At a time when two-thirds of young people stop going to church following their spiritually-active teen years, City Church San Francisco isn't using "gimmicks" or "bait-and-switch" tactics to draw the Millennial Generation.

Instead, Rev. Chuck DeGroat says the 1,700-member congregation offers authentic worship services and liturgies rooted in "the historical past, but progressive and future-oriented" too. Rev. Fred Harrell has a unique way of connecting with young people – meeting them at an existential level and addressing their intellectual questions  and "deeper heart longings," DeGroat says.

Although the church only began in 1997, it is committed to the theological heritage of the Protestant Reformation as a member church of the Reformed Church in America, a denomination with roots back to the 1600s in America. Featuring a historic liturgy, the services offer a "definite structure" with confession and a weekly Eucharist.

"I think those are the kinds of things that connect with Millennials," DeGroat says. "With a time of confession, they can reflect on their lives. And with a weekly Eucharist, they can engage in a very meaningful way - in an experiential way – in the kinds of real satisfaction that Jesus gives. As I talk to Millennials in the city, they like that. They don't come for the show, but to be engaged and to engage."

The church's success in reaching out to young Americans – many of whom are gravitating to the "ancient traditions of Christianity" - comes as a report by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life found the Millennial Generation – those ages 18 to 29 - is considerably less religious than older Americans. Fully one-in-four (25 percent) are unaffiliated with any particular religious tradition or  identify themselves as part of a Christian denomination. They describe their religion as "atheist," "agnostic" or "nothing in particular."

According to the survey, Millennials – who now outnumber Baby Boomers - are significantly more unaffiliated than members of Generation X were at a comparable point in their life cycle (20 percent) and twice as unaffiliated as Baby Boomers were as young adults (13 percent). About two-thirds of young people (68 percent) say they are members of a Christian denomination, compared with 81 percent of adults ages 30 and older. 

But Pew researcher Allison Pond says Millennials are still fairly traditional in many religious beliefs and practices.

"For example, beliefs about life after death, the existence of heaven and hell or whether miracles occur," Pond says. "In those areas, the Millennials and older generations' beliefs are still very similar."

The Pew report found the large proportion of young adults who are unaffiliated with a religion is a result, in part, of the decision by many young people to leave the religion of their upbringing without becoming involved with a new faith. In total, nearly one-in-five adults under age 30 (18 percent) say they were raised in a religion but are now unaffiliated with any particular faith.

A large reason behind this phenomena, according to Princeton University Professor Robert Wuthnow, author of "After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion," is that today's young adults are simply marrying five to seven years later than their parents. Facing a 37 percent unemployment rate and struggling to find jobs in the teeth of a recession, many are staying in college longer, living with their parents, taking longer to decide on a career and marry and settle down.

"That actually has the biggest impact on church attendance of anything you can find," Wuthnow says. "I figured that it accounted for about 6 million fewer regular church-goers than would have been the case if marriage rates hadn't changed."

The findings are similar to studies conducted by The Barna Group. A 2006 Barna study found that despite strong levels of spiritual activity during the teen years, 61 percent of twenty-somethings disengage from active participation in the Christian faith during their young adult years – and often beyond that. 

Barna President David Kinnaman says there are many reasons, including that many churches aren't providing children and teenagers with in-depth biblical teaching. Without this "depth of Scripture," youth don't get the tools they need to understand their calling and grow in their faith. Kinnaman says churches also need to do a better job of providing youth with significant relationships with adults to help them through an often difficult time in their lives. 

Although many churches and youth pastors are more aware of this problem now and are taking steps to better connect with youth, Kinnaman says they only get an hour or two a week to have an impact – compared to the more than 53 hours a week youths spend with various types of media.

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found the average amount of time 8-18 year olds spend each day with media – television, social networking, Internet, music, video games, text-messaging,  books, magazines and newspapers – has increased from 6 hours and 21 minutes  in 2004 to seven hours and 38 minutes today. And because they spend so much time "media multitasking," they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into those seven-and-a-half hours.

