A trend is emerging among Ottawa churches, and it’s one that has caught most priests and pastors by surprise.
As churches struggle to address an aging congregation, there has been a resurgence in church attendance on Sundays, with Ottawa’s younger generations leading the crowd.
Seniors, including baby boomers and Generation X, have largely maintained their strong participation, church leaders are saying, but the latest increase in church attendance is in the generation between the ages of 18 and 35.
Trinity Anglican Parish has operated in Old Ottawa South since 1876, and the current church building has stood on the corner of Cameron Avenue and Bank Street in 1926.
Just before the pandemic, Rev. Mark Whittall joined the church, and shortly after, the church conducted a demographic study of the members of the parish. At that time, the membership rolls showed 35 people in the 18-40 age group, said Whittall.
Now, he says there are approximately 70 within that age group.
“Up until the pandemic, we did have a pretty balanced demographic with older folks, middle-aged folks, some families, some children, some teens,” Whittall told the Lookout. “But the group that was missing, at least at Trinity, was the 18- to 30-year-olds. And that's just totally flipped in the last four and a half years.”
The entire congregation consists of about 300 people, so the significant increase in youth attendance made a “massive” difference, said Whittall.
Further downtown, the Saint Patrick Basilica towers over Kent Street. The parish began in a small church on Sparks Street in 1855 before opening the current basilica in 1872. According to church records, Sir John A. MacDonald was present when the new building was blessed and officially opened.
Here, the Catholic church offers six Sunday Masses, 16 weekday Masses, and 17 periods of Confession that are available each week. In addition to these, the church offers the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA), the Catholic Church's process for initiating adults into the Christian faith.
Before the pandemic, the church had an average of five or six adults participating; now, that number has reached closer to 35, and Father Stephen Amesse says the majority of participants are young people.
“Perhaps it was the loneliness of the pandemic, perhaps the uncertainty of everything that was happening to them, but it's certainly since then,” Amesse told the Lookout. “COVID was not fun for us because we were closed for a long time, and we were very limited in the number of people we could have, and we really thought it was going to take years to get back to where we were.”
Thanks to the increase in attendance, though, the church can barely keep up, with the new participants filling up Confession time and taking to the pews for Mass, said Amesse.
At Knox Presbyterian Church on Lisgar Street, the attendance and demographics of parishioners have been shifting. Over the last 10 years, approximately half of the church’s regular members have passed away, according to Minister James Pot. Since the pandemic, younger people have begun to attend the Sunday services.
“At first it was occasionally and sporadically, and in the last 2 years especially, younger people have been connecting and attending more regularly, including a number of them taking our membership class, receiving baptism and getting quite involved in ministries and leadership in the congregation,” Pot told the Lookout.
But aside from their age, the young people don’t necessarily have a lot in common, both church leaders have said.
In speaking to the new parishioners, Amesse said he has learned that some went to Catholic schools or were baptized by their parents, but didn't go to church.
“Some of them have the foundation, if that's the right word… and for others, there's been absolutely nothing, but there's this curiosity,” he said.
In most cases, he said he believes they are seeking connection — both to each other and to a higher power.
“We believe there's sort of a hole in our hearts that only God can fill. And there's that sort of theological dimension as we believe, and maybe it's COVID, maybe it's the isolation,” he explained. “Sometimes with social media, we are not connecting physically with people. That's another one of the reasons that people want to join the church, or are coming to mass… because they just want to be with people.”
At Knox, Pot said it’s a bit more than that. His church has a clear mission of supporting people “living with scarcity”. The church is also near the University of Ottawa and hosts an internship program for post-secondary students.
But aside from these practical factors, Pot said new, younger members have cited the church’s position as an affirming place for people of all ages and backgrounds as a point in its favour.
“While there are clearly other Christian churches with divergent views from us also experiencing growth among younger people, we are part of a denomination that has both apologized for past harm and offered congregations the option to be fully affirming and welcoming in relation to the LGBTQ+ community,” said Pot. “Our church is one of quite a number within our denomination that have chosen this direction.
“While we are clear about this in our publicity, we try not to draw attention to it or make it central to our identity,” he continued. “I've received comments from some of our younger attendees that our approach in this matter is influential in their decision to join us in worship.”
But he agreed that younger people are seeking more profound connections in their communities and are “unsatisfied with the strict secular view of the world.”
“It privatizes and even blocks out transcendent concerns, and they are searching for meaning and purpose,” he said. “I suspect many Christian churches, which are either more progressive or fundamental or somewhere between, are all seeing more younger people in search of spiritual answers.”
On Prince of Wales Drive, more than 1,000 people walk through the doors of the Metropolitan Bible Church each Sunday for worship. The evangelical Christian megachurch is recognized as one of the largest churches in Ottawa, offering a range of services and social groups for young adults.
In an email to the Lookout, the Met’s young adults coordinator Claire Vandesande said the church has also seen an increase in attendance, as well as volunteering, from young people, “which has been very exciting.”
Also in Nepean, the Vineyard Church is no exception.
