By Vicki Brown

(UMCom) - The Rev. William Shillady spends an hour each Sunday outside New York City’s Park Avenue United Methodist Church inviting joggers, tourists and others to morning services, whether they’re in suits or shorts. But he remembers when his congregation wasn’t so welcoming.

"One particular Sunday an older member of the church asked someone who had shorts on to leave," he recalls.

The next Sunday, the congregation heard from the Bible’s book of James 2: "My brothers, believing as you do in our Lord Jesus Christ, who reigns in glory, you must never show snobbery. For instance, two visitors may enter your place of worship, one a well-dressed man with gold rings, the other a poor man in shabby clothes. Suppose you pay special attention to the well-dressed man and say to him, ‘Please take this seat,’ while to the poor man you say, ‘You can stand, or you may sit here on the floor by my footstool,’ do you not see that you are inconsistent and judge by false standards?"

Congregations increasingly are welcoming casual attire. Some say the trend reflects today’s more casual society, but others are making the change to give their congregations a more welcoming and hospitable feel. While most black congregations still maintain a formal dress code in keeping with the belief that only the best should be presented to God, some ministers are seeing younger members forget the fancy tie and jacket at home.

"It’s a part of our history, tradition and culture," says the Rev. Walter Barton of the formal dress at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in New York’s Harlem neighborhood. Nonetheless, Barton started a casual summer service in the church’s lower level after a member passed out from the heat in the sanctuary, which has no air conditioning.

"I had printed in the bulletin that casual attire is appropriate. Someone on the worship committee said, ‘But not too casual,’" he says with a laugh. Worshippers turned out in polo shirts and khaki pants but not jeans or shorts.

Some churches, particularly the so-called megachurches of the non-denominational, white evangelical movement, use informality to make a statement about who they are, says Ian Evison, director of research for the Alban Institute, an organization in Herndon, Va., working in support of congregations.

He says for a congregation to announce "`you can come, from white gloves to cutoffs,’ would be a positive ministry statement."

The Rev. Kennard Murray of Seay-Hubbard United Methodist Church, a predominately black church in Nashville, Tenn., uses casual dress to connect with young people.

"We have always brought out our best when we come to worship," says Murray, who says that tradition is rooted in Scripture. "The first of your fruits," he says.

In the West, casual dress is so much a part of church that no one really thinks about it, says the Rev. Derf Bergman of First United Methodist Church in Miles City, Mont.

"That’s just not an issue," Bergman says. Weekday attire is so casual, he would hate for the cost of clothes to keep someone from church, he says.

Affordability is a concern even at formal churches.

Shirley Wax-Copeland, a St. Mark’s member who Barton describes as "very fashionable," says she was raised to wear her best to church, but she recalls when her mother made her dresses from flour sacks. She adds that she would hate to think of someone not coming to church because they didn’t have "the right clothes."

"‘Just As I Am,’ as the song says," she notes. "If that’s all you have and you are clean, that’s the bottom line."