Local churches struggle to recruit, keep young members

Mar. 30—Sisters Cora and Ruby Bixby grew up attending Santa Fe's First Presbyterian Church, where they have fond memories of making crafts in Sunday school as young children and attending the annual Palm Sunday service on the Plaza.

But after things got busy for their family, the Bixby girls fell out of the routine of church attendance. It's a worrisome trend for many faith communities: the loss, at least for a time, of the young.

Now in their late teens, the sisters have reconnected with their faith and attend church regularly with their father. Cora said a religion class at Santa Fe Preparatory School that required attendance at several religious events in order to write an essay was her impetus. Returning to church also gave the sisters a way to feel close to their grandmother, who loved going to church before her death two years ago.

"When I was coming back those few times, we went all together as a family and we just found it was a really nice tradition to have," Cora said as she and her sister attended this year's Palm Sunday service on the Plaza.

By returning to the church fold, the Bixby sisters rejoin an increasingly small share of American young adults who are part of a religious community.

Around 45% of Generation Z identifies as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular, compared to 30% of Americans as a whole, said Ryan Burge, a professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University who researches demographic trends in religion and politics. More than half of young people today say they never or rarely attend church.

"Young people really have no vision of religion — white young people especially — that is not evangelical, that's not conservative," Burge said in an interview. "And that's been a big change."

A number of recent national studies indicate churches are struggling to attract regular attendees of all ages; a Gallup poll released in late March says just 3 in 10 Americans go to church regularly.

It makes sense that as adult attendance falls off, so would that of young adults, teens and children, local faith leaders said in interviews.

The trend has potentially devastating consequences when it comes to the survival of churches, they said. Some question how long they can last without attracting newer, younger members.

"I ask myself that question every day," said the Rev. Lucas Grubbs of St. Bede's Episcopal Church in Santa Fe. "I have anxiety about it, I do."

Looking over his aging congregation, he said, he often asks himself: "Ten years from now, who is going to be here?"

The Rev. Talitha Arnold of the United Church of Santa Fe has similar thoughts. She said she has seen a "precipitous drop" of about 50% in terms of church attendees 18 and under since 2020, which she ties to the coronavirus pandemic shutting down churches and creating a physical separation between faith leaders and their congregations.

The pandemic simply "accentuated trends that were already happening not just in mainline churches, but even evangelical churches," she said. "The further you go down the generational spectrum, the decrease in participation in local congregations is more evident."

The Rev. Andrew Black of First Presbyterian said his congregation is facing similar challenges, noting it's been difficult to entice most middle and high school students back since the pandemic.

One reason he cites is kids getting "over scheduled" with school activities, sports, outdoor adventures and the like in the wake of being cooped up for a year or two during the pandemic.

"Kids are the heart of a service," he said.

Black said he is "absolutely" concerned their continued absence could affect the survival of a church. His church is addressing the issue by getting youth involved in ministry field trips, such as a visit to a homeless shelter in Santa Fe or to the U.S.-Mexico border to "deepen their understanding of the world. That's most effective."

Mainline Protestant denominations — The Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist Church and others — have been hit the hardest by the attendance decline. In the 1950s, half of all Americans were mainline Protestants, Burge said. Now it's 10%.

Among those ages 18 to 35, it's only 1.5% — a number "almost impossible to sample," Burge said.

"Mainline congregations are in crisis," the Rev. Joene Herr of Christ Lutheran Church in Santa Fe said in a December interview.

Christ Lutheran has just over 40 members, almost all over the age of 70. In 2022 the church had a congregational meeting to consider closing but decided to stay open in part because it felt it had more work to do in the community, including becoming the host site for the city's first-ever Pallet shelter village for the homeless.

Burge believes political polarization has fueled the decline in young people's interest in church, as a rightward trend in the 1970s and 1980s of evangelical and Catholic churches alienated more left-leaning young people.

"I think for a lot of young people, that was enough for them to say, 'I don't want to be part of that anymore,' " Burge said.

Measuring the strength of Catholicism is somewhat more complicated, Burge said, because many Catholics who no longer attend church still strongly identify with the faith.

