How large is the average UK Christian youth group?

Now that is the question isn’t is! How big is the average youth group? I don’t mean how many young people are there averaged out across the number of churches which exist in the UK – as most churches don’t have any youth provision. The question is, of the Church-based youth groups that exist, what is their average size?

There is very little actual research into this, and what there is seems questionable. Let’s start with one such piece of research from a reputable source.

Kageler’s Study

A few days ago, I was put onto a cross-cultural comparative study of youth work by Len Kageler[1] who found that the average youth group size in the UK in 2006 was between 50-180 young people.

Shocked? I was too. Even generously speaking – and including children – this would make the average Christian youth group bigger than the average church. Let’s spend a little time with this figure and see how likely it is.

Kageler’s methodology sampled youth workers who are part of the International Association of the Study of Youth Ministry (IASYM)[2]. This is a group that I’m a part of and it represents those in youth work who are actively involved in academic research. This means Kageler didn’t sample ‘typical’ youth workers, most of whom in the UK have no formal training whatsoever. This also excludes the majority of youth work in the UK that is run by volunteers.

Using surveymonkey he received 303 responses from across 24 countries. We don’t know how many responses came from each country, but taking the average, this would mean he received 10-15 responses from each country. This is clearly far too small a sample, and it looks to me like he happened upon some larger youth groups.

The issue with 50-180, of course, would mean that the ‘average’ youth group is larger than the ‘average’ church. To get to that figure we’d have to assume that either 1. Most Christian youth work happens outside the sphere of churches, or 2. Christian youth work is limited to just 10% (or less) of churches.

Exploring a better model

In 2018, the Church of England reported that the usual Sunday attendance was 703,000[3] people. Across roughly 16,043 churches and cathedrals, this makes the average attendance 44 people per church. Of this, 13% were children under the age of 16, or about 7 per church. As only 25% of these Churches have any youth provision, this would mean that the likely average across those 25% of churches is 22 young people. So, 25% have 22 young people under the age of 16, and 75% don’t have any at all.

Assuming that this is too stark, and that there would be some bleed through of Church of England churches with no youth provision but who still some young people attending – the average ‘youth group’ size in these churches would be around 18 young people, aged 0 – 16. Of course, this still means most churches don’t have any young people at all.

There is also a significant drop off of young people between the ages of 11-14. Only about 26% of those young people aged 0 – 16 noted above would be older than 11. This would make the average youth group in the Church of England would be about 5 young people. Perhaps 5 – 10 allowing for 17 and 18 year olds that aren’t part of these figures.

The Church of England make up nearly a third of all church attendance, but using similar available figures for Baptist, URC, Catholic, Pentecostal, Orthodox, independent, and ‘other’ churches, we should be able to put together a reasonable figure.

It’s hard to find data, but we can add to this that the Christian Youth Work Consortium in 2016[4] found 7192 13-19 year olds in the Methodist church were attending on a Sunday morning, but 67,000 attending weekly activities. This (according to Piggot, 2017)[5] would be across 4512 Methodist churches. Likely (using similar data to the Church of England), this means those young people will be spread out among fewer churches, making this about 10-40 young people involved in regulated weekly activities – however only 10% of this would be on a Sunday.

Limitations of this model

Some of this data goes back as far as 2005[6], but mostly church attendance trends downwardly. The Church of England, for instance, had an average attendance of 54 in 2005, but 44 in 2018. So, any figure we come up with is likely to be generous.

Much (but not all) of the data is also only pertinent to England, and misses Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Also, this data doesn’t look at all at parachurch groups like Youth for Christ, YoungLife, YWAM, Scripture Union, or Urban Saints. It also doesn’t make a clear distinction as to what constitutes a ‘youth group.’ It’s likely that much of the figure from the Methodist churches above includes larger one-off events or schools work. For that reason we should err on the cautious side.

It’s also worth noting that we stream young people into age categories. So often youth ministries have separate 11-13s and a 14-18s groups. In these common cases, a youth group may actually be two groups. This also doesn’t account for funnel models of larger youth groups where there can be as many as seven different groups/projects based on group aims or maturities.

Finally, some churches have larger average sizes but make up a much smaller proportion of church attendance across the UK. So Pentecostal churches, for instance, have an average attendance size of 129, but only make up 9% of Christian worshippers across the UK.

With all those provisions, let’s try to estimate an average.

So, what’s the answer?

With this in mind, we are able to come up with a broad, but I think likely figure.

I believe that the average youth group size across the UK is between 5 and 20 young people aged 11-18. These groups are mostly limited to 25% of the church.

Splitting up the age categories, the average is probably 5 – 12 young people per youth group.

** Additional note suggested after publication:

For an excellent study on the impact of vocational youth, children’s and families workers has on youth group attendance in the Church of England, see:

Francis, L. J., Howell, D., Hill, P. & McKenna U. (2019) ‘Assessing the Impact of a Paid Children, Youth, or Family Worker on Anglican Congregations’ in England, Journal of Research on Christian Education, 28:1, 43-50, DOI: 10.1080/10656219.2019.1593267

They found that the average youth/children’s group in the Church of England contained 0 – 10 young people, but saw an increase of around 7 when a vocational worker was added; making it 0 – 17 young people aged 0-18. This would be consistent with my findings above.

Notes:

[1] Kageler, L. (2010) ‘A cross national analysis of church based youth ministries’, The Journal of Youth Ministry, 8(2), pp. 49–68

[2] https://iasym.net

[3] Church of England (2018) Statistics for Mission. (Research and Statistics, Church House, London), available at: https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2019-10/2018StatisticsForMission_0.pdf

[4] Christian Youth Work Consortium (2016) Report of the consultation: Christian youth work and ministry across the UK, available at: https://www.cte.org.uk/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=182924

[5] Piggot, A (2017), Statistics for Mission, available at: https://www.methodist.org.uk/downloads/conf-2017-42-Statistics-for-Mission.pdf

[6] Evangelical Alliance (2005) English Church Census 2005. Available at: https://www.eauk.org/church/research-and-statistics/english-church-census.cfm

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