how times have changed!
There is no question that the position of the institutional church in American life has changed radically in the last half-century or so. Indeed, there is hardly any aspect of our common life that has not undergone profound changes. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, these changes truly are historic in scope. Author and theologian Phyllis Tickle writes about this time as a “Great Emergence,” noting that every 500 years or so the institutionalized Church undergoes radical transformation that remakes the faith. The last such time was when Martin Luther posted his Ninety Five Theses in 1517. Now is another such time. In the course of developing a faithful proposal in response to our current circumstances, it is useful to look a little more closely at some of our contemporary sociological and demographic changes and consider their impact on our lives and our work as people of faith.
A number of books and reports have been written to document what ministers, religious educators, and other religious professionals have remarked on anecdotally. The last half of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st in the United States have been marked by changes that catapulted us from the Industrial to the Digital age. Changes in demography and family structures have moved at an astonishing pace.
Here are just some of the changes noted in the literature, changes that have significant impact on our traditional religious education programs, and which carry implications for the role of church in American life into the future.[1] These are broad-brush descriptions of general social and demographic trends; there may be multiple exceptions to each general sketch, but the trendlines are clear.
from modern to postmodern
We are standing in the midst of a shift in culture and thinking from Modernism to Postmodernism. Modernism arose out of the Enlightenment and spawned an Age of Reason, of ultimate confidence in the power of science and rationality and skepticism. The source of authority in modernism is the free individual. All truth can be both known and proven. Contained within modernism is an assumption of the inevitability of human progress - defined as Western progress - and a presumption that the rest of the world inevitably strives to be like us.
Postmodernism, as a thought response, affirms the diversity of human cultures and experiences and posits that there is not one, knowable, universal Truth. Human beings exist in community; communities create culture; cultures breed stories that tell real and knowable things about people in particular places at particular moments in time. What is true and good in one community may not be so in another corner of the world.
Postmodernism opens minds and hearts to wonder, allows room for mystery, and acknowledges there will be questions our sciences and studies may never be able to answer. We are called to neither worship nor reject science as a sole source of authority, but to make use of its elucidating powers as we discern those questions and concerns that call our spirits and bodies to their service.
Unitarian Universalism is well suited to serve this paradigmatic shift. Our faith draws from many sources – Jewish, Christian and Humanist teachings; wisdom of the world’s religions; and our direct experiences of transcendent mystery and wonder. We are practiced in holding two seemingly opposing things to be true at once. If we embrace the both/and nature of our faith, we will be better positioned to serve neighbors and seekers in a postmodern world than some of our siblings in other faith traditions with more staid dogma.
influence of individualism
With roots in the consumer-oriented culture that rose following World War II, and coming of age in the so-called “me generation” of the 1970’s, there has been an increasing focus on customization, commoditization, and personalization in our lives in general. We have gotten used to being marketed to in increasingly diverse ways. Our ideas, values, and opinions are now understood to derive from our own experiences and preferences, and not necessarily or even primarily inherited from familial or community expectations.
After World War II, American men returned to work in force, and manufacturing technologies evolved rapidly. For the first time in our nation’s history, luxury items became available and affordable on a large scale and Americans were encouraged to consume in order to contribute to a thriving economy. Consider how we came to expect customization and personalization over the decades through the example of the humble telephone. In the early decades of the 20th century, if a home had a telephone it would look pretty much identical from one home to the next – the standard issue black model from good old Ma Bell. By the 1950’s and 1960’s, a lightweight version of the phone was introduced and it became possible to have multiple telephones in a single house. Not only that, each phone could even be a different color to match that room’s décor. Today, those of us who carry smartphones – roughly half of all Americans[2] - have the option of decorating its home screen with our family photos, a level of customization not imagined fifty years ago
This kind of personalized marketing has been honed to a fine point online. Search engines, email hosting services and social media platforms “optimize” our online experiences by using our own words and browsing habits to provide us with ads for our favorite beverages or our preferred political candidate, and to suggest to us new friends and people we may want to ‘follow.’ Youth and children are considered a consumer market from an early age.
