An evangelical church in Iowa has reported a 60 per cent rise in attendance since 2022, with its lead pastor saying young adults are increasingly open to Christianity and the gospel.

Around 4,000 adults now attend Cornerstone Church in Ames, where the growth has become so significant that worshippers can face waits of up to half an hour to reach the church car park.

"Every year, we've seen at least 10% year-over-year attendance growth," lead pastor Mark Vance said.

Cornerstone is part of the Salt Network, an evangelical church-planting movement which now has more than 40 churches in university cities across 28 US states.

The network grew out of a campus ministry at Iowa State University and was established in 2016 with a focus on planting churches in university communities.

Vance said 18 to 25-year-olds have been an important part of that growth, including young people with little previous experience of church.

"We find that demographic, 18 to 25, is wildly open... to Christianity and the gospel," he said.

"They're curious, they're asking questions," he added, saying many are searching for deeper meaning in their lives.

Cornerstone is now looking beyond university cities and considering how its model could be used in rural communities, where many traditional churches are struggling to survive.

Nearly 300 churches have been lost in Iowa over the past decade, and Vance said people are already travelling considerable distances to attend Cornerstone or watching its services online.

"We see people driving to Cornerstone from 40, 50, 60 minutes away," he said.

“You think of rural Iowa as having community churches… but many of them are dying. They’re closing their doors in huge numbers because they can’t economically and functionally sustain” their operations.

Cornerstone is developing plans to "plant or replant churches" in rural Iowa and hopes other growing congregations will join the effort.

Vance warned that the disappearance of churches could have consequences beyond Sunday worship, particularly in communities which have already lost schools, businesses and other institutions.

"I think the loss of rural churches in Iowa will be profound," he said, describing churches as some of the last "human threads" holding communities together.

"It doesn't just have eternal, soul-level, spiritual ramifications," he said. "It has human-suffering ramifications for a community."

“We have to look at the problems in a community and say, 'Those are our problems. Those are our people,'” he added.

One potential model is already emerging in the small northeast Iowa community of West Union.

Former Cornerstone pastor Shane Rothlisberger moved back to his hometown with his wife and nine children in 2022 after his father became ill.

After struggling to find a church home, his family began meeting with another family each week to livestream Cornerstone's services, discuss Bible teaching, sing hymns and eat together.

“We were homesick and felt like we needed to hear from our pastors” at Cornerstone, Rothlisberger said.

Word spread and the gathering grew to around 50 people within months, before reaching 95.

Rothlisberger said the turning point came as he baptised three people on his front lawn and realised "it was time to call this what it is — a church planting.”

The resulting Acreage Church now has around 140 members, including people who had either been away from church for years or had never previously attended.

"We're just a bunch of people, with a ton of baggage, who are in need of a lot of grace that Jesus provides in abundance," Rothlisberger said.

The congregation now meets in a renovated room at a private events centre and could soon introduce a second service.

"It's just a beautiful, messy, organic thing that... is growing rapidly," he said.

Vance described Acreage Church as a "trial run" for a wider effort to establish sustainable congregations in rural communities.

"Our hope is that maybe over the next 10 to 20 years we can see more of those churches started and sustained,” he said. "The driver for us is we want people to have access to the good news of Jesus Christ."

He said rural pastors can face particular pressure as neighbouring churches disappear, leaving remaining ministers to become the "chaplain for the whole town".

"They’re absorbing all the care needed in the community,” he said.

Older congregations can also mean “they’re doing a huge number of funerals,” alongside visiting the sick and providing counselling.

"It's very hard to keep a talented pastor who can preach the Bible faithfully," Vance said.

Rothlisberger believes sharing Cornerstone's weekly Bible teaching could reduce some of that burden and allow rural pastors to devote more time to their congregations.

Vance also suggested the growth of Cornerstone and other conservative churches could partly reflect a desire for certainty amid artificial intelligence, deepfakes and misinformation.

"There's a hunger for truth," he said.

Additonal reporting from Reuters / USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect