are with us because of our particular approach to worship and mission, the congregation’s health and feel or because they want to deepen their spiritual lives at this particular moment in history.”
Recalibration, not revival
Across attendance, finances, volunteering, programming and clergy well-being, the report documents a consistent pattern: an initial surge of adaptation early in the pandemic, a dip in 2023 and a rebound in 2025.
The percentage of congregational leaders who strongly agreed their faith community has a clear mission and purpose went from 39% in 2020, rose to 54% in 2021, fell to 32% in 2023, and has now returned to 40% in 2025. Volunteer participation, which dropped to just 15% during the pandemic, has rebounded to 40% — matching pre-pandemic levels.
The report’s authors are careful not to overstate what the data shows. The findings are best understood not as a revival, but as a recalibration — a moment of unexpected stabilization marked by resilience, adaptation and cautious hope.
The pastors interviewed for this story largely agreed with that framing, though some pushed back on its limits.
“I don’t know if I would say it’s a revival, but I think it’s more than a recalibration,” Moore said. “I think there is a spiritual hunger and interest, and despite any negative press related to politics or ‘Christian’ nationalism, people are still coming to find truth.”
Pastor Eric Blauer of Jacob’s Well in Spokane, said his congregation had experienced “multiple aspects of deep renewal and recalibration,” with community outreach activities growing from one monthly event to six per month and financial health reaching its strongest point ever.
Starbuck described the pandemic as a clarifying moment for Manito Presbyterian.
“We realized that we needed to be a clearer theological voice and touch for people trying to make sense of increasingly divided, dangerous and destructive cultural shifts,” he said.
The research shows churches that have survived the pandemic by adapting seem to have internalized a new posture toward change even without an existential crisis.
“This is supported by widespread adoption of digital tools like live streaming, online giving and hybrid participation,” said Charissa Mikoski, who analyzes the data for EPIC and was part of the panel.
Giving surpasses inflation
On the financial front, the news is largely positive. Median congregational income rose from $120,000 in 2020 to $205,000 in 2025 — well above what inflation alone would predict.
A key driver was the expanded adoption of electronic giving. The share of congregations offering online giving options rose from 58% in 2020 to 76% in 2025, and the proportion of total contributions received electronically grew from 10% to 40%.
“People no longer need to be physically present or even remember to give in the moment. Many now give electronically, automatically and consistently, which expanded even while regular weekly attendance waned,” Thumma said.
Rising income has not come without rising costs. Median congregational expenditures also climbed, from $108,000 to $199,000, with much of the increase driven by higher insurance rates. The share of budgets devoted to buildings, maintenance and insurance grew from 31% to 40%, while spending on staff, programs and missions declined from 69% to 60%.
The technology dividend
One lasting legacy of the pandemic appears to be a broad technological transformation. Livestreaming services doubled in use between 2020 and 2025, with those using livestreaming “a lot” rising from 32% to 66%. Electronic giving, Facebook engagement, video projection and online meeting software all saw significant increases.
Moore said Emmanuel Baptist’s live stream has become indispensable.
“We don’t want folks to only worship online, but it has been a blessing to those who are traveling, moved away or have family members in other states who watch online,” he said. “We also have a couple of folks who are immunocompromised who still watch online as well.”
A newer development noted in the 2025 survey: 36% of congregations report having used generative AI in their ministry, primarily to support communications such as newsletters, social media posts and promotional materials, as well as administrative tasks like sermon preparation and meeting minutes.
The gap between large and small
Running through nearly every finding in the report is a divide between larger and smaller congregations that the pandemic appears to have widened. Despite representing only 13% of congregations, the largest churches — those with more than 250 weekly attenders — now account for 78% of all regular weekly service attendees nationwide, up from 70% in 2020.
“Even as the number of small congregations is quite considerable, they are becoming increasingly marginal in terms of where the majority of religious participation happens,” Thumma said on the panel.
For the Rev. Pam Starbuck, who co-pastors Manito Presbyterian alongside her husband, the pandemic brought its own unexpected disruptions — including a major flood in January 2021 that forced the congregation to rethink how its building was used. What emerged was a leaner, more focused ministry.
“We ended up doing less, but sticking to our core,” she said. “We realized that we couldn’t manage programs, but we could learn to use our space better for the community to be invited in.”
That rethinking extended to who the building serves. The congregation now hosts the Spokane Youth Symphony, the Spokane Judo Club and rotating community music groups.
A moment of cautious hope
Nearly three-quarters of congregations now report a positive outlook for the future. Over a third say they are doing well and expect continued strength, while another third describe themselves as stable and expect that to continue. Only a small minority describe their situation as struggling with little hope for improvement.
Scott Starbuck said what keeps him hopeful is seeing people — young and old — searching for something more than what a fractured culture offers.
“There is a cautious hunger to join in that meaning-centering work by people who are discovering they are about much, much more than secular, market-driven, politically-divided, algorithmically fragmented society allows,” he said. “They want to live differently, deeply and meaningfully connected to God and to one another.”
The challenge moving forward, the report’s authors write, is not to recover what was, but to lead faithfully within a changing landscape.
FāVS News uses professional journalists and thoughtful commentary to explore faith, values and ethics. Support journalism like this by making a tax-deductible donation. FāVS is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. © FāVS News. All rights reserved. Reproduction permitted only to authorized media partners or with written permission.
