Supporting Churches in Understanding and Growing Their Worshipping Communities
What is Statistics for Mission?
Statistics for Mission is an annual data collection initiative by the Church of England. It helps churches, dioceses, and the national church understand patterns in attendance, demographics, and life events. This data is vital for shaping mission strategies, allocating resources, and celebrating growth.
Why it matters
- Local Insight: Understand your worshipping community and trends over time.
- Strategic Planning: Inform parish and diocesan decisions.
- National Impact: Contribute to the Church of England’s broader mission and reporting.
• Online Portal: Church of England Parish Returns Portal
Need Help?
Contact the Parish Coordination Team or visit the Church of England’s Statistics for Mission Help Page.
Statistics for Mission 2026
Thank you to all who coordinated the input of Mission Statistics for 2025. The dashboards have been published, and we are happy to share these with you via email.
Email to ask for your parish dashboard
Please include the name of the parish and church you are contacting us about, and your position in that church.
October Count – Submission Deadline: 30 November 2026
To support early analysis, we ask parishes to submit October Count data by 30 November.
In 2025, 94% met this deadline—thank you!
The return should be submitted via Parish Returns Online.
The remaining sections of the Stats for Mission return should be completed by the end of January 2027. We’ll send reminders, but it may help to plan ahead.
Updates to 2026 Statistics for Mission (SfM)
Most of the questions remain unchanged — consistency helps us track meaningful trends over time. However, there are a few updates and additions to be aware of:
• New Question on Confirmations: The form is slightly shorter than in previous years, as there is no "one-off" question.
The following changes were made for 2025, and have been kept in 2026.
• New Question on Confirmations: A new question has been added just after the baptisms section, following a unanimous request from General Synod.
• Return of the Social Action Question: Last included in 2022, this question is back by popular demand from various stakeholders.
• Updated Section on Fresh Expressions & New Congregations: The questions about fresh expressions of Church (fxC) and new congregations/new worshipping communities (NCs/NWCs) have been brought closer together and slightly restructured.
o National Church are now asking for more detail about each NC/NWC (previously, only names were required).
o To balance this, we’ve streamlined the fxC descriptive section.
• Smarter Form Logic: If a respondent indicates that an fxC began in 2025, the relevant descriptive fields will automatically populate in the NC/NWC section (but remain editable). This should reduce duplication of effort.
• Children & Youth Ministry Leaders: The section on leaders of ministry with children and young people remains unchanged.
• Worshipping Community Measure: In response to the research published by the Bible Society, there is increased interest in understanding the age distribution of our worshiping communities. From 2025, we ask parishes to estimate the number of people in the following age groups:
• 0–10 (Children)
• 11–17 (Young People)
• 18–29
• 30–49
• 50–69
• 70+
Previously, adult age groups were: 18–69 and 70+.
We would remind parishes that this is an exercise in estimating the number of people in a particular age category, rather than estimating the age of each member of your community.
Here is a case study, sharing how another parish have collected this information.
Why are we doing this? Over time, the more detailed responses will give us a greater understanding of the age profile of our parishes and enable more targeted support. Examples of benefits from other Diocese’s include:
“When our Director of Ordinands wanted to target programmes at churches with adults aged under 30, I’ve been able to tell her which ones have a few under 35’s.”
and
“people talked about gaps in the age groups e.g., 30’s to 50’s, but we had no data to know what the scale of the gap was. It was smaller than we feared!”
These fields open on Easter Tuesday, allowing data entry to be spread across the year. From 2026, we’ll send a reminder on Easter Tuesday. There’s no deadline—just an option to complete early.