Few churches back to pre-COVID attendance levels

This survey was conducted by LifeWay Research between early September and early October 2020 and queried 1,007 Protestant pastors through a combination of phone and online interviews, weighting responses for region and church size. Their findings indicated that the vast majority of U.S. Protestant churches were holding in-person services again, but only 15% responded that their church had returned to 90% or more of pre-pandemic attendance levels. The survey also explored possible long-term consequences of the pandemic, with 73% of respondents indicating that they had thus far avoided long-term issues such as budget cuts, staff reduction, ministry elimination, etc. The most common shift reported was a delay in capital expenditures.