The largest local Anglican congregation in North America is a southern California megachurch formed in 2011.
Vintage Church LA, a congregation affiliated with the Holy Trinity Brompton network and part of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO) now ranks as the most-attended, with an average of 3,000 in the pews in 2024. The church employs a multi-site model, with five services across two locations in El Segundo and Santa Monica, California totaling 2,800 on a Sunday, alongside two smaller churches within the same family in Malibu and Pasadena with 150.
The information was part of two lists of diocesan and parish-level information made available by ACNA officials this week following the June 19 annual Provincial Council at which officials reported a province-wide 13.4 percent increase in average Sunday attendance across 2024.
Nearly every diocese in the ACNA reported attendance growth, with many seeing sustained double-digit increases across the past two years. The largest by attendance continues to be C4SO, which increased 33 percent from 8,214 to 12,260 in 2024, followed by the Diocese of South Carolina which grew 13.49% from 7,663 to 8,858. South Carolina continues to have the largest membership in the province of 17,103. The full list is included below.
Among the few dioceses reporting declines were the Anglican Diocese of the South, which dropped from an attendance of 6,329 to 5,561. This is due to the transfer of Christ Church Cathedral into the Diocese of Christ Our Hope as part of long-term plans for a Dallas based jurisdiction anchored by that church. Except for the Christ Church transfer, ADOTS otherwise saw organic growth, declining only 768 despite the transfer out of the 1,313 attendee Christ Church. Christ Our Hope grew from 4,884 to 7,352 (33.57 percent) also partly due to receiving the majority of congregations transferring from the International Diocese that concluded at the retirement of Bishop Bill Atwood. The only other two dioceses to report attendance declines were the Reformed Episcopal Church’s Diocese of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic down from 849 to 715 (18.74 percent) and the Diocese of All Nations (formerly CANA West) down from 1,766 to 1,195 (47.78 percent). The Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy also saw a small 2.8 percent drop.
Attendance and membership data collected by dioceses and forwarded on to the province does have variations in reporting and at least one significant apparent error. The Diocese of Quincy reported a 63.66 percent growth from 1,368 to 3,764 in a single year.
“We haven’t been good at getting our churches to report to the ACNA,” explained Diocese of Quincy Canon to the Ordinary J. Michael Strachan. “In 2022 we had about 37% of churches report. In 2023, it was about 85%. In 2024, it was almost 100%.” That increased reporting rate shows congregational attendance that probably already existed but went mostly unrecorded on the diocesan and provincial level until now.
Quincy did surprisingly list the second-largest congregation by attendance within ACNA, Mision Sagrado Corazon de Jesus of Perris, California, a town of 80,000 in Riverside County east of Los Angeles reporting 1,860 attendees.
“It’s definitely an error of some sort,” Strachan explained, recalling a Sunday visit several years ago with an attendance of approximately 150. “Quincy has churches that speak English, Spanish, and Karen. It’s a genuine blessing, but it can also make filling out English-only forms a struggle.”
While ACNA remains a small denomination composed mostly of small congregations, for the first time 27 local churches now have an average attendance exceeding 500, up from 16 surpassing that number the year before (not counting Mision Sagrado Corazon de Jesus).
Some of the congregations are well known: Christ Church Cathedral in Plano, Texas (1,313), The Falls Church Anglican (1,385) in Virginia and St. Andrew’s Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina (1,348). All three are established congregations formerly associated with the Episcopal Church.
A newer group of churches that were never part of the Episcopal Church is among those posting the strongest growth, among them Cornerstone in Tulsa, Oklahoma (838), International Anglican Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado (612), Wellspring Church in Englewood, Colorado (780), The Mission in Chattanooga, Tennessee (920), and Restoration Anglican Church in Arlington, Virginia (697).
Vintage is not the only Anglican congregation featuring a multi-site structure: St. Andrew’s Church of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, which reported 1,348 on an average Sunday in 2024, has three locations across the greater Charleston area. St. Helena’s Church in Beaufort, South Carolina (1,373) holds Sunday services at three different sites, and the Church of the Cross in Bluffton, South Carolina (1,325) has services at three locations.
Access the full lists of diocesan data and largest ACNA congregations below (viewable as images, downloadable as spreadsheets).
More from IRD:
Anglicans See Multi-Year Growth
Trinity Anglican Seminary Goes ‘Whole Candlestick’
New Trend: Nondenom ‘Anglicans’?
Comment by Joshua Toepper on July 11, 2025 at 4:42 pm
Hey Jeff, what does APSA stand for in form two and do you know how the counting is being done? Is the number reflective of adults only or adults, youth, and children?
Comment by Jeffrey Walton on July 11, 2025 at 6:23 pm
“Average Principal Service Attendance” – the equivalent of Average Sunday Attendance in the ACNA. Unlike membership, attendance counts all participants in the service, including youth and children. Typically ushers make a count during each service and record it in the parish register.