Behind the numbers: What 2025 revealed about church engagement

Our team is already full-steam ahead on developing and delivering impactful technology to help you and your church make this year meaningful. But it would be a miss if we didn’t take time to recognize and celebrate the incredible impact we had together in 2025. Through our technology, and your passionate heart for ministry, it was a record year for engagement, generosity and community impact.  

We love seeing first-hand how our technology is enabling you to focus less on administrative tasks and more on the transformational work of ministry. And this year, we witnessed something remarkable.

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Engagement is up

Across our network of more than 14,000 church customers we are seeing communities deepen their bonds in extraordinary ways. In looking at averages per customer, group participation surged 22% year-over-year, and volunteering increased 19%. Also, child check-ins were up more than 3% this year, with 21 million total check-ins via Pushpay technology, which is a hopeful sign for the next generation of church-goers. 

What excites us most is seeing the direct correlation between engagement and generosity. When churches invest in authentic relationships and make it easy for people to participate, generosity follows. We saw total giving increase 5% this year, with recurring giving climbing 11%. But beyond the numbers, we witnessed 1.7 million moments of connection facilitated each week through our platform.

These aren’t just metrics—they represent real people choosing to show up, serve, and engage more deeply in their faith communities.

Technology to support growth 

Beth Dandino from Zeal Church expressed it well when she said, “We were growing exponentially and it was really hard to keep up with capturing details and following-up information for first-time visitors, while still maintaining that small church feel.”

We know that as churches grow, maintaining that personal touch becomes increasingly challenging. Our tools are designed to help you strengthen critical points of connection—whether through mobile app engagement (which grew 5% on average per customer), volunteer coordination, or delivering a seamless giving experience.

In looking at Catholic churches specifically, this year was remarkable. Parishes leveraging ParishStaq, demonstrated powerful adoption of digital tools with more than 5.6 million sacramental records imported to date, and 53,000 new sacraments performed and recorded through the platform in 2025 alone.

Removing barriers to generosity 

One of the most encouraging trends we saw was the adoption of non-cash giving options. Through our long-standing partnership with Engiven, we witnessed a 73% increase in the number of our customers accepting cryptocurrency and a 105% increase accepting stock donations. The average crypto gift reached $3,153 (up 21% from 2024), while stock gifts averaged $11,930.

This tells us that some donors are shifting the way they prefer to give, and reinforces the need to offer the right tools to enable them to express their generosity. Churches that embrace these options are meeting their communities where they are and making it easier than ever to give.

We also know that the last few weeks of the year are a critical time for donors and churches, and December 2025 was an extraordinary month of generosity. Churches received more than $1 billion through Pushpay in that month alone, with the average gift size jumping 240% in the final three days of the year compared to daily averages. In total, churches welcomed 1.8 million first-time givers to the platform and processed more than 53 million total gifts throughout the year. Our data also shows that 59% of first-time givers use Apple Pay, which underscores the importance of offering frictionless, mobile-first giving experiences that meet people in the moment of inspiration.

As an organization, we’ve worked diligently over the last few years in particular to prioritize new product features, enhancements and integrations to help reduce barriers and increase accessibility to opportunities for generosity. In fact, we released 8 of the top 10 most requested features from our customers this year alone, including Apple Pay QuickGive—the fastest way to give in the industry—split giving, embedded giving, automatic fund sync between Giving and ChMS, a new partnership with VisitorReach to offer tap-to-give, and much more.

Know the hearts behind every gift

Go beyond the numbers to understand the stories of your community, allowing you to nurture deeper relationships and sustainable generosity.

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Livestream momentum continues 

Our digital ministry solutions through Resi also reached new heights, with over 1 billion minutes of content watched throughout the year. Nearly 2.8 million people tuned into church live streams through Resi in December alone. This helps reinforce the notion that digital ministry isn’t replacing in-person community, it’s extending reach and creating new pathways for people to discover and engage with their local church.

Looking ahead 

The broader cultural context makes these trends even more significant. There is renewed energy in the Church, and we are starting to see a shift in how people are integrating church and religion in their lives. Recent research from Barna shows that the number of Americans with a meaningful personal commitment to Jesus rose 12 percentage points between 2022 and 2025. Also noting that Gen Z has emerged as the most frequent church attenders of any demographic. After years of uncertainty, churches are seeing momentum.

The impact we’re seeing alongside our customers is remarkable, and it’s transformative for the millions of lives churches like yours touch every week. As we look to 2026, we’re more committed than ever to equipping ministry leaders with tools that remove friction so you can focus on what matters most—building transformational relationships that change lives. If you missed it, we also recently launched new AI-powered features across our entire ministry platform, which we know will help you and your team make an even bigger impact in 2026. Looking forward to another memorable year in ministry together.