The Church and the Conversion of Emerging Adults
One of our Conference priorities is to reach a new generation of
Christians. Our focus is upon the 18-30 age group, those who are being
called "emerging adults." If we are to reach this age group-the age
group that we have sadly neglected and therefore find absence from our
churches-we are going to have to understand them. Fortunately, a number
of new books are helpful in that regard.
A major defining characteristic of this age group is their postponement
of marriage. In just a couple of decades the average age for women to
marry moved from 20-25 years old, and then the average age rose from 22
to 27 years old. Interestingly, this change in marriage began in 1970-
about the same year that our church started losing membership and we
began losing touch with the next generation.
Studies of the emerging generation seem to agree that the ages of 18-30,
that is the threshold of adulthood, has become more complex, disjointed
and confusing than in past decades. In his book Emerging Adulthood,
Jeffrey J. Arnett (Oxford University Press, 2004) notes that young
adults today put a high premium on finding their identity in an
uncertain world. They are impressed with economic and political
instability and live their lives accordingly. They focus much more on
the self and less upon groups, and they tend to be overwhelmed by their
sense of possibilities.
This summer I also read James L. Heft's Passing on the Faith:
Transforming Traditions for the Next Generation of Jews, Christians, and
Muslims (Fordam University Press, 2006). Adults, who grew up in the
church retain very little of what the church taught them, says Heft. Our
churches have not passed on the faith to our children. (The chances that
someone who grew up in the United Methodist Church will still be United
Methodist by age 30 are something like 1-6. For Episcopalians,
Presbyterians and many others, the rate of attrition is even worse.)
Jeffrey Arnett agrees with Heft's gloomy analysis of those who happen to
have grown up in the church. Arnett says, "The most interesting and
surprising feature of emerging adults' religious beliefs is how little
relationship there is between the religious training they received
throughout childhood and the religious beliefs they hold at the time
they reach emerging adulthood.." A recent survey showed that today's
young adults attend church less, pray less, are less lik ely to believe
in authority of the Bible, more likely to identify themselves as
non-religious, and tend to be extremely suspicious of institutions and
organized religion.
Not too long ago the church could count on a return to church by young
adults when they had their first children. That appears not to be a
pattern for today's young adults. Because they are postponing marriage,
the church can expect at least a 20 year gap between young adults
leaving the church and returning. In her book, Generation Me: Why Today'
s Young American's are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled, and More
Miserable than Ever Before, Janet Twenge(Free Press, 2006) depicts this
generation of young adults as extraordinarily self-absorbed and
narcissistic. Twenge thinks that we parents made a mistake in fostering
in our children an aura of self-esteem, but did not give them realistic
assessments of how challenging the adult world would be.
Today's young adults are documented as having a great love of God, but
less commitment to a particular religious tradition. When it comes to
religion many of them are "dabblers and deferrers." I believe that this
is not only one of the most important challenges facing the church with
this age group, but also one of our most difficult challenges as United
Methodists.
Fortunately, we Wesleyans believe in conversion. We need to know more
about what young adults need to be converted from and to. We also must
set higher priorities on reaching today's young adults. Young Christians
are not a priority for us until every pastor spends as much time with
this generation as with older generations, until each congregation shows
in its staff, its budget, and its energies that it is really taking
seriously our mandate to reach this generation for Christ. With God's
help, we can.
William H. Willimon |
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