Now consider how this expectation of customization and personalization extends to our religious lives. Americans who grew up in a religious tradition are increasingly comfortable rejecting elements of their doctrine that don’t align with their personal beliefs, essentially customizing their faith experience to fit their personal needs and interests. A good example of this phenomenon is reflected in recent reporting that the majority of American Catholics believe they can be good Catholics “without obeying the church hierarchy’s teaching on birth control (78%).”[3] Adults raised in a church do not feel the same loyalty to remain in that church or even within the same faith tradition as their grandparents did. Adults who come into a new church may feel no compunction about leaving the congregation after a single negative experience there, perhaps to seek another church that might ‘fit’ them better. We refer without irony to ‘church shopping,’ conflating the process of finding a home for one’s soul with seeking out one’s preferred cola, or looking for a good deal on a pair of sneakers.
In some families, children and youth are catered to not only by retailers and manufacturers, but also at home by parents who are willing to make ‘deals’ with their children about when they can skip Sunday School or quit coming to church altogether (often after Coming of Age). There are numerous pressures on families, some described below, that may lead them to think of church as one more optional extracurricular activity among others to choose from and make deals around. Children and youth are under a lot of pressure and have highly scheduled lives. Many may be quite effective in arguing that their needs are better served through time chilling with friends, gaming, or watching YouTube videos. Certainly the entertainment industry and its marketers make the newest video game or new series on Netflix look a lot more appealing than a morning at church!
These same parents would likely not make deals about skipping their Monday-Friday schools, or allow their children to quit seeing the dentist when they turn 13, but we do not have a cultural ethos that teaches us it is as important a responsibility to tend to our children’s spiritual health as it is their medical, dental and emotional health. As a general rule, we should ask if we have done enough to explicitly lift up this communal responsibility or to equip young parents with the language and resources to feel capable of caring for the spiritual well being of their families. The challenge in our work is to resist the popular view of church as commodity and lift up church as community instead.
choice over chance
A century ago, it was largely a foregone conclusion that a child born into one faith community would remain a member throughout their whole lives. The teachings and values of that faith community would define the choices they made, even to the extent of choosing a spouse. It was a given that the faith community would continue to play a prominent role over their lifetime, and likely that their children would grow up worshipping in the same congregation as their grandparents. Today, Americans are much more transient and mobile. For many it is simply not logistically possible to remain in the church one grew up in. People are also increasingly comfortable shopping for a religious home that most closely suits their individual needs instead of remaining in the church of their childhood. Alternatively, many people feel increasingly comfortable cobbling together their spiritual lives with elements of various traditions that speak to them personally, rather than choose to align with any one faith tradition or congregation. They may attend Catholic Mass on Christmas and Easter, resonate deeply with the Passover story, and study Buddhist meditation year-round.
Once again, as a faith tradition that honors the sacred center of other world religions, Unitarian Universalists may be uniquely poised to serve this cultural shift. The challenge, however, is that even seekers who find their way to us may still have no interest in being identified as a Unitarian Universalist or in being part of a congregation – even a congregation which embraces diverse theological outlooks. And those who may decide to align themselves with a Unitarian Universalist congregation may have no lived experience of participating in congregational life. The invitation is for us to create accessible entry points and intentionally equip our laity for spiritual leadership. The Rev. Peter Morales opened up an important conversation with his white paper, Congregations and Beyond[4] inviting new thinking and attention to serving seekers beyond those who ‘belong’ to congregations in the traditional sense. Our challenge and our invitation for the ministry of faith formation is to draw an expansive circle of us, and develop faith formation resources, events and practices to meet people where they are – inside our church buildings and beyond their walls.
family structure: end of the nuclear age
According to the US government’s 2010 Census, the iconic American nuclear family comprised of a married mother and father and their children accounted for 20.2 % of all American households, down from 23.5% in 2000, and stunningly down from 45% in 1960.[5] In little more than a half century there has been a radical diversification of family structures.
A number of factors contributed to this diversification. We have seen an increase in single-parent families through both choice and divorce, which has become less stigmatized and legally easier to obtain. Technology has made it possible for more single individuals to become parents through in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, and medical advances make pregnancy possible much later in life. Globalization has contributed to a dramatic increase in cross-cultural adoptions. There are more couples choosing to raise children together without marrying at all, and there are more same-gender couples choosing parenthood and where available choosing marriage as well. Overall, adults are waiting to begin families until later than their parents, and much later than their grandparents did.
