Small, rural churches face challenge         

[June 18, 2007]  BIG ISAAC, W.Va. (AP) -- It's an idyllic setting for Sunday worship: a small, white church on the slope of a gentle hill. Outside the sanctuary, two dogs lie in the shade.

The only problem is there are just 20 worshippers inside, a situation that's become common in rural America as small churches struggle with dwindling memberships, aging congregations and less money to keep the lights on, let alone to pay full-time salary and benefits to a minister.

Across the denominational spectrum, rural churches are trying a variety of approaches to the challenge. Some are focusing on recruiting full-time ministers to rural towns. Others are adopting the style of suburban megachurches to attract those who might not normally attend services. Some are holding fast to the traditions of their forebears.

About 52 percent of American churches are in rural areas. Yet more than half of weekly churchgoers attend services in places that are among the most populous 10 percent of congregations, according to the Hartford Institute on Religion Research. That leaves some of the estimated 177,000 rural churches scattered across the country with as few as two regular worshippers.

Attendance isn't just a problem at rural churches, but with fewer resources to begin with, a smaller drop in the congregation -- and revenue -- can have bigger effect, such as putting a full-time pastor out of reach.

"Sad to say, that's not going to change any time soon, without a move from God," says Ray Gilder, chairman of the Tennessee Southern Baptist Convention's ministry coordinating council.

The Jarvisville United Methodist Charge, or circuit, in northern West Virginia is trying to lessen the strain by pooling resources of four rural churches, including the one at Big Isaac, to keep the buildings in good repair and to support two part-time pastors. It's a practice sometimes referred to as "yoking" churches.

Danny Fleming is one of the pastors. Like the 19th-century circuit riders who founded these churches, he travels hundreds of miles a month to preach to all the congregations.

"I learned a long time ago that you get out of it what you put into it," he says.

Although it may seem easier for the 80 regular worshippers in the Jarvisville Charge to travel to a single church, that isn't likely to happen. The small white buildings are not only the center of religious life for their members, but also of community life.

A United Methodist church has stood in Big Isaac since the 1860s. Drawings of the original log cabin sanctuary decorate the walls inside the new church, built in 1949. A plaque out front commemorates eight church members who died in a 1913 flood. For worshippers here, leaving the church for a larger gathering place is unthinkable.

"People can get lost in a megachurch," says Susie Richards, who plays piano during services. "Here, you walk in and if Mona Lee's not in her corner or Mary's not in her seat, you miss them."

"We may not be able to do as much as the bigger churches, but a lot of times the spirit is closer," she says.

The United Methodist Church has been hit hard by the decline in rural church membership, according to the Hartford Institute's Cynthia Woolever. The denomination once pledged to locate at least one church in every U.S. county, a goal that stretched its resources.

Besides encouraging smaller churches to pool their resources, the Methodists are focusing on recruiting full-time ministers to rural towns. A program begun at the Methodist-affiliated Duke Divinity School in 2006 aims to make seminary-trained ministers as excited about posts in rural America as they would be about larger churches or overseas missions.

Yoking churches and hiring part-time pastors are common practices in other denominations, too.

David Andrews, executive director of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, said priests in rural areas often have more than one parish, which has led to lay members taking on more responsibility.

About 20 percent of Catholic parishes in the country are led by non-ordained leaders, Andrews said. Only priests can celebrate Mass, but lay leaders can tend to a parish's finances, organize charitable programs and perform baptisms.

"How much can one person do?" Andrews posed. "Especially since so many rural people look to the pastor for leadership."

Not every denomination is using these models, though.

An experiment in rural, northern Arkansas is convincing some that changing old habits can lead to dynamic growth in rural congregations.

When the Rev. Shannon O'Dell came to the Lead Mine Baptist Church in 2003, there were 31 weekly worshippers. Four years later, O'Dell is regularly presiding over services that pack 1,600 people into a high school gym.

His method was to completely change the Lead Mine church, renaming it Brand New Church and making over its Sunday services to include casual dress, upbeat worship and high-tech media presentations now popular in megachurches in larger communities.

O'Dell's church has grown to four times the size of the town where it's located, and he is in demand as a speaker at conferences across the country.

"If you graduate seminary and a church calls you to a town of 88, everyone says, 'Ooh, that's not a good move,'" O'Dell says.

Most of the membership growth at his church has come from people who did not attend church before. He says it proves that many rural Americans are spiritual and looking for nontraditional types of worship.

"If you give someone with God's gift a dusty barn, people will show up if it's done right," he says.

[Text copied from file received from AP Digital; article by Tom Breen, Associated Press writer]