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Are You Ready for the Age Wave? Understanding How the Greatest Demographic Shift in History will Affect Ministry
By chris | November 9, 2007
Recently, I became interested in the impact of the baby boom on ministry when I led a local research project in my home state of Oklahoma that revealed that nearly 70% of the unchurched (people who had not been in church for six months or more except for a funeral, wedding or holiday service) were boomers.
I was surprised to find that a person was more likely to be in a church if they were younger than if they were older where I live. That was the exact opposite of what my intuition told me. I began to investigate further why this might be the case.
Turns out (at least in my state) that if you are a young there is usually some kind of outreach-oriented activity people can participate in to draw them into visiting a church.
Kids: There are “fall carnivals” (Uh, that’s a “Halloween Party” at church but given a new name so as not to upset the home schoolers) Vacation Bible school, and other activities are always going on at church. Children’s ministry is very outreach oriented and the typical ministry identifies most of the prospects for their churches since people have to fill out visitor information when they bring their kids to participate.
Youth: Youth in our culture are very indulged by the church. Churches have concerts, retreats, camps, people bending things with their necks and busting ice with their foreheads, etc. Youth leaders are always reaching outward. Not to mention the cool rooms designed for youth to hang out in that have sports and video recreation options.
There is a misunderstanding in our state about the status of our youth. The perception is that on average they don’t go to church and they live worldly pagan lifestyles. Actually, research shows, that’s only half right. Youth in our state do live pagan worldly lifestyles but on average, they attend church at least once a week. There’s a subtle difference there. The pagan youth do go to church, but we are so busy thowing events and pies in the faces of our youth leaders to entertain them, we barely have time to disciple them in church.
Young Adults: Churches have been obsessing over what to do to reach the younger “emerging/postmodern” crowd. The 20 somethings are perceived to be burned out and not interested in church unless you build them a cool venue at the church that looks like a clothing shop in a mall and refer to iPods a lot. I love how their ministry leaders stress humility and genuineness as they stand there talking to you in their expensive brand jeans and highlighted spiky hair.
Just about every church has something cool going down for young people. Rock bands that play the same music you hear on one of the three Christian stations in my city, complete with the same rock video look on stage with lighting and image magnification. It’s the cool thing to be also because a large church in our town does it and has practically drained all the young people from the smaller churches.
Middle Age to Older Adults: What is going on down at the church? Well, we have a card game over at the Johnson’s. Hey, a group is renting a bus to go look at fall follage in Arkansas. Look a great “big hair” Bible seminar is in town, wanna go Themla? Woo, hoo!
Imagine what would happen if you have not been to church in years and you having been getting all your ideas about ethics from the mainstream media. Almost all the issues you would consider to be political have moral immplications to Christians. Church members talking about gambling, gay marriage, abortion, etc would seem to you to be taking politics to church. Politics in church would turn you off. Sometimes Sunday School and small groups run people off before they get a chance to consider the full message of the Bible. (We need to leave the GOP rhetoric at home too. But I digress.)
What can we do to be more ready to meet the biggest trend in our lifetime?
I am not interested in telling people the current outreach activities are wrong. I do wish many of them were more balanced. Please, I am not trying to disparage anything anyone is doing. (I just love to joke about it. They have their hairstylists to complain to if it bothers them.)
Also, before you say it, I know, where you live my not be like my state. I travel all over the place and I know that’s the fact. But I also know that you may be more like my state than you know. Most people have not looked into what the demographic trends are, they glance at their demographics and see what they want to see. The demographic trend all over the planet is that in industrialized places of our world, the population is greying.
Age is the issue everyone will be dealing with in the very near future.
If you are thirty years old, talking about a change that is 15-20 years away sounds like a long time from now. But Don’t Blink it will go by very fast I promise you. Also, it won’t start that long from now. Boomers are graying fast and starting in 2010, things will start shaking up!
My point is that all the outreach activity I see ignores the largest cohort of people in our state and leaves them with virtually no outreach. The result is, there’s nothing at the church that interests them. So that a majority of the people yet to be reached by the church are 50 years old or older. That’s just a fact where I live. What about where you live? Before you say, I ask that you actually check the statistics, consider doing the research first.
In the next couple of posts I want to talk about the greatest demographic shift in the history of the United States that the church is not talking about and not prepared to handle. I hope to spark someone out there to get creative and start thinking about this issue. It is the issue that will define the evangelical church in the near future. We need people in the church putting similar effort into understanding the demographic shift the way some companies are now doing.
Topics: Demographics |
November 9th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Hey Chris. A church that I consult with has launched a “boomer” targeted service. Speaking to issues that are current in the life cycle of someone on that elusive “boomer” demo. Only problem is that the boomer demo spans such a wide range that it encompasses many sub demos within the broad generalization.
Our targeted service is doing “okay” but because it is a Saturday evening service, I believe it is now really showing how effective it can be (since most people we’ve surveyed in the boomer demo, say they still prefer traditional Sunday service times).
Love to know your thoughts as your further investigate this demo and how to better reach and relate to them. My research papers show the “boomer” demo as being very skeptical of organized religion on many cases. Not hostile to Jesus but questioning “church” as an establishment.
November 9th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
I think what needs to happen is creative ministry leaders need to value ministry to boomers and start working to understand their changing needs (and segments) and begin developing relvant ministry to them. I don’t have the answers, but I think smarter people than me need to start thinking more about this issue.
Next to that is what will boomers do with current church expressions both traditional and contemporary. I think you are right, they will not be satisfied with the status quo. My personal view is we are about to see a really big wave of social entrepreneurism among boomers. There is still enough Hippie in the Boomers to motivate them to do something humanitarian. Maybe I will talk abou this in another post.
Anyway, I think new ministries and new entitities will spring up that extend the church in the other domains of society. And Christian ministry work will take on new forms outside the walls of the existing contemporary church and denominational structures. I agree about the need for research and that’s why it’s one of the services I spend most of my time providing.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:22 am
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