Church attendance growing in smaller denominations

Bonnie Fields, 53, decided to try out a church for the first time in eight years this past March.

On her first Sunday at City Church of East Nashville, Fields realized that this was where she, her husband, and her grandson needed to be.

“From the moment I walked into the church, from the leaders to the elders, to the members, they were real, they were caring, they were compassionate, and they don’t put on a fake act in any way,” Fields said.

The church, which is a part of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), soon felt like home to Fields. On Easter, she became a member of the church, and her grandson got baptized.

Fields’ story is part of a trend of church attendees gravitating to smaller denominations, such as the PCA, or even nondenominational churches. In the United States, smaller church bodies are growing despite roughly two decades of declining church involvement overall, with mainstream denominations especially floundering. While numerous factors contribute to the attendance changes, experts who study church demographics say the largest driver is people’s desire to be part of a caring community.

Unexplained growth

Fields said she grew up going to a “hellfire and brimstone” Pentecostal church that once shamed her publicly for wearing lipstick.

Then as an adult, she and her husband tried to go to two nondenominational churches in Kentucky and Tennessee. Both churches struggled because of accusations of infidelity against their pastors. Fields was left churchless and hurt. She loved God but didn’t feel safe trying to find a new spiritual home.

Nearly two years ago, Fields said she received custody of her then-12-year-old grandson. He soon started to ask if he and his grandparents could all go to church because he wanted to learn “more about Jesus, and he wanted to be baptized,” she said. Fields started to pray that God would lead her family to a church where she felt safe.

The answer came through Kelly Richter, a staff member at the school Fields’ grandson went to. Richter’s husband serves as the senior pastor of City Church, so Richter invited the family to come join them one Sunday. Fields said Richter’s actions seemed to resound with genuine care.

Church members have continued that same attitude—they invited her grandson to go on a youth trip that occurred just weeks after she started attending the church. Fields emphasized that she has never felt judged or criticized by church members; instead, they are vulnerable and share their own struggles with her.

The PCA’s magazine, byFaith, recently reported that the denomination had a 1.8% growth in church membership, going from 393,528 in 2023 members to 400,751 members in 2024. It also had a 16.6% increase in adult baptisms. The PCA has had continual growth since it was first established in 1973. Its membership numbers only significantly dipped during the pandemic.

“To some measure, we have no idea why the Lord is granting us this privilege right now,” said Bryan Chapell, the administrative leader of the PCA, who announced plans to retire last week after he publicly criticized other denominational leaders.

Chapell said that PCA churches haven’t found some “magic solution” for drawing in new members. “Each year that I have announced that we are still growing I’m thinking, ‘Well, maybe that’s the last year,’ but so far the Lord has continued to help us grow,” he said. “We are trying to be true to the historic Christian faith, true to the Scriptures, and obedient to the Great Commission, as best we are able. We are doing very basic things.”

Nondenominational churches have experienced similar growth, as well. They have added nearly 9 million attendees between 2010 and 2020, according to the U.S. Religion Census. This nondenominational growth is likely underreported because the growth of house churches or independent churches is harder to track, said Daniel Copeland, the vice president of research at Barna Group. Copeland said church attendance could be on the “rebound” despite the decadeslong decline in church involvement.

Trend reversal?

According to a March report from Barna, the share of U.S. adults attending church weekly hit its highest point—48%—in 2009. That number dropped to 27% by 2017. While the 2024 count had only risen to 28%, preliminary data from 2025 shows that church attendance is up to approximately 32%.

Copeland also pointed out that, while men have consistently lagged behind women in attendance for the past two decades, so far in 2025, 40% of men have reported attending church weekly compared to 28% of women.

These increases stem from people’s desires to connect with communities and build relationships, Copeland said, adding that people are struggling with a loneliness epidemic that the pandemic accelerated.

“Since that pandemic, it’s as if young men have started looking around and going, ‘I think I really need a bigger community,’” Copeland said. “So, this rebounding effect, I think and the research shows, comes from a long diagnosis of loneliness and cultural disconnect. And now we are seeing young people reengaging, almost as if they say, ‘I think I need this church thing.’”

Findings from Pew Research Center’s latest Religious Landscape Study line up with Barna’s reports. The study found that church attendance has some signs of leveling off, with 33% of individuals reporting that they go to religious services at least once a month.

Ongoing losses

While the decline may be slowing down, larger denominations are still losing members. The Presbyterian Church (USA) announced last week that its membership between 2023 and 2024 shrank by about 4.5%. The church is now down to about 1,046,000 total members.

Earlier this spring, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) announced its 18th consecutive year of membership decline.

Between 2023 and 2024, the SBC lost 259,824 members of its 12,722,266, a 2% drop, according to a report from Lifeway Research. Additionally, 30 churches left the denomination in 2024, with some leaving over theological disagreements such as the ordination of women.

Scott McConnell, the executive director at Lifeway Research, blamed the long-term decline on the deaths of older members and a lack of interest from young adults in church and religion.

He added that the relational aspect of church membership is key to growth—churches need to connect with new people to make up for lost members.

McConnell said there are some signs that SBC churches are building relationships like that successfully. For instance, the denomination reported that 250,643 individuals were baptized in 2024, which is the highest annual total since 2017.

A huge factor in major denominations’ declines, like the SBC, is “money and sex scandals” within the leadership and organization, said Christian Smith, the director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame.

Smith said his first piece of advice for churches to reduce membership loss is to “somehow get a handle on the leaders and the clergy who are getting in trouble and are being reported and creating scandals for you because it just really turns off huge numbers of Americans.”

For instance, in 2022, the organization Guidepost Solutions released a report stating that SBC leaders had mistreated abuse survivors for years and downplayed the number of sexual abuse cases. One of the men accused of misconduct in the report sued the denomination and Guidepost for defamation. The Justice Department investigated the SBC and closed the case without filing any abuse-related charges.

Smith said that while there have been signs that the downward trend of church attendance is leveling off, he believes that there is still a net effect decline overall. Even the statistics on young men coming back to church more, he labeled as “not major, consequential changes.”

He added that these numbers are “not going to change the long-term trends.”

Membership will continue to decrease because younger generations are less interested in religion than their predecessors, he said. He noted that the internet has fueled additional disinterest in church. Many are turning online for community or information about church scandals, he said.

Despite declining membership numbers, people like Fields are still finding their way to the church pews. For Fields, going back to church wasn’t about finding a specific denomination, it was about finding a place where her family was welcomed and loved.

“I had never been in a Presbyterian church [before this],” Fields said, adding that while she glanced at their core beliefs, she didn’t know them fully. “I did not care. I knew that there was a love of Christ. I knew that there was a peace amongst them, and that’s what I was drawn to.”