The decline in church attendance of almost one quarter between 2019 and 2022 may be the result of reduced supply rather than lower demand. A new report suggests that too many churches abandoned their online offering and cut the number of services available.

Church Attendance in October 2022: Post-Covid-19 trends, patterns and possibilities draws on data from five dioceses, and concludes that there is a “strong correlation” between reduced provision and reduced attendance. “Numbers are lower than in 2019 not because the demand for church is in inevitable decline but because of difficulties with the supply of both onsite and online church services,” it says.

“Churches that stayed online and have not reduced their service numbers have fully regained 2019 attendance levels. It is only where churches have retrenched that their attendance is reduced.”

This should be a cause for optimism, the report argues: “If attendance is sensitive to the state and supply of church life and worship, then the future of attendance trends lies in the churches’ own hands. Developing the number and relevance of services leads to church growth.” New models of leadership that “take pressure off the stipendiary clergy” may be key to recovering 2019 levels of attendance, it says.

The report, hosted by the diocese of Oxford, draws on data from Canterbury, Chester, Guildford, Oxford, and Leeds.

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The report shows ‘strong correlation’ rather than causation but authors write: ‘Numbers are lower than in 2019 not because the demand for church is in inevitable decline but because of difficulties with the supply of both onsite and online church services’ https://t.co/For8BQawhM

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) April 3, 2023

There is also a downloadable option there.

Jesus makes his entry into Jerusalem, Dovetailed tapestry weave coloured wools on linen, Northern Europe, 17th century (V&A Museum, London) #PalmSunday pic.twitter.com/A0YiPApvmz

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) April 2, 2023

Listen carefully for a most important Jonathan Edwards reference–KSH.

A few pre-COVID churchgoers may no longer be involved in your congregation. If someone was connected with your church at the start of the pandemic, however, chances are they’ve stuck with you through it all.

While regular church attendance has dropped slightly since 2019, church participation has remained “remarkably steady” throughout the pandemic, according to an analysis from Pew Research.

In July 2020, around 41% of Americans said they had participated in religious services in the past month, including both in-person and virtual attendance. In November 2022, 40% of Americans continued to say they participated in some way.

While the percentage participating has remained stable, the way they participate has shifted since the first months of the pandemic. In July 2020, 13% said they had attended services in person in the past month. And 36% had watched online or on TV. By November 2022, 28% attended in person and 24% watched.

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 The secret contract was finalized on Nov. 8, 2021, a deal between a company that has acted as a front for the United States government and the American affiliate of a notorious Israeli hacking firm.

Under the arrangement, the Israeli firm, NSO Group, gave the U.S. government access to one of its most powerful weapons — a geolocation tool that can covertly track mobile phones around the world without the phone user’s knowledge or consent.

If the veiled nature of the deal was unusual — it was signed for the front company by a businessman using a fake name — the timing was extraordinary.

Only five days earlier, the Biden administration had announced it was taking action against NSO, whose hacking tools for years had been abused by governments around the world to spy on political dissidents, human rights activists and journalists. The White House placed NSO on a Commerce Department blacklist, declaring the company a national security threat and sending the message that American companies should stop doing business with it.

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NEW: Days after the White House in 2021 blacklisted NSO, the notorious Israeli hacking firm, a secret contract was signed for a hacking tool. The contract states that the USG is the user. A thread https://t.co/i2PSUXq3NJ

— Mark Mazzetti (@MarkMazzettiNYT) April 2, 2023

If we try to follow Jesus in faith and hope and love on his journey to the cross, we will find that the hurricane of love which we tremblingly call God will sweep in from a fresh angle, fulfilling our dreams by first shattering them, bringing something new out of the dangerous combination of personal hopes and cultural pressures. We mustn’t be surprised if in this process there are moments when it feels as though we are being sucked down to the depths, five hundred miles from shore amid hundred-foot waves, weeping for the dream that has had to die, for the kingdom that isn’t coming the way we wanted. That is what it’s like when we are caught up in Jesus’s perfect storm.

But be sure, when that happens, when you say with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, “We had hoped … but now it’s all gone wrong,” that you are on the verge of hearing the fresh word – the word that comes when the storm is stilled, and in the new great calm we see a way forward we had never imagined. “Foolish ones,” said Jesus, “and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and so enter into his glory?”

Who knows what might happen if each of us were to approach Holy Week and Good Friday praying humbly for the powerful fresh wind of God to blow into that combination of cultural pressure and personal aspiration, so that we each might share in the sufferings of the Messiah and come through into the new life he longs to give us.

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Today is Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week. Christ enters Jerusalem on a young colt to the acclaim of the crowds. It will end in tears and then in ultimate triumph. A 14th Century wall painting at North Cove, Suffolk.

North Cove: https://t.co/iEkvSm4TfK pic.twitter.com/BVjtKXxAcd

— Simon Knott (@last_of_england) April 2, 2023

Almighty and everlasting God, in your tender love for us you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon himself our nature, and to suffer death upon the Cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and come to share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Today is Palm Sunday, when Christians remember Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey. He was surrounded by crowds with palm branches. You can read more about Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem in Luke 19.28-40

📸 St Nicholas Church, Dersingham pic.twitter.com/n1kctirw5q

— Diocese of Norwich (@DioceseNorwich) April 2, 2023

Righteous art thou, O Lord,
when I complain to thee;
yet I would plead my case before thee.
Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
Why do all who are treacherous thrive?
Thou plantest them, and they take root;
they grow and bring forth fruit;
thou art near in their mouth
and far from their heart.
But thou, O Lord, knowest me;
thou seest me, and triest my mind toward thee.
Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter,
and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
How long will the land mourn,
and the grass of every field wither?
For the wickedness of those who dwell in it
the beasts and the birds are swept away,
because men said, “He will not see our latter end.”

“If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you,
how will you compete with horses?
And if in a safe land you fall down,
how will you do in the jungle of the Jordan?
For even your brothers and the house of your father,
even they have dealt treacherously with you;
they are in full cry after you;
believe them not,
though they speak fair words to you.”

“I have forsaken my house,
I have abandoned my heritage;
I have given the beloved of my soul
into the hands of her enemies.
My heritage has become to me
like a lion in the forest,
she has lifted up her voice against me;
therefore I hate her.
Is my heritage to me like a speckled bird of prey?
Are the birds of prey against her round about?
Go, assemble all the wild beasts;
bring them to devour.
Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard,
they have trampled down my portion,
they have made my pleasant portion
a desolate wilderness.
They have made it a desolation;
desolate, it mourns to me.
The whole land is made desolate,
but no man lays it to heart.
Upon all the bare heights in the desert
destroyers have come;
for the sword of the Lord devours
from one end of the land to the other;
no flesh has peace.
They have sown wheat and have reaped thorns,
they have tired themselves out but profit nothing.
They shall be ashamed of their harvests
because of the fierce anger of the Lord.”

Thus says the Lord concerning all my evil neighbors who touch the heritage which I have given my people Israel to inherit: “Behold, I will pluck them up from their land, and I will pluck up the house of Judah from among them. And after I have plucked them up, I will again have compassion on them, and I will bring them again each to his heritage and each to his land. And it shall come to pass, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by my name, ‘As the Lord lives,’ even as they taught my people to swear by Ba′al, then they shall be built up in the midst of my people.

–Jeremiah 12:1-16

It's Palm Sunday. Here's Christ on his flying donkey from the Melisande Psalter, 12th century. 🙂 #palmsunday #palmzondag pic.twitter.com/OfjaxUmdAd

— Rembrandt's R👀m 🖌 (@RembrandtsRoom) April 2, 2023