By Maggie Downs
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Paul Leonard, 34, of Hyde Park, bows his head in prayer at Crossroads Community Church in Oakley, one of several local worship centers that are attracting increasing numbers of younger congregants. At right are his wife, Kristi, 34, and their baby, Matthew. The Cincinnati Enquirer/CRAIG RUTTLE

Bradley Reith leads the congregation during a Good Friday evening service at the Faith Evangelical Free Church in Milford, a group geared toward 18- to 30-year-olds. The Cincinnati Enquirer/TONY JONES

Freddi Caldwell defines ultra-trendy: He wears slick Banana Republic clothes and highlighted hair.

He runs his own salon, Chappie Hair Design, with his wife, Heather, in Crescent Springs.

And he calls himself a former heathen.

Still, the 35-year-old newlywed is someone you might see in your pew today on Easter.

Slowly but steadily, young adults like Caldwell - ages 18-35 and who never much went to church before - are being wooed into organized religion in Greater Cincinnati.

Not long ago, the Ludlow resident frequented bars, drinking 32-ounce beers each night to "fill a void." Today, Caldwell and his wife will celebrate the one-year anniversary of their baptism at Vineyard Christian Church in Burlington.

"No matter what I did, I couldn't get filled," he says. "It wasn't money. It wasn't alcohol. I needed God, but I just didn't know it yet."

According to a March Gallup poll, 48 percent of America's 18- to 29-year-olds and 59 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds say religion is important in their lives.

But a much smaller number attends services. Only 30 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds and 40 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds say they have attended services in the past week.

Despite national surveys that say there has been only a slight attendance increase among young people over the past decade, local churches say they are seeing a significant upswing of young faces in their congregations.

Now, church leaders are taking steps to retain them.

Caldwell attends one of the area's contemporary interdenominational churches, where services are repackaged with Top 40 music and a multimedia "message" instead of a standard sermon.

Traditional churches also are stepping up efforts to attract the young crowd. An Enquirer sampling of more than 30 such churches in Greater Cincinnati showed that each one already features - or is planning to start - ministries to attract young adults.

SERVICES

Here's a sampling of ministries attracting young adults: • Crossroads Community Church, 3500 Madison Road, Oakley. Weekend services: 5:30 p.m. Saturdays; 9, 10:20 and 11:40 a.m. Sundays. Next Level extended prayer service: 7 p.m. Wednesdays. Web site. • Faith Evangelical Free Church, 5910 Price Road, Milford. Essential meetings: 7 p.m. Sundays. Web site. • First Baptist Church of Glen Este, 1034 Old Ohio 74, Glen Este. Single Impact (for singles 24-34) Bible study: 9 a.m. Sundays, church service 10:30 a.m. Sundays. Web site. • Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 7701 Kenwood Road, Kenwood. Nontraditional worship - 5 p.m. Saturdays, 9:30 a.m. Sundays.Web site. • Northminster Presbyterian Church, 703 Compton Road, Finneytown. Crosspoint services: 9 and 11:30 a.m. Sundays. Web site. • Tri-County Baptist Church, 8195 Beckett Road, West Chester. Single purpose service: 9:45 a.m. Sundays, 7 p.m. Wednesdays. Web site. • Trinity Lutheran Church of Mount Healthy, 1553 Kinney Ave., Mount Healthy. Break Out! contemporary worship: 9:45 a.m. Sundays. Web site. • The Vineyard, 11340 Century Circle East, Springdale. Weekend services: 6:30 p.m. Saturdays, 8:30, 10 and 11:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. Web site. • University Christian Church, 245 W. McMillan St., Clifton. Weekend services: 9:30 and 11 a.m. Sundays. Couples group: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays; college group: 9 p.m. Wednesdays. Web site.

RELATED STORIES

• Lively, easy-to-read teen Bibles good news for young Christians

Their efforts are paying off:

• In Springdale, the Vineyard is Cincinnati's largest congregation with more than 6,000 members, many of them young professionals.

• Crossroads Community Church in Oakley is planning a multimillion-dollar expansion to accommodate its 5,000-plus members, most of whom have yet to develop wrinkles.

• Essential at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Milford, a group geared to 18- to 30-year-olds, attracts scores of people who wouldn't normally attend services.

• Northminster Presbyterian in Finneytown just added a second "contemporary" service with modern music and a relaxed setting, which have attracted many younger families with small children.

Young people are "very excited about God," says John Wentz, 27, campus minister of University Christian Church in Clifton.

