Annual Survey 2026

Published 14th April 2026 by Sophie Harber

We ran a survey back in January/February to get a snapshot of the UK Messy Church network and after a little bit of squinting at – and wrangling with! – our spreadsheets we have the results ready to share: it’s good news!

207 of you in the UK took the time to tell us about your Messy Church – our sincere thanks to each and every one of you. It has been such an encouragement to get more of an insight into what Messy Church looks like, and even more wonderful to read about where God is at work in your communities.

Some key figures from the results:

Approximately 17,454 attended Messy Church across the year at the churches who responded, with an average of 96 people visiting each Messy Church in 2025 ==> if we take this average and widen it for the whole UK network, that would be roughly 143,852 people attending Messy Church in 2025!
Average attendance at a Messy Church session is 43 people
The age profile is 52% children and 48% adults – that’s a great ratio and a superb amount of young people!
For nearly 50% of people who come to Messy Church, it is their only church

This demonstrates again that Messy Church is a brilliant way to get both young people and non-churched people into church!

The results are also very helpful for us to share with our funders to show the impact we are having, both through data and the stories that represent you and your communities. This is especially true for our current Messy Momentum project, generously funded by the Church of England, which we can report back on with confidence.

One great take-way is specifically about young people. In our last survey in 2024, nearly 50% of Messy Churches reported they had no 12-16 year olds; this gap became the missional challenge that launched our Messy Momentum youth pilots. However, in this survey, this gap of 12-16 year olds has decreased to 34%. Heading into the second year of Messy Momentum, we are very encouraged to see this has already dipped but will be keeping an eye to check it’s a continuing trend as we continue our work better engaging young people.

Where is God at work?

Clearly, God is at work! But we asked you for stories – as well as your numbers! – of where you see God working in your Messy Churches. We had a wonderfully positive response, with many of you highlighting how God is moving to build community, foster intergenerational engagement and better support faith journeys for both your teams and families.

Some of you noted challenges with attendance and engagement, difficulties reaching new families, and volunteer retention, but overall, the encouragement from seeing the impact Messy Church has on providing a safe, inclusive space where faith and relationships can flourish across ages and backgrounds in your community was the key theme. Below are just a few quotes from some of the Messy Church leaders who responded to the survey that well represent the general responses:

We have a lovely team and group of people who attend although we, the leading team, are all tired at the end we feel God at work amongst our Messy People

a Messy Church leader

Looking forward

We also asked what you would be most beneficial to you as Messy Church leaders from the network, since we are currently redefining the network. Top was ongoing training and resourcing from the Messy Church team, followed by prayerful support – and we are always here for that! – but it was apt to see that connecting with and learning from

one another as Messy Churches, whether online or in-person, was important to you – and this is very much a part of our new Regional Teams as a support structure for the UK network.

To hear more about the new Regional Teams, sign-up to one of our ‘Messy Meet-up: Network News’: https://www.messychurch.brf.org.uk/regional-teams/

Thank you again to all who gave time and responses – we hope it will be as helpful for you as it was for us as we build your input into our outcomes like Messy Momentum and the network development, along with other ministry areas.

Sophie Harber, Youth Project Lead.