Dan Alaimo wrote:How has St. James done on that front?
Dan
The have a great, but aging group of parishioners. There are also building into that family heritage, and participation.
All churches are under attack by many, many things out of their control, and one could easily forecast their demise for many reasons.
Inner Ring churches are the most under attack, and many from their own religion. Mega-Churches have been a drain on inner ring churches since they popped up. Also featured in "Slaughter of Cities" religion is a great way to move people around. Build a mega-church, hire a "star minister" you get some of the old congregation, which begins to bring in friends, and families from old congregations, and as they move to the cool new mega-church, they drive by miles and miles of homes for sale in suburbia, and the inner ring hold outs, start thinking of moving closer to friends and church, and "Lakewoodites would become Leakwoodites" as Ken would call them.
With a diminishing population, and grwoing spiritualism as opposed to organize religion on the rise, the growth of many storefront, school front, Masonic Hall Front community churches, and Televangelism I would say they have a long hard uphill battle. But, I believe they collected enough for repairs, and when the bells ring people coming flocking. So best said, only Gold knows how they will do in the future.
.