These changes contribute to a decline in family religious socialization. Traditionally, marriage and parenthood are milestone moments that draw young adults back into active participation in their church. Delaying marriage and parenthood delays the return to the church and weakens any lingering connections to the faith tradition they grew up with. At the same time there has been a radical increase in the acceptance of interfaith marriages, leading to a decline in participation in some faith traditions when one partner of the couple leaves the faith of their childhood and adopts that of their spouse. In other cases, the couple may choose a new faith tradition together, or may choose to remain unchurched. Unitarian Universalism, with its liberal theology and its affirmation of the sacred center of the world’s diverse faith traditions, is in theory well suited to serve interfaith families.
our networked world
Humans have always created social networks. Through the use of social media, we have the ability to build expansive networks that cross all kinds of boundaries. These networks can be leveraged in ways that were not possible before the advent of these technologies. Networks of families, friends and colleagues can instantly share joys and sorrows. Crowdfunding sites can raise thousands of dollars in a matter of days or weeks with the support and promotion of friends, and friends of friends.
Christian author and children’s pastor David Csisnos sees implications for the way churches approach faith formation by recognizing that “formation is no longer about forming an individual person, but forming a member of a community that will, in turn, influence the wider world. In the postmodern world, all people have the power to form one another’s faith.”[6] This is also good news for Unitarian Universalist religious leaders. We have long affirmed each person’s free and responsible search for truth and meaning. A challenge for us moving into the future will be to create safe spaces and structured opportunities for seekers to come together and share the search by leveraging the networks people already belong to, and nurturing new networks both among parishioners and between congregations. As much as individuals will trust in their own experience of wonder in the world, they will also seek a community in which to make meaning, to co-create the stories that are carried out into the world, and to help transmit the stories of who we are as a people of faith into the future.
rise of the ‘nones’
The Pew Forum on Religion and Family Life[7] reports a steady rise in the number of “Nones,” that is, Americans who report no religious affiliation in its annual survey. In 1972, those reporting no religious affiliation accounted for 7% of all surveyed. In 2010, in the span of just over a single generation, that number had more than doubled to 18%. There has been a commensurate decline in the number of Americans identifying with Protestantism (which would include Unitarian Universalism) from 62% of Americans surveyed in 1972 to 51% in 2010. Many people increasingly define themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” For some, this represents a rejection of sectarianism and what they see as the evils that have been done in the world through religious fundamentalism. For some this is a reflection of the increase in religious pluralism and the invitation to ‘try out’ different houses of worship and faith practices. Some of the “nones” piece together a spiritual life that draws on multiple traditions and practices and some of the “nones” are content to live without explicit spiritual beliefs and practices. As a faith tradition that does not require a belief in God or ascription to any creed, Unitarian Universalism again seems well positioned to serve the growing number of “nones.” But another stark statistic from the Pew Forum makes it unlikely that we should expect significant growth from this quarter. According to its report, among those surveyed (summer 2012) who identify their religion as “nothing in particular,” only 10% say they are actively looking for a religion that would be right for them.
If we believe that Unitarian Universalism has a saving message and a vital mission in the 21st century and beyond, our challenge in response to the growing number of “nones” is to magnify our footprint in the world, to raise our visibility in our communities, to move beyond our congregational walls to meet people where they are, because the “nones” are overwhelmingly not going to come looking for us. Encouraging our current members and religious professionals to adopt a more evangelical relationship to our faith is one way to raise the profile of Unitarian Universalism in the tens of thousands of networks that our members and friends already belong to. Some may argue that evangelism is inherently contrary to our Unitarian Universalist commitment to respect other faith traditions and the religious choices that our friends, families and colleagues freely make, but I contend that this is a both/and proposition, and not an either/or. Sharing the good news of our own faith tradition, and how it guides us in living lives of meaning, and supports us through challenges is quite different from trying to persuade people to forgo their own beliefs and adopt ours as the only road to salvation. We have been careful to not disparage the spiritual paths of others; sometimes so careful that we feel shy or embarrassed to even talk about faith in public. We have long been encouraged to develop our “elevator speeches” – brief explanations of Unitarian Universalism that could be shared over the course of an elevator trip. In an era when many are questioning the very purpose of religion and with the loudest public voices of faith tending toward extremism, fundamentalism and exclusivity, we have a unique opportunity and an obligation to lift up our truth that religion can be and is a source of good and comfort in a broken world.
