Transforming Melbourne have been collating some data about the state of the Church in Melbourne. Next week they are releasing the data at a special day long event — with the data broken down into municipalities. I have been somewhat sceptical of the whole thing but more than willing to check it out and give it the benefit of the doubt.
Here’s what they have released on the Transforming Melbourne blog;
MELBOURNE: 3.6 million people (2006), 248 Nationalities, 289 languages,128 religious faiths
THE CHURCH
- 300,000 people attend church weekly, another 300,000 attend about once a month.
- There are over 1700 local churches of more than 30 denominations and over 80 nationalities
- There are 60 Chinese, 52 Greek, 41 Italian, 35 Samoan, 30 Vietnamese, 24 Korean churches
- “NO RELIGION” up 20% in 10 years
- Under 34s: 1.2million (48%) in population BUT only 48,000 (4%) attend church(=16% of attenders)
- Over 55s: 819,000 (22%) of population and 20% (122,000) attend weekly (= 54% of attenders)
- About 5000 people come to faith each year, about 9000 people leave the Church
City population increasing at 90,000pa, here is a net loss of 4,800pa from church attendance.
The churches make a major contribution to the city in education, welfare, health and aged care BUT without spiritual regeneration this support will not be sustainable.
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