Some are in rural areas, way out in the countryside, hidden from view by cornfields and barns. Some are in small towns where 40 years ago they were thriving enterprises and highly valued by the community. And many are in inner-city neighborhoods.

While visiting relatives recently, I heard shocking news about my hometown congregation, a small United Methodist church where I attended Sunday school. It sits on Main Street, about two blocks from the business district in a town of about 1,200 people. And it is struggling in vain against secular forces in our society.

Now the congregation has two pastors, who are expected to serve four small churches in neighboring towns. This is not unusual. There have been multiple parishes in Protestant denominations for 50 or 60 years. But it is shocking to see your old spiritual home suddenly experiencing such difficulty.

The church is suffering from a post-agricultural society that has for 30 years become more and more secular. When those rural and small-town churches were built 100 years ago, denominations knew they had to have a church about every six miles if they were going to adequately serve the spiritual needs of the people who came to church in a buggy pulled by a horse or oxen.

Now the populations of rural areas have diminished and it appears more and more people will be selling the family farm and moving to the city. Therefore, the crisis in American Christianity will continue. Only the healthiest and wealthiest congregations will survive.

The other problem is that the church is not as valued as it once was. There was a time when my hometown congregation was packed every Sunday morning. My mother and I would sit in the front pew some Sundays and sing in the choir when we were able to make the midweek rehearsal. But since the freedom revolution of the 1960s, people are finding their spiritual sustenance in unconventional ways and it is a good bet most will not return to church.

But the biggest reason many congregations will face trouble in the next quarter century is that large groups of people always have trouble making radical changes. And radical changes are needed if those congregations expect to be saved.

Picture this congregation. St. Whatever is an old-line congregation that saw its best days in the late 1940s, when the sanctuary was packed every Sunday morning. Since then, the membership has been steadily eroding until today, when about 250 people are on the rolls. But because most members are elderly, only about 50 people attend worship.

The pastor has been trying to persuade members to embrace change as a natural part of life. For instance, the pastor made a few changes in the liturgy that would make worship a bit more contemporary. Of course, some people were horrified that anyone would mess with the liturgy and four or five couples stopped attending.

It finally came down to a congregational meeting. Some wanted the pastor to resign. Others felt the pastor was too radical. And some said they could tolerate just about anything but changes in the Sunday liturgy.

The pastor tried to explain that young families would not join the congregation unless the Sunday morning experience was more contemporary. But the members would not buy that argument. The meeting broke up when the pastor reminded the members they had agreed to change when she became the pastor.

Within a year, the pastor found a new congregation, the church lost 11 members by death and worship attendance was down to about 45 people. Within a decade, the congregation will be shut down because the people could not accept the smallest change.

That is the scenario that will be played out in hundreds of congregations during the next 25 years. The number of churches in the United States will be cut by one-third, with vital congregations growing bigger and wealthier than ever before.

And it all depends on a church's ability to adapt to a changing world.

Clark D. Morphew