Church attendance up

I was a little hesitant as I started to read this: there is a tendency for people to over-report and sometimes like-with-like comparisons are not there. However, this looks fairly robust: Baptist Times - Numbers increase: "The data reveals that 7.3m are now attending church once a month, an increase of two per cent from 2007." It's likely to be robust because it's a regular survey which is designed to provide year-on-year tracking using quite a large sample. The like-with-like factor is important in the sense that even if people do over-report, other things being equal, it should be similar from year to year (unless what we really need to be investigating is why people's over-reporting rate has increased!). And we should note that the figures are derived from pre-credit crunch surveying; so the effect that has sometimes been noticed of economic downturns on church attendance is not really a factor.

As with any data of this kind, the real trick is explaining it: coming up with a theory that explains the figures well. The article doesn't really give us that. I await seeing the report itself for indications of why this is so. Is it that many churches and initiatives are doing a http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifbetter job of attracting people and helping them to stay with it? Or is there some interesting socio-spiritual something occuring? What sort of churches are involved? What sort of people? ... ?

There's a bit more detail here (along with a link to further details at TEAR fund's site).
From the latter we might note this: "The broader trend over three years since the start of the tracking, shows that churchgoing is holding up well:
* at least annually: Sep 08 recovery from low point of 21% in Feb 07 but still below Feb 05 level of 29%
* at least monthly: Sep 08 and Feb 05 are equivalent, at 15%
* at least weekly: Sep 08 and Feb 05 are equivalent, at 10% "
So the picture is of bottoming out in these figure (again crying out for a set of hypotheses to explain the data).
I'm particularly interested in these figures too.

The increase in annual churchgoing (attending at least once a year) between Sep 07 and Sep 08 has occurred in most demographic segments i.e across the board rather than only among certain sub-groups. However the largest significant increases from September 2007 to September 2008 are:
By age:
* 25-34 year olds: +7% 15% to 22%
* 65-74 year olds +6% 27% to 33%
* Over 75 year olds + 10% 29% to 39%
...
By denomination, in the ‘established’ church rather than smaller denominations:
* Church of England +6% 28% to 34%
* Church of Scotland +6% 39% to 45%

So I'm wondering whether this may be something about doing occasional offices well: christenings and funerals plus surrounding pastoral contacts. ...? That would seem to stack up with the church I'm currently most acquainted with ...