BANGOR, Maine — While religious leaders across the state grapple with a decrease in attendance at weekly services, one pastor in Bangor is looking for a solution.
"Really the challenge for churches today is reaching younger adults," Gary Bagley, who leads the Hammond Street Congregational Church, said before delivering his sermon on Sunday.
To Bagley, a persistent problem has been staying relevant with the young adult population. Indeed, the issue is present in churches, temples, and mosques across the nation.
According to a study from the Pew Research Center, 20 percent of Americans ages 18-29 attend religious services on a monthly basis. That’s a decline from 24 percent just three years earlier.
To attract this demographic back, Bagley is rethinking what a service means.
"We’re looking at different ways. One is alternative worship—which would be more of a contemporary style worship that would appeal to younger adults," Bagley said.
This could mean changing the music in hymns to be more modern and adopting a come-as-you-can approach.
While some of the specifics haven’t been fleshed out, Bagley sees Hammond Street’s central mission as attractive to this group of younger worshippers:
"It does make a difference when those who feel marginalized, who feel like there’s no place for them, realize that we’re breaking down walls."
The congregation, which sits on the ridge of the hill on its namesake street, is part of the United Church of Christ—a more progressive wing of the mainline protestant denominations that are accepting of the LGBTQ+ community (Bagley's husband is in the choir), anti-discrimination, and oriented towards the needs of the community—namely addressing homelessness and addiction.
George Fricke is an usher at Hammond Street and was drawn to this openness and believes the church serves a pivotal role in the future of Christianity.
"Mainline churches are just seen as being more and more rigid… so the whole movement for open and affirming, which goes back a while, has been an attempt to counter that," Fricke said on Sunday.
This Sunday, about 40 people gathered to worship—Pastor Bagley says that’s less than normal. But for the congregation to return to its heyday, where Sunday saw two packed services, the future could rest on the younger generation to return to the pews.