Worden ? Drive on U.S. 56 west of Baldwin Junction, past some farmhouses, barns and fields, and you’ll eventually get to a brand-new, $1.1 million shiny metal building that bucks a nationwide trend.

It’s a new church, the kind the experts say aren’t supposed to be built out in the middle of the country these days, when so many rural communities are dwindling.

But it happened at the Worden United Methodist Church, and members will gather today and Sunday to celebrate both the completion of its new facility and a new chapter in the church’s 134-year history.

“I think this church would do well in any locale,” says Dwayne McCune, a member for 17 years. “It appeals to everybody. Anyone who wants a relationship with God would work well here.”

The new facility has been talked about for a long time, but it started to become a reality about six years ago.

The former building – on the same corner at 298 E. 900 Road – was built in 1932, and it was barely large enough to hold services and fellowship dinners for the Sunday congregation, which ranges from 180 to 230 a week.

It got to the point it would cost more to bring it up to code with the Americans with Disabilities Act and other concerns than it would build a new building. For now, the old church is serving as a chapel, though it will either need to be upgraded or demolished down the road.

The new structure is around 16,000 square feet – or about three times the old facility – and includes a sanctuary, large fellowship hall that doubles as a basketball court, gathering area, Sunday school classrooms and a library.

So far, about $700,000 of the $1.1 million building has been paid for by church members. The cost of the building was reduced by volunteer work from the congregation and area businesses.

“I’ve heard pastors tell me of horror stories” about construction projects, says the Rev. Dale Lewis, the church’s pastor of seven years. “But that never happened.”

Keys to growth

Lewis says the church has grown steadily through the years. He attributes the growth to a focus on children and youth programs, including Vacation Bible School.

Many of the church’s members live around Worden, which is about a half-hour drive from Lawrence. But he says others drive from Baldwin, Lawrence and as far away as Oskaloosa.

The focus on youth was what brought Kevin Markley to the church three years ago. He remembers his infant daughter crying during a service and an older person whispering, “Don’t worry about it.”

“We knew nobody,” Markley says. “We were welcomed into this church. It’s a family church. It really is a family-oriented church.”

Scott Jones, the Methodist bishop for Kansas, says the Worden church certainly is going against the grain when it comes to rural churches that are growing and building new facilities.

“It is quite unusual and quite exciting for the same reason,” Jones says. “My understanding is it’s because of the high-quality leadership of both the pastor and laity there. There’s a sense of care for each other and an interest in reaching out to new people.”

Jones says he gauges church growth in rural communities not always on how much a congregation is growing but by how it’s doing compared to the community’s demographics. Sometimes, it’s more a matter of remaining stable as populations shift toward larger cities.

“Worden is in a stable county that’s slightly growing,” he says. “The basic principles of growth are the same everywhere – preach the Gospel, spread the love of God in word and deed, be open to change and be open to the people who are in your area. Those same principles are helping Worden.”

National concern

Rural churches do face challenges not always found in urban congregations, says Kenneth L. Carder, a professor of pastoral formation at Duke Divinity School who studies rural congregations.

Rural areas tend to be economically depressed, he says. And they struggle to keep stable leadership, when some pastors see being in a small town as being a stepping stone to a larger location.

Carder says rural churches often suffer from an inferiority complex. Small Methodist churches in the Kansas City area, for instance, may realize they can’t offer all of the services offered by the Church of the Resurrection, a Leawood church that is one of the largest Methodist congregations in the United States.

“The image of the church tends to be the large-membership church, and that leads the small-membership church to have low morale if they can’t provide sports facilities or multiple programs for various age groups,” Carder says. “It’s the Churches of the Resurrection that get the affirmation as being the ideal, and therefore it creates a sense of disparity and despair in these small membership churches. It’s not that one is better than the other, just different.”

Carder says successful rural churches are the ones that pay attention to changing demographics around them.

“One of the dangers of the small-membership church is that it becomes a family chapel and doesn’t connect with the changing demographics of the community,” he says. “Those that are bucking the trend know who’s present in the neighborhood or communities now and often find there’s an ethnic population that moved in, or if a small membership church has been predominately middle class, it might not have paid attention to the mobile home parks in the past.”

‘Rural atmosphere’

Louise Wintermantel, a Worden church member for 46 years, says that even though her congregation has grown to be one of the larger ones in its Methodist district, it has retained that small-church feel.

“That old, rural atmosphere is still here,” she says. “Everybody gets to know everybody.”

Or, as 50-year church member Jane Schwartz says: “We want to know who brought what to the (church) dinner, and can we get the recipe.”

Lewis, the pastor, says he’s always been impressed that the church members aren’t focused on how large their Sunday attendance is. Even if the new building attracts some new faces, he says, the mission of the church will be the same as it was when it was founded in 1872.

“This church has always been the church God called us to be,” Lewis says. “I’ve been part of churches with folks who are just as faithful as the folks around here, yet they didn’t experience this type of growth. We want to be the church God wants us to be.”