Some Five Towns churches losing members

Barbara Schnaible, who has been a parishioner at the Woodmere-Lawrence Methodist Church for nearly 50 years, says the church is facing a decline in membership, with people moving out of the Five Towns and others dying.

Schnaible has been an active church member since moving to Woodmere in 1963, and her three sons grew up going to church and attended Sunday school. Now they’ve grown up and live elsewhere. “This church has become a way of life [for me] since I moved here,” she said.

The Rev. Wendy Steed, pastor of Woodmere-Lawrence Methodist Church, said that when she first arrived at the church in 2003, she went through the membership books, which indicated that there were 149 members. But after she eliminated members who had died or moved away, she counted only 41 remaining congregants.

Steed blames declining church membership on the current generation’s decreased interest in faith. “This is an indication that we’ve become a real do-it-yourself, worry-about-yourself generation,” she said. “In this day and age we need more faith than ever because of unemployment and people losing their homes, so it is critical that we go back to supporting each other.”

On the other hand, said Steed, who is also the pastor of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Inwood, she has noticed something of a rebirth at St. Paul’s, with more younger people in attendance. “Both congregations have mixed congregations, mixed races and cultures, but St. Paul’s is mostly a split between the young and the old,” she said. “ And because of its proximity to Far Rockaway, many members are from there.”

At Valley Stream Presbyterian Church, which has members from Lawrence, Rosedale and Hewlett, the Rev. Kymberley Clemons “K.C.” Jones said the church’s membership has increased since she became pastor in 2008. “When I first came to the church,” Jones said, “we had 33 members, and now we have 56, including 10 children under the age of 13 that we don’t count towards membership.”