"There's a huge disconnect between the share of Americans who identify as Catholic and the share of Catholics who actually go to Mass," he said.

Burge referenced data he recently aggregated showing only 19% of New Mexicans — a heavily Catholic state — attend religious services weekly.

According to 2014 data from the Pew Research Center, 34% of New Mexicans identified as Catholic, one of the highest percentages in the nation after Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. A 2017 Gallup poll ranked New Mexico sixth in the nation, with 30% of its residents considered Catholic.

"I think why New Mexico is struggling so much is because the Catholic Church is more about a tribal identity than it is about ... a lived religious experience," Burge said. "And so that's why you see [church attendance] numbers so low in predominantly Catholic areas like New Mexico, Arizona and parts of Texas."

Efforts to reach the Archdiocese of Santa Fe for comment were unsuccessful.

Catholicism's deep roots in Northern New Mexico were on display at the annual Good Friday pilgrimage to El Santuario de Chimayó, with children and teenagers among the pilgrims. The same held true at a similar pilgrimage south of Albuquerque in the Valencia County community of Tomé.

Joshua Roberts, 12, carried a cross at the Chimayó Good Friday procession, while friends Jinny Oviedo, 13, and Amalia Berryhill, 11, carried candles on either side of him.

The three attend church in Chimayó, and all said their Catholic faith helps give meaning to their lives.

While Oviedo admitted she doesn't always follow the letter of the faith "to a T," she said she sees it as "understanding we're all human and we're all here together. Showing each other respect and peace is kind of what Jesus taught."

Roberts is an altar server each Sunday at Mass at the santuario.

"It's just fun to help out my community, help my priest," he said. "I like altar serving because it helps me understand my religion and follow deep into it."

Several small conservative denominations, including the Anglican Church in North America and the Presbyterian Church in America, are currently growing. The contingent growing the fastest is nondenominational Christians, which Burge estimates nationwide includes more than twice as many churches as the Southern Baptist Convention.

Burge said a cycle is likely fueling the rise of nondenominationalism: People want to belong to organizations that are growing.

"Once your church starts growing a little bit, it almost feeds itself," he said.

That cycle has gone both ways for Christ Church Santa Fe, affiliated with the the Presbyterian Church in America. Children and youth ministry director Jennifer Brenner said the congregation has seen the spectrum of youth attendance in a short time.

A year or so ago "we were down to so few kids that we lost some families, because they didn't see kids here," Brenner said. "Right now we're experiencing growth, and we're very grateful for it."

About a decade ago, the 275-member church had about 60 to 70 kids in its programs, and after a decline is now back at about 40, Brenner said. The church has had a recent influx of new families, in part driven by the hiring surge at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Brenner said children are "pretty visible in the service."

Though the number of people attending church continues to decrease, Burge said belief in God in the U.S. remains very high, at about 90%.

"That belief piece is incredibly stubborn, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon," he said.

Perhaps, Arnold said, but if belief does not translate to building a church's congregation, then faith itself may be in danger of toppling.

"My concern is what impact it has on our whole life together," she said.

Faith communities can be a place where young and old alike learn "the values of loving other people, learn moral and ethical understandings, learn what it means to love our neighbor," Arnold said.

Other congregations are working to attract young people. Two decades ago, St. John's United Methodist Church had a thriving youth ministry. But when the Rev. Matt Bridges was appointed to the church in 2021, he had to build another ministry from the ground up.

The church now has a small but engaged youth ministry mostly of middle school students in partnership with Zia United Methodist. St. John's will begin a process later this year in which the congregation will work with an outside facilitator for 12 to 18 months to map out its long-term future.

Part of that plan is about bringing youth into the fold, Bridges said.

Bridges said he's "incredibly proud" of his congregation for wanting to welcome more families and children and also for being willing to adapt, since what worked 20 or 30 years ago to draw people to church isn't always effective anymore.

"You talk to lots of church communities, and a lot of the older generations will say, 'I wish we have more youth,' " Bridges said.

But he noted, "How much are we willing to change if that's our goal?"