Tag Archives: congregations

Documentary series addresses “tsunami” of church closings that could come in the next decade

Posted on by

A new four-part series looks at church closings in the United States:

Photo by Megan Bailey on Pexels.com

What Wagner experienced with her shrinking congregation is arguably the most urgent challenge facing churches across America. Experts project an estimated 100,000 churches in the US will close or be repurposed over the next decade. Many churches will be unable to escape this “tsunami” of closings — a grim trajectory one pastor described as, “Every year the pews are getting emptier and the collection plates getting lighter.”

This is the challenge that “Christianity at a Crossroads,” a new TV documentary series, examines. The comprehensive four-part series, which premieres Thursday on PBS stations, features heart-wrenching scenes like the last days of Belding United Methodist Church. It also shows how mass church closures will hurt communities across America — including people who don’t attend church or care nothing for organized religion…

The shadow that hangs over the entire series, though, is the perilous future of the church. Christian leaders have been warning about the decline of American churches for decades. What’s new about the PBS series is that it presents portraits of the people and congregations behind this decline, along with specific numbers and a timeframe for the expected church closings.

As the documentary series shows some shared traits — accessible parking, lively music, powerful preaching and efforts to shower visitors with hospitality — seem mundane. But they are non-negotiable elements for growth. The film also spotlights the Church of the Nativity in suburban Baltimore, Maryland, which has learned another key to expansion: make church fun for young people. It draws about 800 kids and youths for its Sunday services.

A number of people have made such predictions in the last decade or two. The typical American church is small with roughly half having fewer than 70 or so people. Some church buildings are old and are expensive to maintain. An increasing number of Americans claim no religious affiliation. The decline of numerous denominations.

What would be interesting to see in the series (episode 1 is on Youtube) is the discussion of the impacts of closures. What happens to religious communities, both as collectives and the individuals within them? What happens to neighborhoods and communities when churches are no longer using those buildings or providing services? What might the American landscape look like with fewer religious congregations overall and perhaps fewer occupying prominent locations and buildings?

Robert Brenneman and I found in Building Faith: A Sociology of Religious Structures that some closed religious buildings were used by other religious groups. Newer congregations who did not have many resources could find older religious buildings that an older congregation needed to sell. The younger congregation might adapt that older structure to their own needs. My guess is that this will continue to happen, particularly in parts of the United States where populations are growing.

But if a tsunami of church closures comes and the rates of closures significantly increases, this could have cascading effects. Instead of a church or two disappearing, it could be 5 or 10 in a neighborhood or community. Are there enough ways that such buildings or properties could still benefit the community?

Themes across three books about suburbs I reviewed since February 2026

Posted on by

I enjoy reading and I enjoy reading good work by scholars in areas I am interested in. This reading recently included three books about different aspects of the suburbs and metropolitan regions for which I wrote book reviews in recent months. Here are the three books:

The Right to Suburbia: Combating Gentrification on the Urban Edge by Willow S. Lung-Amam (my review here)

Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America by Stephen M. Koeth (my review here)

Zoning Faith: How City Politics Shape Muslim Communities in Chicago by Sultan Tepe (my review here)

Even as each book addressed particular topics and settings (the first about gentrification and responses to it in three Washington, D.C. suburbs, the second about Long Island Catholic parishes in the immediate postwar suburban boom, and the third about three Muslim congregations approaching zoning and theology in the Chicago region), several themes stand out across the books:

  1. Suburban communities are diverse and dynamic. Each author describes significant changes that impact and are shaped by residents, businesses, local leaders, and religious groups. These communities, organizations, and residents are not the same as they were in the past. Suburbs are changing places.
  2. The topics each author discusses are both broader across places and highly local. Take Lung-Amam’s cases of suburban gentrification outside Washington, D.C. Gentrification and redevelopment takes place across a number of American communities. How exactly it plays out with local coalitions for and against the gentrification differs. Comparing the experiences of three suburbs can help us think broadly of what has or could happen in other suburban settings.
  3. The collective life of suburban communities and religious congregations is worth studying. There are thousands of such groups across the United States. They each impact more people on a regular basis. A majority of Americans live in suburbs. Many Americans are connected to religious congregations. To live in a particular suburb shapes all sorts of daily experiences and outcomes as does participation in a religious congregation.
  4. There are multiple methods that can help us understand these communities and changes. The ones utilized across these books include working with historical documents and archives, ethnography and observations, interviews, and surveys. To work to explain changes can lead to creativity in collecting and analyzing data on what has happened and how people understand it.

How a closed church can live on for years in local and online markers and memories

Posted on by

I recently drove down a local road and saw signs on a traffic light pole pointing different directions to nearby religious congregations. Several of the congregations are active but one has been closed for a while now. If a driver were to follow these signs, they would find the building put to another use after it was purchased by a local governmental body.

