Two Books

I have been trying to get through some cultural analysis on the 18-35 demographic this spring and summer. I started with On the Frontier of Adulthood: Theory, Research, and Public Policy. As the title implies, it was a compilation of research and analysis that I finally had to just put down (I got through 370 out of 555). As helpful as it might have been for policy makers and politicians, it just did not provide me with much that I could use in thinking, dreaming, and planning for ministry at FBC.

Today I started After The Baby Boomers and have found something completely different. It is still summarizing research but it is written in a readable fashion. I was amazed with how it resonates with what I have discovered in ministry. I thought I would post some of the quotes from it that I found interesting, enlightening, and/or provoking.

Whatever the rubric, one thing is clear: younger adults are not only the future of American religion; they are already a very significant part of it. They are at least a sizable minority of most congregations. They are the young families who look to congregations for guidance in raising their children. They are the low-income families trying to balance tight budgets, hectic work schedules, and parenting. They are the young singles with time and energy to do volunteer work and look for companionship. They are the “unchurched” friends and co-workers struggling with questions about whether to be religiously involved at all. And because they have been overshadowed by the baby boomers, this current generation of younger adults is not very well understood, wither by religious leaders or by scholars.

The increase in life expectancy means that the midpoint of adult life for Americans age 21 and over is now reached at age 49. That figure is up from a midpoint of age 44 in 1950. Statistically, it means that younger adulthood could now be thought of as extending from age 21 through age 49.

The amazing thing about this pattern of support and socialization is that it all comes to a halt about the time a young person reaches the age of twenty-one or twenty –two. After providing significant institutional support of the developmental tasks that occurred before then, we provide almost nothing for the developmental tasks that are accomplished when people are in their twenties and thirties….It means that younger adults are having to invent their won ways of making decisions and seeking support for those decisions…I am not suggesting that we develop caretaker institutions for people in their thirties like the ones we have for teenagers. I am saying we should have a serious national conversation about the kinds of [church and non-church] institutional support young adults do need.

Congregations could be a valuable source for young adults. They could be places where young adults gravitate to talk about the difficult decisions they are facing or to meet other people of the same age. Congregations could be guiding the career decisions of younger adults or helping them think about their budgets and their personal priorities.

Bricolage is thus an apt description of the religion and spirituality of young adults. Bricolage implies the joining together of seemingly inconsistent, disparate components.

Church hopping, though, is quite different from church shopping. Going to a church one week because of visiting one’s parents in another city and a different church on another occasion with a friend is no more than participating in a ‘market’ than visiting one’s parents or friends on other occasions is. The idea that spirituality can be understood as ‘rational-choice’ behavior is similarly helpful, but limited. Tinkers undoubtedly make choices that are rational, if rationality means trying to get the job done and make the best use of the resources at one’s disposal.