Estimates of annual church closures range from 3,500 to 7,000. That’s likely to increase as younger generations, including the rise of the “nones,” increasingly avoid organized religion. One of the biggest dangers facing those churches is the failure to see the financial trap that puts them in,” said Chris Gambill. “A lot of established, traditional congregations don’t realize how close they might be to this scenario,” he said.

Things were looking bleak for Orange Grove Baptist Church and its aging membership when Greg Shoemaker arrived as its pastor about a year ago.

Located just north of Pascagoula, Miss., the congregation and community around it had been hit hard by years of flooding, the closing of a paper mill and elementary school and the decline of the local fishing industry.

Add to that the national trends driving down church attendance and all Orange Grove Baptist had were about a dozen mostly elderly members worshiping in a sanctuary meant for 120.

“It was a little discouraging,” said Shoemaker, 44, a bivocational pastor who also works in health-care administration. “They were a dying church with a lot stacked up against them.”

What he didn’t know at the time was that the decline in numbers would continue and raise questions about whether the church would survive.

Churches on the edge

It’s a question thousands of American churches confront each year. Estimates of annual church closures range from 3,500 to 7,000. That’s likely to increase as younger generations, including therise of the “nones,” increasingly avoid organized religion.

One of the biggest dangers facing those churches is the failure to see the financial trap that puts them in, said Chris Gambill, manager of congregational health services at the Center for Congregational Health in Winston-Salem, N.C.

“A lot of established, traditional congregations don’t realize how close they might be to this scenario,” he said.

That scenario can spell trouble because aging members are the biggest givers in most American congregations. Gambill said 60 to 75 percent of giving comes from members who are 60 and older.

Gambill said those older members are often resistant to changes in ministries, and their giving isn’t being replaced after they leave or pass away.

“My best guess is that there is a 10- to 20-year window before most churches hit a financial crisis that will push them over the edge,” Gambill said.

Discerning that edge for Orange Grove Baptist church wasn’t always easy, said Patsy Ready, 71, a member of the congregation since its founding as a mission of First Baptist Pascagoula in the 1960s.

“I can remember a time when it was full and we had youth groups and everything,” she said. “Then we began to have our ups and downs, and it was probably in the ‘80s when we began to see real declines and couldn’t seem to build back.”

Ready said a series of preachers brought with them surges in attendance followed by more declines. Not until three or four years ago did the idea of shutting down become a sustained conversation.

“Personally, I felt like it was going to go down,” Ready said. “The last three or four years we have really been down to where 10 is a big crowd.”

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