"The church doesn't seem to provide a lot of teaching or wisdom on how technology is both an opportunity for creating a positive impact in people's lives, but also one of the things that becomes, as the Bible describes it, an idol – something that distracts us from our work in serving God," Kinnaman says. "The three important things for churches to do are to get more spiritually healthy adults involved in the youth ministry as mentors and models, teach the Bible more deeply and help students understand the pluses and minuses of technology and how to navigate the media and cultural realities more effectively."

As a 23-year-old student at The Movement, a ministry training and discipleship program at the Dream Center in Los Angeles, Cody Cressey says he sees a connection between the increasing influence of the media and the moral decline in society.

Phil Cooke, president and creative director of Cooke Pictures and author of "The Last TV Evangelist: Why the Next Generation Couldn't Care Less About Religious Media and Why It Matters," says there is no question the media has played a significant role in the fact a large number of youth identify themselves as "atheist," "agnostic" or "nothing in particular."

"As media options have exploded including more channels, different platforms, digital media, and more, we've seen 'choice' become the new god people pay allegiance to today," Cooke says. "I was thinking this afternoon about the word 'whatever.' Millennials toss that around at the end of every sentence, and it's really come to represent 'whatever you want' is what works. 'Whatever' has really become the mantra of this generation because we've lost the ability (and certainly the nerve) to actually make a moral decision about anything anymore."

Despite the study's findings that youth are less likely to identify themselves as part of a Christian denomination, Christian Smith, a professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame, says youth often return to church once they get married and have children. Smith, co-author of "Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults," wrote the common wisdom that religiosity declines sharply during the young adult years is greatly exaggerated.

"Nothing is guaranteed and youth may return to the church at lower rates than in the past," Smith says. "But if people read the Pew report in alarmist terms – 'Oh no, this generation is particularly not religious and everything is changing' – I don't think that's an accurate reading of the numbers or the report."

Although belief in God is lower among young adults than among older adults, Millennials say they believe in God with absolute certainty at rates similar to those seen among Generation Xers a decade ago, the Pew report found. This suggests that some of the religious differences between younger and older Americans are not entirely generational, but result in part from people's tendency to place greater emphasis on religion as they age.

At the First United Methodist Church in Springfield, Illinois, Rev. Vince Rohn says his 1,400-member church has struggled to find effective ways to draw the younger generation to the church. The best tool, Rohn says, are small group ministries where young adults can build relationships with others.

"In small groups, young adults develop a sense of community that is often one of the biggest needs of folks in a highly mobile society," Rohn says. "It's also a place where people are much more comfortable accepting an invitation. If you are unfamiliar with a church, coming to a large gathering with 700 people can be a little intimidating at times."

Also, for the "always connected" generation – one that treats their "multi-tasking hand-held gadgets almost like a body part" – Rohn says it's important for churches to have an attractive, user-friendly Web site that allows people to connect with the church. Many churches now post sermons and other videos on their Web sites.

Despite the challenges facing his generation, Cressey says a large segment are returning to the revolutionary Christianity of the 1st century – "actually doing what the Bible says" and reaching out to the poor, homeless and those "no one wants to touch - just like Jesus did in the Bible."

Youth today, Cressey says, know the story of Jesus, have seen "The Passion of the Christ," but have often failed to see anything different in the lives of older Christians than in the rest of the world. But they are encouraged by those Christians who are "living right lives," helping the poor and sick, sharing the Good News and showing the world the "true love of Christ."

It's among these on-fire believers, Cressey says, that the new wave of revival will occur.

"I just see a great revival taking place across the country," Cressey says. "It’s like God is mobilizing this generation.... I know lots of people like myself are just going after God with all they have. There is no reason we can’t do the impossible, if it's God's will."

