It is worth noting the key marks of the new religious cultures as quoted above: immigrant backgrounds, creative worship, an emphasis on good works, and personal holiness. According to the article, a good deal of the growth of the newer churches is among immigrants, an avenue not open to most mainline churches, although there are exceptions. The PC(USA) Presbytery of Boston is, for example, seeing some growth in its congregations fueled by Presbyterian immigrants from West Africa. There is no reason, on the other hand, why Presbyterian and other mainline churches can't engage in a search for more creative worship, hands on good works, and a more personal spirituality. In fact, mainline churches are frequently quite adept at the good works piece of the pie.
Where mainline churches face issues in adapting themselves to the 21st century is in creative worship and personal faith development. Creative worship is tricky in and of itself and frequently resisted by pastors as well as their parishioners. Creative worship involves mastering skills and technologies unfamiliar to many pastors, and it can be seriously hit-and-miss. And one of the most serious obstacles facing mainline creative worship is that the kind of technology-driven, drums & guitars creative worship many Americans seem to want is already being done by evangelical churches—being done better than your average declining mainline church can hope to do it. And the folks who are in our pews don't want that kind of worship, anyway. A Presbyterian pastor in Michigan once shared with me the "journey" he and his congregation had travelled in worship. They explored a variety of alternative forms of worship and made a full-faith effort to develop a creative, experimental, and "exciting" worship life for the church. He said their journey had eventually led them to the conclusion that they did best when they did traditional mainline worship as well as they could.
The one door that I see wide open for the congregation I serve as pastor and other mainline churches, then, is the quest for a deeper personal spirituality. Not everyone in a church is interested in such a thing, but I suspect that the percentage is higher than most would guess and higher than it was in the glory years of the 1950s. Prayer and meditation. Engagement with scripture. Reading spiritual literature. Dialogue with others of faith. Sermons & worship that focus on seeking God and discovering the Spirit. Such an agenda can lead churches to new vitality, whether or not it leads them back to the era of statistical growth and past the demographic imbalance of the present. There are, of course, obstacles not the least of which is the fact that we tend to identify personal spirituality with evangelicalism and, thus, shy away as if a deeper personal faith is somehow chained to theologies and attitudes that we find objectionable. It isn't. We just need to learn that we can remain true to our mainline heritage and also engage in a life of growth in personal faith.
