By Joyce Gannon, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
First Presbyterian Church, Clairton, Pa.
Sidra deRose grew up right across the street from the First Presbyterian Church on Mitchell Avenue in Clairton. Pa., where her family worshiped. So when her mother, a choir member and mission leader, had church meetings to attend, she tagged along rather than stay with a babysitter.
Even after the family moved to Elizabeth Borough when Ms. deRose was 11, they continued to attend First Presbyterian. Ms. deRose, 49, who now resides with her husband and daughters in South Park, still travels to the church for services, sings in the choir and sits on its session, or governing board.
After Christmas however, Ms. deRose, her mother and other members of the congregation that has dwindled to about 50 members in recent years will be looking for other churches to join.
First Presbyterian is closing after more than 100 years — a casualty of Clairton’s aging and declining population and the economic struggles the Mon Valley community has weathered since U.S. Steel downsized its operations and other businesses began leaving in the late 1970s. The city entered the state’s Act 47 program for financially struggling communities in 1988, and just emerged from the status last month.
When the mills along the Monongahela River were booming in the 1950s, the church reported more than 1,200 members and had two services every Sunday.
In the 1970s, as families fled the town to seek jobs elsewhere, church membership shrunk to about half that number.
In recent years, only about 15 people typically attend the 11 a.m. Sunday service because many elderly members are homebound or have moved in with relatives who don’t live nearby, said Ardis Mills, Ms. deRose’s mother.
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As we know, demographics plays a big role in church life cycles. This is why it is so important that local churches do a comprehensive self study of themselves every 10 years. Things do change.
Evangelism is needed to reach Clairton, PA for Christ.
Demographics play a huge role the life cycle of a church. I was baptized in a downtown church that was, back before the 1960s, so large and well established that no one ever envisioned that it might one day have to close its doors. But after a major demographic change in its surrounding neighborhood and a mere 30 years, the church was no more.
I personally know of two churches that took different paths when the demographics around them changed, and both did it successfully. One of them, a Presbyterian Church, relocated out of the downtown area to better serve its membership, even though that meant having to abandon a beautiful Gothic sanctuary. The other, a Methodist Church, chose to remain in its neighborhood and to change the focus of its ministry to better serve those who were moving in. Both of these churches have flourished.
Sadly, I have known of many scores of churches that met the challenge of demographic change by choosing neither of these options. They remained in their beautiful buildings as the neighborhoods around them began to change, but they did not change the focus of their ministry to meet the new dynamics that they faced. And now, almost all of these churches are dead or dying.
Robert Wright is absolutely right that a careful and comprehensive self-study every ten years is critical. The communities served by local churches are in constant flux, and if congregations do not take this seriously, before they know it the world has moved on, and they no longer have a role to play in it.