Religion Among the Millennials

Less Religiously Active Than Older Americans, But Fairly Traditional In Other Ways

Click to read full report:
http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=510

Dr. Jeffrey Arnett opened up a cultural conversation when he coined the term "emerging adulthood" and established it as a distinct life stage worthy of scholarly research

Dr. Arnett coined the term and presented a theory of emerging adulthood in a widely-cited article in American Psychologist in 2000. According to Dr. Arnett, in the past half century what most people experience during the years from age 18 to 29 has changed dramatically in industrialized societies. Instead of entering marriage and parenthood in their very early twenties, most people now postpone these transitions until at least their late twenties, and spend their late teens through their mid-twenties in self-focused exploration as they try out different possibilities in love and work. Essentially, a new developmental stage has been created between adolescence and young adulthood. Scholarly attention to this period has boomed in recent years, and it is now widely referred to among scholars as emerging adulthood.

Click to watch video:
http://vimeo.com/4951243

The Hansen Report crystallizes the insights found in Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, co-authored by sociologist Christian Smith

"What if our particular fears about 'emerging adulthood,' the period between the ages of 18 and 29, are unfounded? And what if the situation is actually worse than we imagine? The National Study of Youth and Religion provides us with a treasure trove of valuable information based on interviews with thousands of emerging American adults. Noted sociologist Christian Smith has teamed with Patricia Snell to analyze the data and publish Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, a follow up to the groundbreaking 2005 book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.

Young adults undergo intense transitions during these tumultuous years. And broader social forces have reshaped this expanding interim between adolescence and full adulthood. Emerging adults are delaying marriage, enrolling in college and graduate school in record numbers, hopping from career to career amid economic instability, and relying on financial support from their parents. Such trends have been well documented. Yet several myths about these adults’ spiritual lives persist."

Hansen goes on to outline the 5 myths Smith and Snell describe in their findings.

Myth #1: Emerging adults serve out of concern for the common good.

Myth #2: Emerging adults reject their parents’ religious influence.

Myth #3: Emerging adults behave similarly, whether seriously committed to religion or not.

Myth #4: Emerging adults have abandoned liberal Protestantism.

Myth #5: Emerging adults tend to fall away from faith in college.

Christianity Today

click here to read more about 5 myths of emerging adult religion
http://www.outofur.com/archives/2010/02/the_hansen_repo_8.html

click here to buy at Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Souls-Transition-Religious-Spiritual-Emerging/dp/0195371798

Fellow Sociologist and emerging adult researcher, Christian Smith, reviews Robert Wuthnow's After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion

An Unbooming Business

"What Boomers did in mainline Protestantism—other than to step harder on the gas pedal of the theological liberal steamroller—is somewhat less clear. But, in any case, the time has come to recognize that the big Boomer wave is passing."

"The central image that Wuthnow uses to describe twenty- and thirty-somethings, when it comes to life generally and religion specifically, is “tinkering.” They are, he says, “a generation of tinkerers.” These are a people who pragmatically piece together a jumble of disconnected and sometimes contradictory bits of belief and practice as they—supposedly autonomous individuals—see fit. Tinkering, Wuthnow argues, is a style or habit or strategy driven ultimately by the many economic and cultural uncertainties that characterize American society in recent decades. Tinkerers are resourceful and adaptable but also often live makeshift and less than fully coherent lives. Given what I know about young adults today and the adolescents that are now moving into young adulthood, I find Wuthnow's story here entirely convincing.

The most valuable contribution that sociology has to offer is its ability to help people make sense of their lives in terms of what is happening around, to, and through them. Sociology helps to reveal, through big-picture perspectives and analyses, how what are normally seen as personal experiences and troubles actually happen within larger cultural, institutional, and social contexts."