Photo by K on Pexels.com

This closed congregation is not alone: even as churches and congregations close, they can be found in numerous local and online spots. Here are a few other regular places to find or hear about closed congregations.

  1. Buildings present that may now be used by another religious congregation or are put to other uses. Some are demolished but many are transformed and some observation and research can find the previous congregation(s) that occupied that building.
  2. Online listings. There are numerous websites that continue to list congregations that closed years before. Some of them will tell you that they are closed, others will not.
  3. Obituaries. They can mention congregations people were connected to. Harder to find local print options for reading these; they can now be found online.
  4. Local history accounts. This might be particularly true for older congregations that date back the early days of a community. My experience is that congregations founded later are mentioned less in these accounts.
  5. Newspaper databases. Go back some decades and newspapers regularly ran lists of congregational services and activity and/or stories about existing congregations. Fewer local newspapers means less coverage of more recent years.
  6. Conversations with residents who have local experiences and memories.

While these are possible sources, it can be hard to look at a landscape and see what past churches and congregations might have been there. There may be some hints but there is also work to do to look further than the current built environment.

I went to the local suburban megachurch satellite location (as many do)…

Posted on by

I recently was in the suburbs of a major city on a Sunday morning and looking for somewhere to go to church. I used this megachurch database, searched a few congregational websites, and ended up in a satellite congregation. It was a newer building amid newer subdivisions and green spaces. The local pastor and band led worship: there were lights, fog, and people moving to the worship music. The sermon came from the home church with a charismatic pastor who shared from personal experience and a number of Bible passages on how to counter social and cultural pressures and instead follow God. People were friendly. I could text to give or to ask for more information.

Photo by Caleb Oquendo on Pexels.com

Even as the median congregation size in the United States is around 70, there are many satellite church locations in the United States. Researcher Warren Bird recently shared this:

The congregation I went to was part of the 416 mentioned above: numerous campuses scattered throughout a portion of a metropolitan region. In the service, they shared Easter Sunday figures across their locations. They had big crowds – possibly several multiples of normal Sunday attendance – and a number of baptisms. They want to reach their communities for Jesus. There are regular connections to a main campus but also a good amount going on at each satellite.

It is helpful to keep this in mind when considering the large number of evangelicals or conservative Protestants in the United States. Some of those folks go to small congregations. Others go to big churches or to satellites of those big churches who have lots of attendees, lots of programs, and numerous locations throughout regions. The big church with satellites is not the only model of congregational life but it is a popular and visible one.

The use of former Catholic properties includes homes for other congregations and giving the land back to a Tribal Nation

Posted on by

When churches and properties of the Catholic Church are sold, what happens to them? In the last few days, I saw two articles that highlight several of the possible outcomes. First, they can become homes for other congregations:

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

Local Catholic leaders tend to be grateful that others can use the space for worship and service. But it’s not always a smooth transition. Evangelical churches without experience with bigger facilities may not be ready for the upkeep. And local Catholic parishioners may feel the emotional sting of seeing their former sacred spaces dismantled and reused by other traditions…

Real estate broker Matt Messier, whose company Foundry Commercial has sold around 3,000 churches over the last 50 years, estimates that more than half of church properties—whether Catholic or mainline Protestant—get bought by a fellow faith group…

An ongoing study on Chicago churches by the University of Notre Dame researchers found the same. “The most common reuse of dedicated church buildings—not only Catholic church buildings—is reuse for another church,” said program director Maddy Johnson.

Second, a community of Sisters in Wisconsin sold their property to a neighboring Native tribe:

A Wisconsin religious community says it has completed the first known instance of a Catholic group returning land to a Native American tribe, hailing it as a move made in the “spirit of relationship and healing.”

The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration announced the transfer in an Oct. 31 news release on its website. The community is located in La Crosse, Wisconsin, near the state’s border with Minnesota.

The sisters had purchased the land from the Lac du Flambeau Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa tribe in 1966 and used the property for its Marywood Franciscan Spirituality Center.

The sisters said they sold the property to the tribe for $30,000, the exact amount for which they paid for the land six decades ago. The modern sale price represented “just over 1% of [the land’s] current market value,” the sisters said.

The first set of outcomes is more common than the second. There are plenty of religious congregations who need buildings as constructing a new building is expensive – buying the property, erecting a building, etc. – and time consuming – it could take years to raise funds, obtain approval, complete the construction, etc. Given more recent discussion of colonialism and history, perhaps there will be more instances of religious groups giving land to Native tribes.

