Join the church? Well …

DECADES AGO, Dorothy E. Payton and her husband moved with their young children to a small prairie town in Montana. Although a devoted Methodist, Dorothy and her husband attended a United Church of Christ congregation. The only alternatives in town were Missouri Synod Lutheran and Catholic churches.

"My husband and I did not join the UCC, though our children were confirmed in the church," she said. Later, the congregation of fewer than 50 members was warm and caring toward her upon the untimely death of her husband. As years passed, she served as deaconess and church historian. She wrote for the newsletter and helped decorate the church every holiday.

Thirty-five years after she first became active in the church, she actually became a member. It was, she wrote in "2003 in a column for the UCC Web site, "a very happy ending to this story."

Not many churchgoers take that long to join.

But newly available figures from the largest-ever survey of Americans attending worship services show that one-fourth of all active nonmembers in mainline Protestant churches declined to join for at least six years, and 14 percent still resisted after a decade or more. The holdout figures are nearly the same for evangelical congregations.

Some Protestant pastors compare the visitors' first year or so to "dating"--churchgoers deciding whether they like the congregation enough to join. When active nonmembers have been around so long they think of themselves as members, one pastor likened it to "common-law marriage," or in contemporary terms, "cohabitation."

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many cases are like Dorothy Payton's: people cannot bring themselves to affiliate with a different denomination. Many others refrain from joining because of divided religious loyalties within the family--in Catholic-Protestant marriages, for example, or Christian Jewish ones.

"Some people really do take membership very seriously," said J. Bennett Guess, editor of United Church News. Guess said the UCC has a ritual for recognizing the often-varied background of Flew members. "We give thanks to every community of faith that has been your spiritual home," says the rite, which aims to ease the transition for new members.

Yet, Guess admits, some nonmembers simply "do not see the need to join as they partake of a smorgasbord of benefits without the financial burden, saying, 'After all, I'm not a member.'"

In that vein, church leaders blame a cultural tendency toward delaying commitment, keeping one's options open. "Who needs church? It's not anything you need to put on your career resume," reflects Nancy Maffett. She has been director of outreach and discipleship for nearly 18 years at First Presbyterian Church of Colorado Springs, a bustling church of more than 5,000 members.

"Despite the city's reputation as the evangelical center of the West," Maffett said, "70 percent of Colorado Springs is unchurched." First Presbyterian draws thousands of visitors each year through its recreation program and other ministries. "We've had a ministry to the divorced for 2.5 years, but once they start feeling better they leave," she said. "Our challenge is to help newcomers have transformational experiences; otherwise nothing changes."

What's a church to do? Long-term hangers-on constitute a "free-rider" problem for many congregations, contend sociologists of religion who often associate strong church growth with strict financial, organizational and theological policies that distinguish the church from secular society. Since nonjoiners do not have the same financial obligations as members and are usually barred from leadership roles, the presence of free riders at struggling churches constitute a kind of burden for the core membership.

But other sociologists, and certainly most church leaders, counter that a patient, "open arms" policy is true to Christian tradition and bears practical fruits for most congregations.

Researchers have not had a good picture of nonmember numbers and traits until recently. John (Jack) Marcum, associate for survey research at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), presented the first comparative data on active nonmembers at the October annual meeting of the Religious Research Association in Kansas City, Missouri.

Marcum pulled together the data from the large U.S. Congregational Life Survey that polled 800,000 worshipers in more than 2,000 houses of worship in April 2001, asking all adults sitting in church to fill out questionnaires. Overall, Marcum found that mainline congregations have more members and those becoming members (86 percent) at services than do evangelical congregations (80 percent). That figure is consistent with the observation that evangelical and charismatic churches the more apt to woo religious seekers and to emphasize attendance over membership numbers.

The study focused especially on churchgoers who, when asked if they were members, said, "No, but I regularly attend here." In mainline congregations, 8 percent answered that way and 4 percent said they were nonmembers but declined to elaborate. The corresponding percentages in evangelical churches were 12 and 6 percent.