About a year ago, I read a book called 'Why Men Hate Going To Church', by David Murrow. It was basically about why and how the church is geared more towards women than men. One thing the book discussed was the relative proportions of women and men attending church services.
I decided to find out what sort of 'gender gap' my own church, Kings Church Durham, has. Each Sunday service from September 2009 to July 2010 I counted the number of over-18 men and women at Kings. I decided on the over-18 cutoff because young children are generally brought to church by their parents, rather than of their own accord and, while teenagers tend to have more choice, I had to make a cutoff somewhere.
I counted numbers at each different type of Kings meeting – Morning Worship, Crux, Connecting with God, prayer evenings, evening services, evening guest services and the AGM. I used the numbers to produce a simple percentage – the percentage of the congregation that were male. I also calculated a 'minus team percentage' – the percentage if the 6 female and 10 male staff and interns are discounted, as they are required at the services as part of the job.
All this resulted in many Excel spreadsheets and graphs, but the most important are below:
The average totals for each service are interesting but not that unexpected. For reference, the most people at any service was on 11th October, at 313 people. This was the first Sunday of the student year. The highest at Crux was 48, Connecting was 149 and prayer meeting was 52.
The male percentages are much more interesting. Here they are in table form:
Service type | Male % | Male % minus team |
Morning Worship | 43.26 | 41.5 |
Crux | 61.32 | 60.48 |
Connecting | 41.61 | 38.59 |
Evening (joint) | 39.66 | 34.51 |
Evening Guest | 42.59 | 40.41 |
Prayer meeting | 49.87 | 42.19 |
AGM | 55.56 | 51.72 |
Average over all services | 43.9 | 41.31 |
So, overall, Kings has averaged 43.9% this academic year (41.31 excluding team). Morning worship is typical of this percentage. Connecting, joint evening services and evening guest services are slightly lower. Prayer meetings, the AGM and Crux get successively higher, up to 61.32% male at Crux (60.48 excluding team).
A few comments:
Surveys seem to show that male % in churches is generally below 40%, so Kings is doing better than average, but still well below 50%.
Possible explanations for the variations in services are: Connecting and similar services have lower percentages because they are more 'emotional', crux is higher because it is more 'academic', prayer meetings and AGM are higher showing a balanced (or even male dominated) 'core' in the church but a female dominated periphery or studentdom.
This survey does not examine male percentages within certain age groups.
This survey is purely attendance based, it does not look at involvement in cell groups and other church activities (though I would hazard a guess that the only church activities which are male dominated are setup and worship).
The December 2009 address list give a male % of 44.29%. The most up to date cell list gives 43.93%. These are consistent with average service attendance.
Not all services were counted. Sometimes I was either absent or not in a position to count.
The overall message?
Kings, like almost every church, needs more men.
There is something about Crux, prayer meetings and the AGM that attracts more men than women.
