Non-Christians are to be paid £30 a time to go to church, under a research programme to find out why more people do not practise the Christian faith.

The new “mystery worshipper” scheme will be modelled on the “mystery shopper” schemes used by researchers to gauge the service offered by hotels, shops and other branches of the service industry. The project could even result in a “league table”, by which churches are ranked according to their appraisal score.

While the intention is to keep this league table as a secret internal document, it would almost certainly be made public by someone who stood to benefit from the exposure, creating ecclesiastical parallels with schools and universities.

The research organisation Christian Research has commissioned the company Retail Maxim to send in mystery worshippers, unannounced, to judge the sermon, welcome, atmosphere, warmth, comfort and appearance of churches around the country.

First to be assessed were churches in Telford, subject to a recent pilot. Early next year mystery worshippers will visit churches in the West Midlands. The scheme mirrors that run by the satirical Christian website ShipofFools, the main difference being that ShipofFools uses volunteers who are Christian. Christian Research wants nonChristians to assess the churches because, in common with increasing numbers of church leaders, the organisation wishes to find out what works for the reluctant churchgoer. Christian Research is working with ShipofFools to promote the project.

According to the 2001 Census, more than seven in ten people in England consider themselves Christian. But a recent survey by Christian Research found that fewer than one in ten of the population actually goes to church.

Benita Hewitt, executive director of Christian Research, who joined the organisation recently from a commercial research background, said: “I worked for many years with retailers and hotels where mystery shopping is quite natural.” The nonchurchgoers will be experienced mystery shoppers who are used to assessing the service offered by hotels, shops and restaurants. The Telford pilot involved a range of denominations and styles of service from Anglo-Catholic to a service involving a “lot of people lying on the floor and being healed”.

Mrs Hewitt said it was essential that the churches gained an insight into how they were viewed from the “out-side-in” by nonchurchgoers. She said: “We have had some of our mystery worshippers saying that they were amazed by what they found – by the atmosphere and the welcome before the service, and the fellowship. It was all so far from their expectations that they had before they came in – often based on childhood when they saw the church as a boring experience where you were made to feel guilty.”

Stephen Goddard, co-editor of ShipofFools, said that two of the Telford churches scored 100 per cent. “We did not send in soft, tame mystery worshippers, we sent in people possibly with an axe to grind against the Church. What came out of it was their surprise at how much the Church has moved forward from their experience as children.”