Nurturing faithful and life-affirming partnerships with other houses of worship, non-profit agencies, arts organizations, or government entities in our local communities will be another way to bring our churches and our faith to the public eye by meeting our neighbors in the public square. Already, rich partnerships are being explored denominationally between Unitarian Universalists and our brethren in the United Church of Christ. Our co-authored Our Whole Lives curricula stand as a tribute to the great gifts we bring to the world beyond our congregational walls when we do not fear to live our values out loud in public.
finding meaning in a ridiculously stimulative world
Author and education/creativity expert Sir Kenneth Robinson has noted that we are living in the most richly stimulative time in human history. Our children “are being besieged with information and calls for their attention from every platform – computers, from iPhones, from [advertisements], from hundreds of television channels.”[8] He further notes that the current system of public education “was conceived in the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment and in the economic circumstances of the Industrial Revolution.” The Sunday School model of most Protestant churches, including most Unitarian Universalist congregations, arose from similar circumstances. Meanwhile, the rest of our culture has shifted radically and rapidly into the Information Age through the Digital Revolution. Information is ubiquitous and democratized. If previous generations worried that the telephone would be the death knell of polite conversation, today’s parents bemoan texting, tweeting, and instant messaging with equal fervor. Parents who were chided as youth for watching television or listening to Walkmans while doing homework, now try to limit the screen time of children and youth who may have television, radio, three conversations with friends and homework happening simultaneously on the same laptop computer.
The late 20th and early 21st centuries have also seen the rise in childhood diagnoses, in particular of ADHD, Asperger’s Syndrome, and other Autism spectrum disorders. Anecdotally, religious educators have noted dramatic increases in numbers of students with one or another of these diagnoses, as well as an increase in the number of students with stress and anxiety related disorders, and of children and youth with multiple diagnoses.
Another related phenomenon might be called the Overscheduled Child Syndrome. Childhood play once occurred spontaneously and organically in homes and neighborhoods populated by larger families, many of which had mothers at home who kept watchful eyes on all. As more women entered the paid workforce, and as family sizes shrank, these organic opportunities gave way to scheduled ‘play dates.’ At the same time, the American economy increasingly assumes a college diploma for even entry-level positions, leading to increased competition for acceptance into colleges. Families have increased the expectations that their children and teens will participate in extra-curricular activities, and everything from Little League and soccer practices to play rehearsals; from regattas to piano recitals are routinely scheduled throughout the week. In the years since Title IX passed in 1972, more and more girls are participating in organized sports, which has led to even greater demand on limited municipal recreational resources. Communities have felt the pressure and responded to the need by expanding practice and game times to every day of the week. In an increasingly secular country, Sunday mornings are no longer held as a universally sacred time, and extracurricular activities are regularly scheduled in conflict with our traditional Sunday School time. Religious professionals have noted the more sporadic attendance of families on Sunday mornings because of this, and because of one-week-on/one-week-off shared custody arrangements, among other scheduling demands on our families.
Religious professionals have also reported a sharp decrease in the number of parents who are willing - or able - to participate as volunteers in their congregation’s Religious Education or Sunday School programs. Religious educators running cooperative Sunday School models are increasingly granting exemptions to the ‘mandatory volunteer’ rule. Among the most common reasons for granting exemptions are overextended and highly stressed parents who may –
· be single parents holding multiple jobs, or
· have one or more child(ren) with special challenges, or
· be actively caring for aging and ailing parents in addition to their young children.
The needs of families coming through our doors and the scheduling pressures upon them are so much greater than they were even a single generation ago. We have made some changes around the edges of our traditional Sunday School model over the years. Some congregations are returning to a “one-room schoolhouse” multi-age model of religious education. Some use Spirit Play[9] which is more interactive than some traditional curricula. The UUA has published a series of curricula, Tapestry of Faith,[10] that is available online for free. This allows parents as well as teachers and religious professionals to have access to all the lessons. Theoretically, at least, students could access lessons shared on the days they could not attend Sunday School in person.
These changes, adjustments and improvements have been good and valuable steps, but many of our congregants continue to expect that the most significant faith formation their children and youth receive will occur in an hour or two on Sunday mornings, through religious education classes.
sustainability
Anecdotally, a number of religious professionals are reporting Sunday School programs that are struggling under their own weight. In many churches, Religious Education programs are the largest single area of ministry when measured by number of volunteers and participants. Between teaching teams for every grade level, youth group advisors, coming of age mentors, and Sunday morning nursery staff, as well as volunteers for annual events like a holiday pageant or teacher recognition day, or those RE programs which offer adult educational activities, the Religious Education program engages a significant percent of adult congregants. As families and the demands on them have changed, our Sunday School models remain heavily volunteer dependent and some are finding that model increasingly unsustainable.
