Phoenix (RNS)—A recent survey shows that “unchurched” Americans may be worshipping more, and “churched” Americans worshipping less, than many people might think.

Numerous surveys track trends among “unchurched” Americans, but what does “unchurched” really mean? Does it mean never attending religious services, not attending regularly, or to simply be unaffiliated with a particular congregation?

Phoenix-based Ellison Research said the most common definitions “often don’t tell a complete story about how Americans attend religious worship services.”

The Ellison survey, released last month, showed that 40 percent of the “unchurched” do not entirely stay away from worship services, and 37 percent of “churched” Americans do not make it to religious services every week, even though they consider themselves regular attenders.

“There’s often an assumption that people either do attend worship services or they don’t,” said Ellison President Ron Sellers. “But what we find in this study is that one out of every five Americans is attending worship services at least occasionally during the year.”

In a survey of more than 1,000 adults, 29 percent of Americans do not attend religious services at all; 10 percent attend only on holidays; 9 percent attend occasionally; 19 percent attend between one and three times a month; and 33 percent attend once a week or more.

The study also estimated that 43 million adults typically categorized as “unchurched” will visit a church at some point during the year.