"My distinct impression, in fact, is that mainline Protestant clergy and denominational leaders were the main audience for whom Wuthnow wrote After the Boomers. From start to finish, the book warns readers that, for example, 'congregations can survive, but only if religious leaders roll up their sleeves and pay considerably more attention to young adults' and 'unless religious leaders take younger adults more seriously, the future of American religion is in doubt.'"

First Things

click here to read more
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/12/002-an-unbooming-business-7

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http://www.amazon.com/After-Baby-Boomers-Thirty-Somethings-American/dp/0691127654

Annual Conference for college and emerging adults bucks prevailing demographic trends by fostering high commitment orthodox Christianity in fresh ways

"The idea behind Next was born when Joshua Harris, still in his twenties, wanted to expose other young men and women to older pastors and theologians who had profoundly affected his life. Josh started the New Attitude conference as a way to bring thousands of younger people and dozens of faithful pastors together to transfer the gospel faithfully from one generation to the next. In 2008 New Attitude ended and now Next is born—an even more focused way of helping see the gospel transferred and received faithfully.

The focus of the conference is the younger generation: college students, singles, and young married couples. But if you are above the 18-29 year old range and have a passion to see gospel truth passed on, we welcome you as well."

http://www.thisisnext.org/2010-conference#overview

Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, issues a challenge to emerging adults in his blog post: "The Generation That Won't Grow Up"

"Looking at this from a biblical perspective, the most tragic aspect of this development is the fact that these young people are refusing to enter into the adult experience and adult responsibilities that is their Christian calling. The delay of marriage will exact an undeniable social toll in terms of delayed parenthood, even smaller families, and more self-centered parents. The experiences of marriage and raising children are important parts of learning the adult experience and finding one's way into the deep responsibilities and incalculable rewards of genuine adulthood.

As TIME explains, many of these young people are so busy buying iPods, designer clothes, and new automobiles that they will find the necessary sacrifices of marital life and parenthood to be a rude shock. So long as they are living with parents, or grouping together in "emerging adult" enclaves, they continue to live like teenagers-- only with even greater freedoms and privileges.

According to TIME, America should not linger in denial about this new social phenomenon, but should simply accept it as a new reality. That is simply not good enough for those who believe that God has something better in mind. At the same time, TIME's cover story is an important milestone that should not be missed."
AlbertMohler.com

http://www.albertmohler.com/?cat=Commentary&cdate=2005-01-24

David Brooks' New York Times 2007 opinion piece dubbed emerging adulthood as: The Odessey Years

"As the scholarly contributions to the study of emerging adulthood began to make news, David Brooks added his own commentary about this new life stage.
"Through their work, you can see the spirit of fluidity that now characterizes this stage. Young people grow up in tightly structured childhoods, Wuthnow observes, but then graduate into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering. Old success recipes don’t apply, new norms have not been established and everything seems to give way to a less permanent version of itself.

Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up. Marriage gives way to cohabitation. Church attendance gives way to spiritual longing. Newspaper reading gives way to blogging. (In 1970, 49 percent of adults in their 20s read a daily paper; now it’s at 21 percent.)

The job market is fluid. Graduating seniors don’t find corporations offering them jobs that will guide them all the way to retirement. Instead they find a vast menu of information economy options, few of which they have heard of or prepared for.

Social life is fluid. There’s been a shift in the balance of power between the genders. Thirty-six percent of female workers in their 20s now have a college degree, compared with 23 percent of male workers. Male wages have stagnated over the past decades, while female wages have risen.

This has fundamentally scrambled the courtship rituals and decreased the pressure to get married. Educated women can get many of the things they want (income, status, identity) without marriage, while they find it harder (or, if they’re working-class, next to impossible) to find a suitably accomplished mate.

The odyssey years are not about slacking off. There are intense competitive pressures as a result of the vast numbers of people chasing relatively few opportunities. Moreover, surveys show that people living through these years have highly traditional aspirations (they rate parenthood more highly than their own parents did) even as they lead improvising lives."

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/opinion/09brooks.html

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