For John Brewer, a vacation to New York didn’t mean a vacation from church.

When Brewer, a member of the Unitarian Fellowship of Lawrence, visited a friend in the Hudson Valley this summer, he hopped on the Internet and looked up the nearest Unitarian Fellowship congregation – in Kingston, N.Y.

“It’s nice to know when you’re somewhere else, you can still find your kind,” he says. “It’s a home away from home – that’s the corny way to say it.”

With vacationers taking their last-minute summer trips, many churches are seeing an influx of visitors from out of town. According to a 1998 survey by the Travel Industry Association of America, one in four adult travelers in the United States go to a religious service while on a long-distance trip.

And some churches are starting to market to travelers, hoping to draw in those who have a church home as well as those who are new to faith.

“People are often suspicious of missionaries back home and might be uncomfortable with religion,” says Lynn Davis, director of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Central Atlantic Leisure Ministries, which runs missionary programs at resort locations in Maryland and Delaware. “But when they’re on vacation and camping, they’re much more open to new experiences all around.”

Not many – if any – Lawrence churches seem to be marketing directly to travelers, though. Officials at Clinton Lake and Perry Lake say they rarely have church leaders at their sites, other than church campouts.

Bunnie Watkins, a ranger at Perry Lake, says several churches attempted to hold services there years ago, but the idea never took off.

“It’s one of those things they tried before, but they didn’t get that many people,” Watkins says. “We have a listing of church services in town, and when we have people in (inquiring about churches) we just give them a copy.”

Church variety

For Stan and Phyllis Rolfe, members of Plymouth Congregational Church, a Sunday away from home usually means a Sunday at church.

Whether they’re visiting their children in Texas, Nebraska or Minnesota, they can usually be found in a church pew on Sunday mornings.

“Two of the families are Catholic, and the one in Texas is a fundamental church,” Phyllis Rolfe says. “We really enjoy the variety. We really get something from it.”

When the couple vacationed to Germany, France and England, they went to church, too.

“It’s whatever was convenient,” she says. “I think we tend to attend regularly because it is a support community.”

For Brewer, the member of Unitarian Fellowship of Lawrence, the visits to other churches can give him ideas to help implement at his home congregation.

“It’s a curiosity thing – to see what form this particular faith has taken in another spot,” Brewer says. “I like to see how they built their building and what their service is like.”

‘New beginnings’

Though it’s not the trend in Lawrence, many churches near vacation destinations are picking up their outreach to travelers.

One of the hotbeds of resort recruiting is Ocean City, Md., where the Southern Baptist Church holds services on the Frontier Town campground and several other churches gear their advertising toward tourists.

The Rev. Edward Fahey, associate pastor at St. Andrew’s Catholic Center in Ocean City, says there’s something about relaxing on a beach that causes even nonreligious people to think about God. That makes vacationers a prime audience for church services, he says.

“You find with being near the ocean that there’s a lot of new beginnings,” he says. “It’s almost like people want to bury some of their sins in the sand just like they want to bury their feet in the sand.”

– J-W wire services contributed information to this report.