As a spirited 38-year-old pastor, Willie Joyner remembers Gary churches were flourishing in the early 1990s.
Every Sunday, the pews in his church were teeming with parishioners. You could sometimes feel a slight “bounce” in the floor as the congregation rocked to the voices of the robust choir.
Twenty-three years later, Joyner remains a spry pastor at Tarrytown Missionary Baptist Church, devoted to the word of God and his congregation. But Joyner is seeing a trend among Gary churches: Numbers are shrinking.
“It’s something we’re all experiencing,” he said. “Go anywhere in the city, we all see it.”
As Gary’s economy plummeted with the near-collapse of the steel industry, church attendance was among the casualties.
“It’s socioeconomics more than anything else,” said the Rev. Asher Harris of the Great Band Missionary Baptist Church and president of Baptist Ministers Conference. “As goes the city, at some level goes the churches.”
Harris, 73, cited the thousands of jobs fleeing U.S. Steel and the lack of other jobs in the city as the primary factor for the citywide decline in church populations.
“How do you sustain your population when the mills, U.S. Steel and (Arcelor) Mittal loses thousands of employees?” Harris asked. “You can’t. No city could.”
Gary has lost more than half its population since its peak in the 1960s and is now home to less than 78,000 people, 2015 U.S. Census estimates show.
“When I first came here, it wasn’t at its peak but it was well up there,” said the Rev. Willie Reed of New Mount Moriah Baptist Church. “But as the jobs evaporated, those who graduated college couldn’t find jobs here. So over a period a time the population started to dwindle.”
Reed said Gary businesses began to relocate to surrounding communities.
Curtis Whittaker Sr., pastor of Progressive Community Church, said he believes there’s been a social shift that has contributed to the decline in church attendance.
During the1950s and ’60s, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was established as an African-American civil rights organization composed of clergymen and women.
“Social context used to encourage people that church was the place to be,” Whittaker said. “People were empowered and the church was a galvanizing place.”
He said the fight against racism galvanized people and their rallying place was the church.
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With a fairer, more egalitarian society compared to previous decades, Whittaker said “social progress may have led to religion regress.”
Whittaker believes social media contributed to people attending church less.
“Technology changed everything,” he said, adding that he recently saw a teenager mocking another kid for having a copy of the Bible, which the teen called extinct. “People can now watch a service on Facebook Live. Most pastors are streaming their services, so a lot of people aren’t getting up and physically attending church when they can receive the word from home.”
Urban decay
Standing on his church’s steps, Whittaker peers inside the shattered windows of Gary’s former Emerson School for Visual and Performing Arts. After it closed in 2008, the historic building that was once brimming with talented teenagers is now a vestige for vandalism and criminal activity.
Graffiti is painted on the building, and two years ago a 17-year-old girl was found strangled inside the vacant school.
Emerson is one of many shuttered school buildings throughout the city. Just like the declining church population, the closing of schools and blighted buildings are a byproduct of Gary’s decline.
“That’s been a big impact on the community as a whole,” Whittaker said, referring to the closings of two schools across from his church. He’s had members who said they were afraid to come to church because of the vacant building across the street.
Nearly 60 percent of buildings in Gary are vacant or blighted, according to a 2016 report from the Gary Redevelopment Commission.
“It’s hard for businesses to sustain themselves, abandoned buildings are everywhere and there’s no question that the crime is driving a lot of people out of the city,” Harris said.
Looking ahead
Reed, who started preaching in Gary in 1974, remembers when residents and even tourists would amble along Broadway, past the quaint stores that lined the strip, such as Esquire, a high-end clothing store where men could buy a quality suit.
As the “Steel Town” of about 170,000 nestled on the edge of Lake Michigan, many residents couldn’t have foreseen the steep decline.
Back then the financial prosperity extended beyond Broadway and affected nearly every part of the city, even allowing smaller mom-and-pop shops to thrive.
After Sunday school, dozens of kids would gather outside of New Mount Moriah and walk around the corner to the neighborhood candy shop. Those kids are now adults, and few children have followed in their footsteps.
Reed said he used to have more than 20 Sunday school classes; that’s dwindled to five to 10.
“I can count two kids I have attending my church now,” Harris said.
With the decline in youth participation, most churches are still operational based on a small, tight-knit albeit aging population.
“A great percentage of my population decline has been due to death,” Joyner said.
The faith community continues to examine ways to attract more people to church.
“The only thing I think the church can do is to keep on ministering Christ,” said the Rev. Roosevelt Dixon, pastor of Crossroads Missionary Baptist Church. “That’s the role God has given us. He has assigned us these roles and we got to stick to the agenda he has given us. That’s the only way back.”
Some pastors said they prefer to take a more pragmatic approach. Joyner said he thinks the religious community should go out into the city, knock on doors and spread the word of God.
“We need to get out and stand on some corners and tell them about Jesus,” he said. “They’re not going to know about him unless we get out and tell them.”
Joyner said the religious community can’t continue to sit back and make the proclamation that the church is declining while not actively trying to create an increase.
“We need to go fishing and bring people into the churches,” he said. “Jesus said he will make us fishers of men. Not only do we not go fishing, we don’t even go to the store and buy a pole.”
While Harris said his congregation goes door to door preaching the word of God during warmer months, he believes improving Gary’s economy is pivotal in buttressing church congregations.
“We can focus on job training and working with students to come here for after-school programs.”
But Harris knows the glory days are long gone. “We’re in a new age and we can only look forward.”
Even as his congregation has dipped to 10 to 15 parishioners each Sunday, Harris said he walks in faith and doesn’t expect his church to see the fate of several other churches in the city, being forced to close. But he will know if his time comes to close the doors to his church. “If we get to the point where we can’t pay NIPSCO, we’ll close.”
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Despite the troubles they face, Harris and other pastors said they will not be deterred and are committed to spreading the gospel in Gary.
“I’ll be here until God calls me home,” Harris said.
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