In the world of secular education, the same kinds of shifts and pressures on families and students are being noticed, and in many arenas, shifts in approach and pedagogy are being experimented with. Respected college professors such as Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur are giving up lecturing in favor of peer instruction.[11] Esteemed institutions like Harvard, Princeton and MIT are offering a number of their courses online for free.[12] And in public schools, many districts are experimenting with technology like smart boards and tablets. Still others are experimenting in more low-tech ways, such as replacing desks and chairs with tables and balance balls.[13] Although it is still too early to gauge the efficacy of MOOC’s (Massive Online Open Courses) or other recent innovations, these feel like well-discerned experiments in response to specifically identified social and demographic trends from which we might be able to take lessons.
inheriting the unchurched
Many of our churches’ newest members, and current Religious Education students, have come to us after years (or even lifetimes) of not belonging to any house of worship. As one UUA district staff member put it, “they don't have any sense of how we do things around here - a blessing in that they aren't held captive to any particular model, but a curse because they don't necessarily understand church or (congregational) commitment.” And those who come to us from other faith traditions do not necessarily understand how a covenantal tradition differs from a creedal one. Our curricula and Religious Education ministries have been largely created and supported with a goal of helping children and youth grow into Unitarian Universalist adults. At the same time, we know that an excellent indicator of youth and young adult religiosity is the consistent religious practice of their parents. A sizable number of our current RE students are not coming to us from homes with a history of consistent Unitarian Universalist religious practice.
Still, rather than focusing our faith formation efforts on building adult and family Unitarian Universalist identity and faith formation, we focus instead on religious education programming that teaches children curricular content in traditional Sunday School classes that meet a maximum of 30 – 40 times per year. Actually, many religious educators would put the maximum number of Sunday School classes closer to 25-30, and that presupposes perfect attendance, which we know is extremely challenging for today’s families. When you factor in absences for illness and other family or team obligations, one religious educator routinely tells parents that he has about one full day a year (24 hours) to impact their children’s spiritual development.
The most consistent example of congregational adult faith formation tends to center on Sunday morning worship. A small percentage of our congregants avail themselves of Adult Education classes (in the congregations that offer them) on topics that are already of interest to them. A larger number of congregants have engaged in recent years in Small Group Ministries, a very successful model of spiritual growth and deepening which also builds community and strengthens congregational and associational identity. The model has been adapted for use with children and youth as well.[14]
While some congregations hold new member classes for adults, we have no denominational requirements of membership. Most of the explicit Adult Faith Formation opportunities favor a traditional teach/learn paradigm, and privilege academic learning styles and preferences. By and large, we have not treated the faith formation of parents and other adults with the same priority as the faith formation of children and youth. Increasing the diversity of opportunities and providing easy access points and multiple modalities for a range of learning styles may contribute to a culture change in our congregations, wherein Unitarian Universalists take it as a given that our faith calls each of us to be engaged in our own spiritual development, no matter what our age, how much information we know, or how many classes we have already taken. The journey does not end at high school graduation, or at the end of the membership journey class, just as our faith doesn’t stop when the chalice is extinguished at the end of Sunday morning worship. Unitarian Universalists, no less than any other people of faith, yearn for deep connection and community throughout our lives.
Many of us strive to be held to account for living good lives and serving the cause of Justice in some small way every day. Others of us feel the need to return to our spirit’s home in times of especial joy or challenge. When we encourage one another to live a Full Week Faith, our spiritual connections deepen with regular practice and it becomes a core marker of our identity and orientation in the world, as opposed to merely a title we don on Sunday mornings with our church clothes.
growing unitarian universalists
When I make the assertion that the goal of religious education is forming the current and future generations of Unitarian Universalists, I am aware that I am making some assumptions. It is my strong assertion that this is deeply in the core of our work as religious professionals, and that is as it ought to be. However, I am also aware that this may be not be a shared assumption among our laity. One religious educator conveyed a heartbreaking conversation with a parent who did not want the congregation’s RE program to “make her children think they were Unitarian Universalists.” She wanted her children to be free to make that decision themselves when they grew up. It struck me as a profound distortion of our covenant to support the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Yes, we value, promote, and affirm our children’s rights – and the rights of all – to faithfully and freely engage in the spiritual search for what is right and true. But I want our children to know that by that very act, they are part of our religious community of seekers. This very act is part of how we know ourselves to be Unitarian Universalists. I want them to know we are their community and we have promised to be their spirit’s home. And I want them to know they do not have to wait until they grow up to know themselves to be part of our Unitarian Universalist faith community.
