Sorry, pastor, see you later: Why Nairobi church attendance is falling
Closed door of All Saints Cathedral church in Nairobi on March 29, 2020, after the government directed all places of worship to close as a measure to curb the spread of coronavirus in the country.
A popular church in Nairobi is reporting a drop in the number of people who physically went to worship on Sundays in 2022, offering a glimpse into how Covid-19 affected in-person fellowship in the city.
The All Saints Cathedral, the Anglican Church’s worship centre at the heart of the city, attracted more than 270,000 Sunday worshippers a year between 2017 and 2020.
But in 2022, the year when services happened without closure at any time, the number dropped to 160,145.
“Physical attendance remained considerably less than what it used to be before the pandemic,” says the cathedral’s annual report for 2022, available on its website.
“More than half of those that had been congregating physically have not resumed.”
The church notes that its three Sunday services only resumed in June 2022: the 8am Sunday school service, the 9.30am adult service and the 11.30am young adults service.
However, comparing the month-on-month details for 2022 and the previous years, the June introductions did little to improve attendance.
The Rev Kennedy Salano of the Kenya Assemblies of God in Nairobi’s Kariobangi told the Nation that most churches in the city have witnessed a similar drop.
“Some people prefer online,” he said, noting, however, that physical attendance is improving gradually.
Churches are closing in America
“Also, there is a change of lifestyle. In the United States, when people’s lifestyles change in terms of material (possessions), when you get what you were looking for, spirituality tends to decline. You hear that churches are closing in America because people tend to be materialistic,” added the Rev Salano.
Before Covid-19, Sundays at All Saints were busier. It had 265,914 attending Sunday service in 2017, which grew to 280,358 in 2018 then dropped to 279,609 the following year.
In 2020, as a result of Covid-19, the number of those who attended in-person Sunday worship dropped to 68,930. The months of April to August that year had zero physical attendees on Sunday.
In 2021, only one month had zero physical attendees — April. That year, those who went to the cathedral to worship on Sundays rose to 71,722, which is just 2,729 more worshippers than the Covid year. That figure shot to 160,145 last year.
Curiously, though, online viewership of the cathedral’s services did not grow last year.
“Total online viewing for 2021 was 230,444 because the services were online due to Covid-19 restrictions compared to 22,062 in 2022 when the restrictions were lifted and physical attendance allowed,” says the cathedral’s report.
All Saints Cathedral is one of the few church entities that post their annual reports online detailing attendance, finances and other key aspects of the church.
A random search across other church websites showed that most of them either do not publish such reports or they stopped uploading new ones years ago.
