Our Recovery and Reuse Team has been scouring our church archives for historical clipping, photos and treasures and they ran across some attendance records that will floor you.
On Easter Sunday, February 25, 1951, church volunteers counted 3,435 cars carrying 10,305 worshipers on our 14 acre campus. That is the largest attendance in our records. 29,751 people attendend Pasadena Community Church worship services that month. (There is one record in the archive that says 11,582 people attended services in March 1952, but that figure dos not match other figures we found for that month, so it is unconfirmed.)
As you know, it was far more than coul crowd into the Hamilton Building, so the church set up loud speakers and people worshipped sitting in their vehicles, or in chairs or on the grass.
Compare those figures 1950’s to 25 years later and the attendance and car count was about half of what it was in the 1950’s when there were few churches in our part of Pinellas County. The luxury of air-conditioning and indoor restrooms as well as a 200-person choir and a pipe organ were prominently featured in advertisements trying to attract worshipers.
In some years, such as April 1974, there was a dramatic decline in attendance right after Easter. But in subsequent years, the change unfolded slowly over a month. IN some years, August attendance dropped by a lot, in other years, especially during the oil embargo and gas crisis years of the 1970’s, attendance changed very little in the summer.
By August 1983, one Sunday service counted only 45 total cars. Over the years, even as early as 1951, we noticed a significant dropoff in attendance in July and August.
All of these changes point us toward one indisputable fact; Pasadena Community Church adapts and continues to fulfill its mission to serve God by serving our community. Throughout our history, as national church attendance trends rise and fall, we adapt.
And we never quit serving.
pccforward.org 