Tuesday, June 24, 2008

The Missing Generation, pt. 1

It is the nature of the Church that it is always in crisis. The current crisis for the Methodist church is that it is aging. Members are dying off at a rate higher than new members are joining. People have rightly pointed out that we need to be about the business of evanglizing, not so much to “keep the church from dying,” but because the statistics indicate that we haven’t been spreading the gospel.

So every book you pick up about church renewal mentions that we are missing a whole generation of Christians between the ages of 18 and 35. “Where are the young adults?” they ask. “What have we done wrong?” Most of these books are full of strong opinions. We haven’t evangelized. We’ve focused too much on evangelism. We aren’t missionally-focused. We’re too missionally-focused. We are not relevant to the culture. We are too relevant to the culture and not relevant to the Bible. We are too judmental. We are too soft. We preach cheap grace. We don’t preach grace enough.

There is some good theology that comes out of these books. I think their authors are sincere, and their criticisms of the church are often justified. But I have appreciated reading Robert Wuthnow’s After the Baby Boomers because Wuthnow has more than strong opinions. He has data.

It turns out that the single greatest predictor of whether someone joins a church or not is if they are married and have children. This has been the case for decades. What has happened in recent years, though, is that people get married later. The average age of marriage is now 27 or 28. The average age of having a first child is now the early 30’s. This means that the functional definition of “adulthood” has shifted. Sociologists point out that thanks to longer life spans and a later average age of marriage, someone can be called a “young adult” until they are 40.

Now, I have serious theological and philosophical problems with some of these implications. Are people who are single not adults? Are childless couples not adults? But my theoretical qualms are irrelevant. The fact is people don’t join a church until they “settle down,” and economic and demographic forces mean people settle down later, if they settle down at all. Most adults will change career directions several times before they retire. They marry later and have children later. Of course these factors affect church attendance.

So I find it a bit frustrating when churches beat themselves up about not attracting young people. This isn’t about theology. It’s about demographics.

Ten years ago, people were pointing out that mainline liberal Protestant churches were declining, but conservative Evangelical churches were not. So, they reasoned, it must have something to do with what they preach. The Evangelical gospel must be more compelling, more true, or better-marketed than the Protestant gospel.

Wuthnow points out that the discrepancy is due almost entirely to socioeconomics. Mainline Protestants tended to be better-educated and have higher incomes. Longer education and higher income correlate with a later average age of marriage. So-called Evangelical churches tended to have members with less education and less income, so their members tended to marry earlier and have more children. In recent years, though, the demographic shift has begun to affect Evangelical churches as well. Guess what? I guess “their” gospel wasn’t better than “ours.”

Of course, I don’t think that Wuthnow’s analysis means that everything is okay, and that churches should rest on their laurels. I think his research points to a broader social problem. We are increasingly isolated from authentic community. Our economic and social system discourages people from deep, life-giving relationships.

Here’s an example. In most other cultures, people are plugged into extended families of support. In fact, it is not uncommon for young adults, when they marry, to move back with their parents into a spare room or an addition on the house. If you go to the Middle East, or South America, or nearly anywhere outside of the United States, you will see this same living strategy. Even in the rural U.S., young adults often move into a trailer on property adjoining their parents’ houses. This facilitates the sharing of resources and labor. But in the U.S., the goal is to get out of your parents’ house as soon as possible. If you are thirty years old and living at home, then you have “failed to launch.” You have not moved into adulthood.

Do you see the paradox? Young adults in the United States are the most adolescent adults in the world. We drag adolescence out longer and longer, and make adulthood more and more unobtainable. As the narrator says in Fight Club, “I feel like a 30 year-old boy.”

Unless the Church is going to advocate early (possibly arranged) marriages and bans birth control, we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with a new social reality. One hundred years ago our society invented adolescence by passing child labor laws and requiring public education. Now we are inventing young adulthood for similar economic reasons. Just as the Church took a hard look at youth ministry in the 1940’s and 50’s, we will have to take a hard look at young adulthood and ask some critical questions about how we do church if we really want them to hear and live the Gospel.