Regional planning for Protestant churches got its first big boost last week. The starting point: two able reports on population shifts and religious needs around Philadelphia, made at Allentown, Pa. to the annual Methodist Conference for the Philadelphia area. Impressed, the delegates from the conference's 322 churches and missions voted a ten-year, $250,000 program by way of starter.
What the program aims to accomplish:
1) Start new churches in growing areas.
2) Help small, strategically located parishes, already started, to grow faster.
3) Close or merge many a church in run-down residential districts, moving some to better spots "while there is equity remaining...
