As a niceness for someone I care about here in the US heartland, I attended a Community of Christ service. The day's theme was "love," (patient, kind, etc.) and was woven through various remarks, hymns and an activity. Late start to their service due to a business meeting so they dispensed with the reading from "Doctrines and Covenants" (but the sermon included the same verse later).

From an outsider's standpoint, this group has a problem for which I cannot fathom a solution: nice building and sincere people, but how are they paying to keep the heat and lights on?

There were less than 20 people in attendance at the day's only service. Mostly gray hair seniors. One elementary child, one toddler and one baby. Deduct the musician and two folks at the front and that's a teeny-tiny "congregation."

The future of "traditional" religion is in peril, no?

Sounds like a Christian Science service: lots of gray hairs, a scattering of families, and Sunday Schools that get smaller and smaller. Religion is on the decline overall, but Christian Science much more so, hallelujah! That means fewer children at risk for medical neglect.

Branch churches are closing all over, around 5% a year, and get turned into housing, restaurants, one that I know of as a community theatre (bravissimo!), or sold to other religious groups. The big question is: what will happen to the huge "Mother Church" in Boston when they can't hide the decline by removing pews and roping off the wings?

https://www.google.com/search?q=christian+science+mother+church&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS568US568&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiqvPSgtITUAhXl54MKHVocDpAQ_AUICigB&biw=1600&bih=770

Their use of their office space is somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 of capacity--the rest is rented out. Valuable assets + (filthy)lucrative cash flow - active membership = ???

That's quite a "Mother church" they have there.

What is it with religions feeling the need to put up "glorious," gaudy, expensive, grandiose buildings?
Is it that they think the bigger/better the building, the more likely it is that their god is the right one?

Mormons are certainly guilty of that. Catholics, too. A great many others.

While bible jesus taught out in the fields and hills.

caffiend, when you wonder about my disgust regarding hypocritical religions, that's part of it :)

My children and I attended the RLDS church after moving upstate NY for several years. It's where they became baptized on the same day.

It was a small building, and a small congregation. There was a lot of love to go around, but not a lot of money to support itself with. The pastor worked for free, volunteering all her time for her calling. As did the others.

Same here about the churches in general being in decline. It's like that all over. My local Lutheran church is just down to a sprinkling of gray hairs as they continue to die off. There aren't any newbies to replace them with as younger families either move away or stop going altogether.

Although app 3 miles from there is another Lutheran church that plays live rock music as part of its Sunday service to draw younger folks in. That seems to be working for retention. I tried going there once with my children, but the music was so loud it hurt my eardrums. One of my kids has more sensitive hearing than I do, so we didn't go back after that.

Fascinated in the Midwest Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> The future of "traditional" religion is in peril,
> no?


Yes, it is. And that's a good thing.

For far too long we have in our country associated traditional religion with virtue. But we don't need the former to have the latter. We can do just fine without it. And that's exactly what people are voting (with their feet) to do. People are choosing to not be part of traditional religion and are learning their lives are better without it.

Of course traditionalists are bemoaning that.