Surviving Mainline congregations in future years will reorganize into new networks and collaborations that we cannot now imagine. Some congregations that are dramatically heterodox will survive but most will not. They will no longer have the buffer of supportive denominational structures. Ultimately, nature reasserts itself in churches. Orthodox theology that feeds souls wins and attracts people. The artificial alternatives far less so. Denominational loyalty and money for decades delayed this reassertion of nature. But no more.

Mainline Protestant denominations have been declining for sixty years and some of these denominations will not meaningfully much longer exist. But will all their congregations recede or die with them?

Perhaps not. The collapse of denominational loyalties in America may be good news for many Mainline congregations.

In the old days, many congregants were deeply committed to the denominations, reading their publications, attending their conferences, heeding their pronouncements, financially supporting them generously and appreciating the wider identity they offered, often across generations. Many congregants across decades left their Mainline denominations with sadness as those denominations further liberalized and failed to offer a compelling spiritual message. Many did not leave, but their children and grandchildren were not interested in the Mainline denominations, leaving institutional religion altogether, or joining more evangelical churches that often were nondenominational.

The membership of Mainline Protestant denominations has declined by millions, and thousands of churches have closed. Many more thousands of churches, some barely surviving with a dwindling number of elderly members, will close soon. But thousands of Mainline congregations endure. Some are vital. A few are growing. And nearly universally they have very few members who care about their denominations. These members simply like their congregations.

I attend a United Methodist congregation. Several years ago, in the wake of the schism, I had anticipated joining the new Global Methodist Church. But the GMC is not present in my area and, so far, seems uninterested in planting in new areas. Of course, I do not like United Methodism’s newly liberalized standards and much else about the denomination. But these changes seem not to affect my church. Nobody there talks about the denomination. Last year I asked our since retired pastor if anybody in the church under the age of sixty cared about the denomination. He quickly replied no. I should have asked how many over the age of sixty cared. Likely not many.

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