There are some guidelines in place regarding who the Church might sell to:

“Catholic bishops are required to protect former Catholic worship sites from what canon law calls ‘sordid use,’” said Notre Dame’s Johnson. “In addition, recent Vatican guidance has encouraged, where possible, proactively finding mission-aligned reuses. What this means for non-Catholic religious reuse of former Catholic sites is a point of debate.”

With the number of church closures in recent years and expected in the coming years, keep an eye out for research regarding what happens to properties, buildings, and congregations. My recently published look at how many congregations researchers can find online has implications for studying closed congregations and the fate of their properties.

New publication – Finding Congregations through Online Searches: Possibilities and Perils

Posted on by

Review of Religious Research just published online a research note I wrote titled “Finding Congregations through Online Searches: Possibilities and Perils.” This comes out of research I have been conducting the last few years looking for religious congregations in the suburbs. With all the congregations with online presences, whether on social media or on websites or in online directories, what can researchers learn? Here is the abstract for the article:

Photo by Afif Ramdhasuma on Pexels.com

Many religious congregations are active online and people seek out congregations online but existing research is less clear about whether all congregations within a geographic area are discoverable through online searches and what information about congregations is available online. Searching for congregations in a large suburban county on five online platforms – three directories (YellowPages.com, Yelp.com, ChurchFinder.com) and two social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram) – revealed over 700 congregations. The counts showed similarities and differences for certain religious groups compared to the 2020 U.S. Religion Census. It is difficult to have certainty regarding obtaining a complete population of congregations in this county given the ambiguity of some online information and the possible number of congregations not online. Of congregations found online, the different platforms enable researchers to examine locations, buildings, images, posts, links, activities, and interactions with online actors. These findings point to a need for more online searching for congregations in order to study hundreds of congregations at a time, compare online search results to other methods for finding congregations, and contribute to research on congregational activity, online interactions, and closures.

I have analyzed the online presence of congregations in several works as it enables researchers to look across a large number of cases. And it provides needed insights into what congregations are doing online and offline as the worlds are more overlapping than some might imagine. Can looking at congregations online find all the congregations or tell a researcher everything about congregational activity? No, but it offers opportunities that might be hard to match with other methods and insights into the influential online realm.

Using community wayfinding signs for religious congregations

Posted on by

Drive through a community in the Chicago area and you see a lot of signs. One small set of these direct travelers toward religious congregations. Here is one example from Google Street View:

Image from Google Street View

See the small blue sign on the traffic light pole? It directs people to a church a half a mile down the road.

A few observations in seeing such signs:

  1. Not all congregations have a sign. Could all congregations request one and then have at least one pointing toward them?
  2. The signs are pretty small. How many drivers see them.
  3. The signs tend to be posted at busier intersections. Some drives from those intersections are shorter and easier to navigate than others. For example, a driver might see a sign pointing in a direction but it may take a little while before finding the congregation roughly in that direction.

Given that these signs are likely provided as a community good, can their use be improved in significant ways?

Ongoing movement of religious people from American cities to suburbs

Posted on by

More religious people in cities are moving to suburbs:

Photo by Jonathan Meyer on Pexels.com

Researchers interviewed by The Times said rising costs, rampant crime and changing racial demographics have made it harder to sustain worship spaces in large cities…

As more urban neighborhoods become secularized, demographers say religious families increasingly prefer to settle in suburban enclaves up to 20 miles outside of city centers…

“Over the last 10 years, the 100 fastest-growing churches in America are primarily in the growing inner and outer ring suburbs of major cities,” said Ryan Burge, an Eastern Illinois University political scientist and religious demographer. “They’re almost always non-denominational Christian churches near cities like Charlotte, Charleston and Atlanta. They are the fastest because that’s where people are moving.”…

In New Orleans and several Midwest and Northeast cities, gentrification has pushed more Black Christians into the suburbs than other groups…

Rather than start in the city and expand to the suburbs, most new churches now move in the opposite direction. For example, Elevation Church in Matthews, North Carolina, started 12 miles southeast of downtown Charlotte. It later planted a satellite church in the city center.

In some ways, these are continuations of existing trends. The United States is a majority suburban country and more people have lived in suburbs than cities since the 1960s. White flight from cities included congregations. Increasing racial and ethnic diversity in suburbs has occurred alongside increasing religious diversity in suburbs.

On the other hand, these could include new and different patterns:

-Which churches are closing and which religious groups are moving to the suburbs. If it was largely white congregations in the postwar era, it now includes more groups.

-The number of congregations closing. Are there now more closing than decades before?

-The relative power and influence of suburban megachurches compared to the past. If congregational influence decades ago tended to reside in older, urban congregations, this may have shifted today.

-Are cities more secular than they were in the past? Significant percentages of urban residents are religious and cities contain numerous religious congregations and organizations. Or, has the perception of cities and religion changed?

I suspect there is more to say on the connection between religion and suburbs.