As a scholar, he's charted the decline in religion. Now the church he pastors has closed its doors

They gathered one last time on Sunday — the handful of mostly elderly members of First Baptist Church in Mt. Vernon, Illinois.

The members, joined by well-wishers, said the Lord's Prayer, recited the Apostle's Creed and heard a biblical passage typically used at funerals, “To everything there is a season ... a time to be born, and a time to die.” They sang classic hymns — “Amazing Grace,” “It Is Well With My Soul” and, poignantly, “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.”

Afterward, members voted unanimously to close the church, a century and a half after it was created by hardscrabble farmers in this southern Illinois community of about 14,000 people.

Many U.S. churches close their doors each year, typically with little attention. But this closure has a poignant twist.

First Baptist's pastor, Ryan Burge, spends much of his time as a researcher documenting the dramatic decline in religious affiliation in recent decades. His recent book, “The Nones,” talks about the estimated 30% of American adults who identify with no religious tradition.

He uses his research in part to help other pastors seeking to reach their communities, and he’s often invited to fly around the country and speak to audiences much larger than his weekly congregation.

But it's no academic abstraction. Burge has witnessed the reality of his research every Sunday morning in the increasingly empty pews of the spacious sanctuary, which was built for hundreds in the peak churchgoing years of the mid-20th century.

“It’s this odd thing, where I’ve become somewhat of an expert on church growth, and yet my church is dying,” said Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University. “A lot of what I do is trying to figure out how much I am to blame for what’s happened around me.”

Burge, 42, started leading the congregation in 2006, when “there were about 50 people on a good Sunday,” he recalled. In the years since, he's earned his doctorate and begun working as a professor. He's gained a wide online and print readership, in part by converting dense statistical tables into easy-to-comprehend graphics on religious trends.

All this time, he's continued to pastor the small church.

“I’m willing to admit that I’m not as good as I could be or should be” as a pastor, he said. “But I’m also not willing to admit that it’s 100% my fault. If you look at the macro level trends happening in modern American religion, it’s hard to grow a church in America today, regardless of what your denomination is. And a lot of places have way more headwinds than tailwinds.”

The church's American Baptist denomination is part of a cluster of so-called mainline denominations — Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran and others that were once central in their communities but have been dramatically shrinking in numbers. The nation's largest evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, has also been losing members.

While there's no annual census of U.S. church closures, about 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, according to the Southern Baptist-affiliated Lifeway Research.

Scholars say churches dwindle for various reasons — scandal, conflict, mobility, indifference, lower birth rates, members shifting to a church they like better. To be sure, most Americans remain religious, and some larger churches are thriving while many smaller ones dwindle. Some surveys suggest that the long rise of the “nones” has slowed or paused.

But the nonreligious are far more common today than a generation ago, in the U.S. and many other nations.

“If Billy Graham would have been born in 1975 instead of 1918, I don’t think he would have been as successful, because he hit his peak right as the baby boom was taking off and America was really hungry for religion,” Burge said.

Things are particularly challenging where communities are shrinking, such as the Rust Belt and rural areas.

Burge hopes his research, and his personal experience, can offer some consolation to other pastors in similar circumstances.

“This is not all your fault,” he said. “You know, in the 1950s, you could be a terrible pastor and probably grow a church because there just was so much growth happening all across America. Now it doesn’t look like that anymore.”

Gail Farnham, 80, has seen that trajectory of church life first-hand.

Her family began attending First Baptist Church when she was 5. Her parents quickly got involved as volunteers and “never looked back," she recalled. Like many American families in the '50s, they joined during the booming rise in church involvement. First Baptist peaked at about 670 members by mid-century, leading to the construction of a large new sanctuary and a suite of Sunday School classrooms.

Farnham went on to raise her own children in the church, and as the congregation's moderator, she continued to hold a top leadership role.

First Baptist has had its share of schisms and controversies in the past, but it largely followed the typical arc of many Protestant churches, thriving in the 1950s and only gradually losing sustainability. The Sunday before its final service, eight worshippers attended. This Sunday's attendance of about 40 was swelled by former members and others, gathering for the momentous final service.

The remaining, primarily older members, found a new mission in recent years despite the uncertain future. They joined a program to provide bag lunches for needy schoolchildren. At one point they were providing 300 meals per week.

The closure is “bittersweet,” Farnham said.

“It’s something we’ve seen coming," she said. ”It’s not a surprise. We’re thankful we’ve been able to serve and meet a need in the community. We turned from being a church saying, ”Oh me, oh my, what are we going to do?' to being a church that said, 'We’re going to serve as long as we can with the best we can."

Now everyone, Burge included, will be looking for a new church. “I have been preaching every Sunday since August of 2005 and I need to be a member of a church for a while, not up front,” he said.