A recent Pew survey found most Americans who were raised in families unaffiliated with any religion “now belong to one religion or another.”These “unchurched” folks are often shopping for a place to settle and raise their own children. They told the Pew researchers worship styles, feelings, a desire to be spiritually fulfilled and being called by God were all reasons to make their first forays into church foyers.
And, as for those raised in strong religious traditions, the news is brand loyalty is not what it once was. Once there were Ford families and Chevrolet clans — and they’d likely have felt the same way about being a Baptist, a Methodist or Presbyterian.
Long-term car loyalty might be a lost cause. Many mainline churches nationwide have seen a sizable percentage of their flocks head off to a variety of less-conventionally organized churches.
“Catholicism has suffered the greatest net loss in the process of religious change,” the Pew study reports. “Many people who leave the Catholic Church do so for religious reasons; two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated say they left the Catholic faith because they stopped believing in its teachings, as do half of former Catholics who are now Protestant.”
This trend is less noticeable in Galveston County, since demographic shifts have served to fill some pews even in faith niches that are trending down elsewhere.
Still, many local worshippers do not inhabit the pews of their youth.
Michaelyn Dunaway coordinates a financial ministry in League City. Raised as a nominal Catholic, she attended different denominations locally before settling in a small church that meets in a nearby school.
“Growing up, my family went to Mass on special days,” she said. “Then, as a teenager, I became very involved on my own at St. Paul’s in Nassau Bay. After high school, I quit going to church, later had a divorce, and then started going to Clear Lake United Methodist. After I married my husband, Marty, we choose Hope Christian Reformed Church in Houston.”
Since then the pair has switched to League City’s OakCreek Bible Church, which is affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church movement.
“As more people tend to return to church or start shopping around, apparently more and more churches are accepting the idea of church shopping, deciding they’d rather see members find a church they can stick with than fall away altogether,” Kevin D. Hendricks wrote in his blog. Hendricks, who worked in communications for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has been commenting on this trend from his site, which bears the risqué name of churchmarketingsucks.com.
“Church shopping does have a downside,” he said. He said one in four church attendees started coming to his current congregation within the past five years. “Of those newbies, only 7 percent are entirely new to church. That means a whole lot of folks are church hopping.”
Overall, how pronounced is the church shopping trend nationally? The Pew Survey suggests: “Americans change religious affiliation early and often. In total, about half of American adults have changed religious affiliation at least once during their lives. Most people who change their religion leave their childhood faith before age 24, and many of those who change religion do so more than once.”
Dallas Theological Seminary professor Michael J. Svigel is not impressed with this consumer view of church choice.
“Sadly, we often treat the church as though it were just one of many ‘supermarkets’ that provide us with spiritual groceries,” he wrote. “We’re living in a Christian culture where church shopping, hopping and dropping are regarded as normal. Our supermarket mentality and the availability of a plethora of differing churches make our modern situation both unique and dangerous. We never seem to find just the right church, and this dissatisfaction can lead to a never-ending church-shopping spree.”
In Galveston County, such church shopping has tended to benefit independent megachurches at the expense of traditional, mainline denominations. There’s also been a trend for congregations dropping traditional labeling altogether, as Baptist or Methodist churches are quietly re-christened with the neutral names such as “community” or “fellowship.”
Friendswood Community Church is one of the beneficiaries of these trends. It has seen unprecedented growth in the last decade. Friends-wood’s staff says that though members have been imported from other churches, much of the growth comes from those who are new to the pew.
“At least half our congregation was disconnected from faith prior to coming here,” church pastor Rick Baldwin said. “That is not to say they didn’t have some previous history at another church denomination, but immediately prior to coming to FCC, they were not attending church anywhere.”
It may be that the recession also will return some families to their faith roots, but for now, this consumer trend has many churches looking at advertising, marketing and promotion as essential parts of their ministry as they seek to differentiate their offering to an increasingly mobile public.
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