Area religious community to be more diverse, shifting

What is abundantly clear about the future of the religious community in Chattanooga, according to experts, is that it will become even more of a hodgepodge than it is today.

"We are increasingly pluralistic," said Dr. Charles Lippy, the former LeRoy A. Martin Distinguished Professorship of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. "There's no way around that."

That will manifest itself in a number of ways, clergy members said.

"Many churches recognize the need to change," said Mark Love, lead pastor for Journey Chattanooga, a 2-year-old nondenominational church, "but there's great pain in change. Some are just unwilling to change because it's easier to have things go along as they are. That's human nature."

Dr. Darrell Henry, senior pastor of Oakwood Baptist Church, one of several megachurches in southeast Tennessee, said the future is not likely to see a proliferation of congregations which average more than 2,000 in weekly worship attendance.

Instead, he said, megachurches will help start newer, smaller congregations with different methodologies.

"That's where the real impact of the future is going to be made," Dr. Henry said. "That's where the effective work will be done."

Dr. Lippy said the present trend of members switching congregations to satisfy immediate needs is likely to continue as is the circumstances of denominations fracturing over specific issues.

Decisions related to homosexuality over the past decade in the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have led to such fracturing, he said.

Like it or not, Dr. Lippy said, "people are always looking for something that will divide things between us and them. The boundaries are constantly shifting. The borders are porous."

Yet, religious congregations are likely to increasingly find common ground on racial matters and community problems, according to the Rev. Mary Baker Hendricks, pastor of Hamlett Chapel Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

"With our economy and the struggles and stresses of just life itself," she said, "I see us coming together."

Services at most churches in the future will be more contemporary and less formal, said Bernie Miller, senior pastor of New Covenant Fellowship.

Many people no longer attend a religious service, he said, because they find it boring, "not a fun place to be" and a place where "everybody takes themselves too seriously."

"I don't think the message will change," said Mr. Miller, "but the presentation will have a different complexion."

That doesn't mean throwing out old hymns, he said, but striking a balance that has more media and more music. Without children and young people to help grow a church, "you'll see a shrinking membership" and eventually can "kiss (the church) good-bye."

"(Successful churches) are not reinventing the wheel," Mr. Miller said. "They're using what has been proven and tried from those who were out of the box."

Whatever emerges, said the Rev. Mark Gooden, senior pastor of Signal Crest United Methodist Church, must be authentic and real to people. For pastors, it requires "more than getting up there on Sunday morning and saying a few words"; for congregants, it requires a commitment beyond the fact church "is part of our culture and tradition."

"We are living in a culture that requires us to bring the best we have each week and let God work with that," he said. "We have to live out our words. We have to practice those things we're preaching."