Richard Long is part of the leadership team at the church on Greenbank Road, which is affiliated with the international Vineyard movement and rooted in evangelical theology. The Vineyard Ottawa church has seen a marked increase in attendance among young people, as well as people in their 30s and 40s, who he said have been “drifting in”.
He said there’s been a combination of young adults and families with young children attending church, as well as students coming over from Algonquin College, which is nearby.
Long also works with One Way Ministries, an organization that connects religious leaders in Ottawa. Here, Long meets with other leaders to provide pastoral advice and support. He said that in talking with other church leaders, he has learned that increased attendance among young people is a trend that is echoing across the city.
The data isn’t only anecdotal — a study from Barna Group, an American Christian polling firm, found that attendance among Generation Z and millennials is showing a “steady shift”, leading the age group to be among the highest-attending in the church.
The study, which was published in September, found that the “rebound” of churchgoing among younger adults contrasts with older generations — “over the last 25 years, elders and boomers are well below the frequency of attendance they practiced in the past; Gen X churchgoing has landed at about the same rate as it was in 2000.”
“Younger adults are showing spiritual curiosity and a desire for belonging — but even as they attend more often than older adults, they still attend less than half the time.”
Although the study only surveyed churchgoers in the United States, churches in Ottawa are no exception to the trend.
In response, Saint Patrick’s has begun offering youth-led young adult groups, said Amesse, and there are now approximately 50 participants — “their numbers are more than we ever expected.”
The same can be said for Trinity, which began running young adult groups in 2021 to address the “influx” of young people who showed interest in the church.
“There was certainly something about the need for connection post-pandemic that motivated some people to connect with us, some of whom are still with us, and some of them have moved on to other places,” said Whittall. “But the term ‘young adult’ encompasses people in a variety of stages of their lives, so they come for different reasons.”
Trinity Anglican Church at 1230 Bank St.. Photo provided.
Many are also students, he said; the church is located near Carleton University, and Whittall leads an active ministry on campus. From there, many students find their way to the nearby church.
But as more and more families move into the community, they also seek out the church as a means of meeting their neighbours, Whittall said.
“People are absolutely looking for connection at all ages, but especially young adults. And they'll articulate that one of the things they get out of being part of our community is the opportunity to connect with people,” said Whittall.
“Also, a lot of them value the intergenerational connection, because there's actually not that many places in our society where you can connect intergenerationally,” he continued. “So for some of these young adults, this is the place where they get to play with kids for a little bit on a Sunday morning, or they get to meet somebody that could have been their grandmother.”
The Vineyard church follows a more contemporary model of worship, with concert-style worship music and accessible services, although Long said the church adheres to a “conservative” theology.
Long said that for many, non-denominational churches like Vineyard can also offer a break from the secular upbringings many people have had within the church. However, he said he thinks young people are seeking more than just small talk and daily connection.
“They're looking for some kind of sense of what's true, the meaning of the universe, or the meaning of their own lives. So they're searching for some of those absolutes,” he said. “They can find community at the bar or the student union or whatever. But I think they're not, because they're not just looking for a community. They're looking for meaning.”
Seniors and older generations haven’t tapered off in their attendance either, said both Whittall and Amesse; Whittall said they are still “really dedicated, faithful church attenders, as long as their health permits.”
“Every year, sadly, we have some of the foundation here of folks who are passing away, and that's expected in any kind of community,” said Amesse. “Otherwise, those numbers remain the same.
“But we're also seeing a number of new communities; we have a lot of East Indians and Filipino people joining the church,” he said. “I always say that, if our pastor came back from the 1940s, he probably wouldn't recognize our parish. You know, Ottawa is changing, and it’s all wonderful.”
At Trinity, the most underrepresented generation is now middle-aged, generation X or young baby boomers. The church began offering both a traditional Sunday mass and a more modern, “contemporary” worship service to appeal to all generations, and Whittall said the attendees are as diverse in how they choose to worship as they are in age.
In addition to the Sunday service, Trinity’s young adults coordinator manages weekly Bible studies, game nights and prayer groups as well as a monthly social event, all for young adults. The church also hosts a young adult meal and a meal for young families, which includes children, about once a month.
Whittall also added that as Ottawa’s community becomes more diverse, so does the parish. Many new church members were raised in Christianity and are now rediscovering their faiths, while others are exploring it for the first time, he said. Still others are new to Canada and looking for religion and community in their new home.
“These young adults are interested in questions of meaning and purpose and identity, and so they want to have a place where we talk about that sort of stuff. Young adults and everybody, I think, want to be able to participate in our worship,” he said. “We try to, as a community, embrace people who are new, and give them a chance to find their place.
“They’re not looking for a social aspect, like at a coffee shop, but they're wanting to engage with some of those bigger questions, have that more meaningful connection as well,” said Whittall. “One of the things one of the young adults told me is that he didn't have a place where he could ask him questions, where he could talk with people about his purpose and what a good life looks like.
“Church is a place where you can do that.”
