Count bridge team in church with us (6)
I believe the answer is:
census
'count' is the definition.
(censusing is a kind of counting)
'bridge team in church with us' is the wordplay.
'bridge team' becomes 'ns' (north and south are a team in bridge).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'church' becomes 'ce' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'with' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'ce'+'us'='ceus'
'ns' put inside 'ceus' is 'CENSUS'.
(Other definitions for census that I've seen before include "Periodic count as of population" , "Official body count?" , "Official survey" , "Periodic count by statisticians" , "People count" .)