PITTSBURGH (AP) - Living Spirit Ministry in Swissvale chose to inaugurate its newest worship space today, when most churches celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“It was natural we would start a new endeavor on Easter Sunday,” said its pastor, the Rev. Dai Morgan.
To be sure, it’s a modest space - a new rented storefront in place of its previous one - and the small congregation’s finances are still as marginal as that of many members.
But the church has weathered many changes, so Rev. Morgan plans to preach on new beginnings. “I’m also going to go back to the basic theological point of view that our whole faith is based on the resurrection,” he said.
With Protestant and Catholic churches marking Easter (with Orthodox churches doing so next week), Living Spirit is just one of several area churches that have an especially compelling reason to celebrate.
That’s because they’ve undergone some resurrecting themselves.
Some churches have literally left the building - bidding farewell to the bricks, mortar and stained-glass windows memorializing their spiritual forebears - and have started new missions. Other congregations are still in the building but would not easily be recognized by their forebears.
“Things are very tight and our future is uncertain, but the thing that is so encouraging is that the congregation refuses to pull over and quit,” said Rev. Morgan. The congregation, traditionally known as Swissvale United Methodist Church, sold its historic building on Braddock Avenue several years ago when its dwindling membership could no longer keep up the building.
It has developed new outreaches such as a food pantry, which draws clients and volunteers from both the church membership and the wider neighborhood.
There are similar stories among churches large and small throughout the region.
A North Side congregation grew tenfold over the decades when it reconnected with its diversifying neighborhood. A dwindling Beaver Falls church reached out to those recovering from addictions. A Duquesne parish grew steadily despite its declining local population and is this week mourning the pastor who led the way.
Local religious leaders say such examples serve as an counter-example to the real-enough cases of congregations in decline.
A newly released survey by the Nashville, Tenn.-based LifeWay Research found that while two-thirds of Americans believe church attendance to be admirable, a majority of Americans believe “the church is declining.”
Rock Dillaman, pastor of the 4,000-member Allegheny Center Alliance Church, said the perception of church decline comes at a time when people are jettisoning traditional practices of all kinds.
“You combine that with the fact that there are a lot of congregations that have grown old, lost their momentum, and we look around our city and we see their buildings that they used to meet in used for bars, nightclubs, breweries, warehouses or office buildings.”
But, he added, “there are new churches opening all the time and churches like our own enjoying their best days in their history.”
The North Side congregation grew from about 400 people decades ago in large part by connecting with its racially diversifying neighborhood.
Bishop David Zubik of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh said he also doesn’t see things “as dire as the reports will make it.”
“Clearly there are a lot of people who aren’t coming to church,” he said. “That’s part of what we’re trying to do with the new evangelization,” or outreach to inactive Catholics. “But at the same time I’m seeing an awful lot of interest in the church,” including among the young.
At Christ the Light of the World Catholic Church in Duquesne, this year’s Easter services coincide with the parish’s mourning for its longtime pastor, the Rev. Dennis Colamarino, who died March 28 of Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“He loved Easter,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Lewandowski, parish administrator. The church, which will memorialize Father Colamarino later this week, is experiencing a “grief-stricken joy,” he said.
During Father Colamarino’s tenure, as the former steel town’s population dwindled, the parish numbers rose and drew people from miles around. In an interview months before his death, Father Colamarino, said people were drawn to “good liturgy, good music … and they feel like it’s home.”
Bishop Zubik added: “There was never a closed door, which is what so many people appreciated when they came to church in Duquesne.”
Bishop Thomas Bickerton of the United Methodist Church’s Western Pennsylvania Conference said there are more ways to measure spiritual vitality than just worship attendance. “Church is mission,” he said. “Church is about relationship-building.”
He added: “In places where people are engaged to do that, the church is vital. In places where folk just assume people are going to come through their door, the church is pretty irrelevant.”
The mission might be global, he said, such as the campaign he has led to raise millions among United Methodists to pay for mosquito netting in malaria-prone nations.
Or it might be very local.
When a fire destroyed the Otterbein United Methodist Church building in Beaver Falls in 2008, the members’ first impulse was to rebuild. But the declining congregation had barely been getting by before the fire, so first they had to rethink their mission.
As they met in another church’s sanctuary, worshipers dressed more casually, sang more contemporary music - and noticed many recovering addicts were showing up.
“I began to teach and preach that we all have issues, not just people in recovery,” said the Rev. Mark Ongley, pastor of what’s now called Ashes to Life. “That really made people in recovery feel welcomed, not judged.”
About 50 are attending now, and the church has purchased another closed sanctuary.
Garrett Olson, a member who now oversees a nearby “three-quarters house” for those transitioning from a halfway house into independent living, said he “got hugs coming in the door” when he started attending.
“I wasn’t looked down upon because I was in recovery and starting all over again,” he said.
There have been setbacks, such as members who relapse, sometimes to return, sometimes to relapse again.
“They know we’re still going to love them and care about them,” Rev. Ongley said.
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Information from: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, https://www.post-gazette.com
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