Small Churches Find They Must Change or Die

c. 2006 Religion News Service CHELSEA, Ala. _ When Leonard Irvin became pastor of Mount Signal Baptist Church in 2003, only about 10 people were attending its Sunday services. At its peak in the late 1960s, the church drew an average of 125. Attendance may never return to that level, but it has almost doubled […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

CHELSEA, Ala. _ When Leonard Irvin became pastor of Mount Signal Baptist Church in 2003, only about 10 people were attending its Sunday services. At its peak in the late 1960s, the church drew an average of 125.

Attendance may never return to that level, but it has almost doubled since Irvin came on board.


“We had a meeting one night and decided if we can’t reach some younger families, our church is destined to die in 20 years,” Irvin said. Members didn’t want that.

In a suburban landscape where megachurches are thriving, smaller, older churches with dwindling congregations often must choose between changing their worship styles to attract younger members or continuing as they have for decades and accepting that their churches may cease to exist.

About 10 percent of churches nationwide have fewer than 20 people who regularly attend Sunday services, said Mark Chaves, chairman of the Sociology Department at the University of Arizona and author of a 2004 book, “Congregations in America,” chronicling trends in church attendance.

Only 1 percent of churchgoers, he found, attend churches with fewer than 20 active members. The average church in America has about 75 regular attendees, Chaves said.

As church attendance declines, some churches often reach a point at which they can no longer afford to pay a pastor or maintain a sanctuary.

Pastors and theologians say these churches must modify their worship styles to bring in young families and, with them, the possibility of a future generation of members.

“If they are going to keep attracting younger families, they have to expand the boundaries of their ministry,” said Penny Long Marler, a professor of religion at Samford University in Birmingham who specializes in congregational studies.


Here at Mount Signal, the church hired 27-year-old associate pastor Josh Posey, who often leads the Sunday service with music director Ramona Vest.

On a recent Sunday, Vest, along with Posey and his wife, Jodi, led the congregation _ most of whom were dressed for the “casual Sunday” service _ through a series of contemporary songs.

Although the blended service _ with equal parts Baptist Hymnal and acoustic guitar _ might not please older members, it is a necessary sacrifice if the congregation values the life of the church, Irvin said.

One lifelong member, Nettie Conlon, expressed skepticism about the contemporary style of the service. “It’s very hard for me to change,” Conlon said, “but you have to change.”

That same Sunday, at the 113-year-old Mount Era United Methodist Church in Columbiana, Ala., fewer than 10 people occupied the pews. The service was largely the same as the others Alan Swindall has led in his two years as the church’s pastor.

Swindall said Mount Era members are unwilling, or unable, to come to terms with the possibility that their church might not live on after they die.


“I try to open that subject from time to time with little success. … Some things we close our eyes to,” Swindall said.

The church is adjacent to a cemetery and houses family records dating to the 19th century. Discussing the grim possibilities with the members, some of whose ancestors are buried in that cemetery, is a necessary part of his job, Swindall said.

“I think sometimes churches need end-of-life care,” he said.

Faye Vincent returned to Mount Era six years ago, after several years of attending another church in town. “A lot of folks have died and some are gone and living in other states,” Vincent said. “In the last few years, we’ve lost a lot of members.”

Part of her return to her childhood church, she said, was a desire to keep alive an institution her family had long been a part of.

Charles Stroud, the retired associational missionary of the local Shelby Baptist Association, said many of the smallest churches are “family chapel churches,” where most of the members are related or stay with the church because their families have been members for decades.

“You usually have a core group that may not live in the community anymore, but because of the ties they have to the church _ their parents or grandparents might have gone there _ they keep going there,” Stroud said.


Chaves said studies indicate that maintaining close-knit structures can sometimes be detrimental to that cause. “The more the members were in a close network,” he said, “the fewer connections they had to people outside of the church.”

Stroud remembers the final service at the now-defunct Grace Baptist Church of Alabaster, Ala., which closed its doors after years of declining attendance.

“We did what we called a closing service _ some people would call it a funeral _ to give the members a sense of closure,” he said.

In nearby Midfield, Ala., B.Y. Williams said the last 25 members of his church, Midfield First United Methodist, transferred their membership to another nearby Methodist church last spring.

The move followed years of shrinking attendance and an announcement by the Methodist leadership of a plan to bring in an elder who would divide her time between two churches, requiring a 9 a.m. Sunday service at the Midfield church.

“Sometimes we couldn’t get the 25 if the weather was bad, and they were older people, so we couldn’t get there that early,” Williams said.


In the church’s final days, “one heating bill would pretty much have wiped out everything we had, so we didn’t even attempt to heat the building,” elder Carole Elrod said.

Members of some smaller churches say membership numbers stagnate because of growing competition from larger churches, which are better equipped to survive demographic changes that often devastate smaller churches, said Marler, the congregational studies expert at Samford.

“The larger you are, the more resources you have, and as the community changes, you have a larger window of opportunity,” she said.

“But if you are small in the first place, it really impacts you to a much greater degree,” Marler said. “The loss of a family or two means losing stewardship, lay pastors, deacons and teachers.”

(Jeremy Gray writes for the Birmingham News in Birmingham, Ala.)

Editors: To obtain a photo of Darryl Brown, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search subject or slug.

A version of this story is being transmitted by Newhouse News Service.

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!