I think a big problem facing many churches is that they have lost the “centrality” in the lives of their congregations.
Accessory to an older church was a meeting hall-dining room, a kitchen, a lounge-restroom for women and girls, small classrooms for Sunday school instruction, and importantly, things to do the rest of the week at the church.
Whenever crops would come in and be cheap, the kitchen might be used for cooking and canning, to provide food for families having a hard time financially. Otherwise groups of ladies would visit shut-ins, the elderly and incapacitated to keep sociability in their lives.
Baptisms, weddings, funerals, all would be guaranteed good attendance out of friendship and respect. This mattered.
Throughout all of it, the clergyman was kept busy.