"I see it happening here and across the country. Religion is almost like a wave through the younger generation."

Contemporary

At a Crossroads service, two large screens flank Pastor Brian Tome, and a brief clip flickers of Saturday Night Live's Church Lady. As Tome speaks, the band kicks in with a soft background tune.

This is no typical sermon.

When the church began in March 1996, at Clark Montessori in Hyde Park, leaders expected 35 people. They got 450.

Today, about 5,300 worship in a sleek concrete and steel church. Average attendees are between 30 and 35. Most are single.

They come for the social aspect as well as the spiritual.

"Church is not all about sitting in one place and listening to someone talk. It's about communication," teaching pastor Brian Wells says.

Rob Seddon, 28, of Hyde Park likes the frank discourse and musical selections such as U2 and the Dave Matthews Band.

"It was relevant. That was the biggest thing," he says. "Every week I would go and hear something I was actually going through, all the way down to the music."

At the Vineyard, attendees listen to the service in theater-style seats, complete with cup holders. But the real church happens in the more than 200 small groups, made up primarily of young adults, that meet throughout the week, pastor Dave Workman says.

Traditional

Bradley Reith looks more like a friendly football player than a preacher. He has a jock's build, an easy smile and often wears slouchy, American Eagle-type clothes.

The 29-year-old Mount Washington man put together the Essential program at Faith Evangelical Free Church, where he is the young adult director.

In the mainline congregation of 1,500, Essential draws dozens to its weekly gathering during the school year, and more than 100 in summer.

The need for the year-old program was great, with 80 percent of youth-group graduates never returning once they hit college.

The Essential community is built upon small groups, mostly self-led by young believers. Religious study isn't a critical examination of the Bible. Instead, it is something like "Stories of a Non-conformist," the title of a study series that examines the life of Jesus.

The message is still probing, Reith says. It's just a more casual presentation.

"In the age of modernity, we rationally deducted everything into very scientific truth-telling until the story was lost," he says. "Now you see a generation that values art, subjectivity and mystery. They want stories."

At half-century-old Northminster Presbyterian Church, older worshipers had grown accustomed to a conservative service with traditional organ and choral music.

But there was a gap in the congregation, says Pastor Jeff Hosmer. The church couldn't retain the youth who were raised there.

Enter Crosspoint, a relaxed service with a live band and upbeat Christian music. Crosspoint proved so popular, even with older members, that the church introduced a second contemporary service Feb. 29.

The modern approach to worship co-exists with two traditional services each Sunday.

Orthodoxy

Plenty of young people still relish traditionalism, too, says Colleen Carroll, author of The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy (Loyola Press, 2002).

The St. Louis-based journalist spent a year researching the attraction of young adults back to orthodox religion. In more than 500 interviews with young churchgoers, she found there's a hunger for liturgy. And the trend isn't limited to Christians, she says.

"Many people are attracted to the mystery and the reverence that is not rock bands and screens."

That describes Andrea Zahumensky, 27, who appreciates the traditional setting of St. Andrew Church in Milford. She and her husband attended a contemporary interdenominational service, but they missed the ceremony of Catholicism.

"We really enjoyed it, but didn't feel like we had been to church," she says. "Being brought up in a Roman Catholic family, there is something about the 'rituals,' for lack of a better term, of going to traditional Mass every week."

Jack L. Klinger, 33, agrees.

"I prefer a more traditional format, to worship in a sanctuary and not a gym," says Klinger, who attends Parkside Christian Church in Anderson Township.

"My church, its congregation anyway, is familiar and I like it, so I stick around. Maybe I'm a creature of habit."

Outside the church

Sometimes church can happen outside a church building, says Chris Combs.

He's a volunteer team leader for the Milford High School Young Life group, a non-denominational outreach for high schoolers who don't attend church. They've had gatherings in pizza parlors, sports events and malls.

"We try to meet them on their own turf," Combs says.

With 812,000 teen-agers in Young Life nationally, including 4,000 locally, the group is helping shape modern Christianity.

That's why organizations are reaching out to this influential age group, according to researcher George Barna of the Barna Institute, which analyzes cultural trends in Christianity.

"The church must earn the time and attention of teens - and that means becoming a provider of value well before their high school graduation," Barna says.

The University Christian Church, across from the University of Cincinnati's main campus in Clifton, tries to reach young adults through interactive Sunday services and weekday gatherings.

He's encouraged; three-fourths of his congregation's 200 members are college students.

"We try to be there to give them balance at a time when people are searching for meaning in life," he says.

E-mail mdowns@enquirer.com