I have heard similar heartbreaking stories from other religious educators, stories that sadly betray what is almost a fear of indoctrination (for lack a of a better word) from some of our members. Perhaps it is connected to the generalized secularization of American public life. Perhaps it is related to some parents’ painful experiences of strict faith communities in their own childhoods. Whatever the reasons, there seems to be a reluctance on the part of some parents to see themselves as caretakers of their children’s healthy spirits, in addition to their healthy minds and bodies. This is part of a culture much larger than our own associational or congregational cultures. We will not single-handedly change it. We can, however, focus more explicitly and intentionally on including parents and extended families in our faith formation ministries – not merely as volunteer teachers, but as recipients of faith formation ministry themselves. We have a responsibility to provide resources and mentoring to equip parents to truly embrace their role as their child’s first and most consistent religious educator, and caretakers of their children’s minds, bodies and souls. To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, if we want a vibrant Unitarian Universalism for the next generation, we shall have to begin with the parents.
generational theory
In 1992, Neil Howe and William Strauss published a definitive work, Generations: the History of America’s Future, 1584-2069, in which they described generational patterns in American society and from which they predict how society may be shaped in the 21st century.[15] The work has been widely digested and applied to congregational life. We are currently in a moment of transition between generational leadership in many areas of our communal lives. We are witnessing the waning of the Baby Boomer generation, whose members are reaching the age of retirement at a rate of 10,000 individuals each day, and the ascension of the Millennial Generation, whose members are reaching the age of majority at roughly the same pace. Members of Gen X and Millennials are on the whole more fluent and comfortable in the emerging digital landscape than their Boomer and Silent Generation elders, even though the clear majority of our elders are adopting cell phone and internet technologies as well. Our congregations remain intentionally multi-generational, and yet our institutional structures maintain models created by the Silent Generation, and struggle to find ways to invite Millennials or even Gen X-ers into congregational leadership. Briefly, drawing from the work of UUA field staff Kimberly Paquette and Renee Ruchotzke, the following are broad descriptions of the generations likely to be represented in our pews.
GENERATION NAME [16]
Silent Generation
(archetype: Adaptive/Artist)
1925-1942
This generation was generally overshadowed by their predecessors (the GI Generation) and their successors (the Boomers) and seeks tolerance, inclusivity, and a sense of fairness from congregations. They’re builders of institutions and fiercely loyal to them. They are consistent financial stewards. Growing up in troubled times, they believe in the ethic of personal sacrifice. They value being wise elders and the institutional memory of their churches. As this generation ages and steps down from leadership, they would appreciate recognition of their contributions.
Baby Boomers
(archetype: Idealist / Prophet)
1943 - 1961
This generation loves big ideas and believes in the power of individuals to create change. Growing up in peace and prosperity, they had freedom in their youth and young adulthood to pursue individual dreams. The majority of Boomers today are living in times of major personal transition, either becoming empty nesters or entering retirement. They are looking for a sense of purpose and willing to take leadership to advance big ideas in service of grand ideals. They would be happy to inspire and mentor the next generation of dreamers and doers.
Gen-X
(archetype: Reactive/Nomad)
1962 - 1981
This generation seeks practical solutions to big picture problems. The cohort is about half the size of the Baby Boomers on the one side and the Millennials on the other. They were the first of the “latchkey” children, coming home to empty houses while their parents were at work. Left to fend for themselves in some ways, they are realists and pragmatists. They also highly prize diversity in all areas, from food to friendships, to worship styles.
Millennials
(archetype: Civic/Hero)
1982 - 2000
Millenials are not ‘joiners’ in the traditional sense. They are not joining social clubs or community institutions in any significant numbers. In terms of congregational stewardship, it is noted that the loss of one Silent in a congregation requires the addition of 15 Millennials to make up the same level of financial support over a lifetime.[17] They are coming into their own as a societal force and seek encouragement and guidance of older generations as they ascend to leadership. They are more likely to create their own spaces in church (i.e., beginning young adult social groups) than to join established boards and committees.
Homeland or
i-generation
(archetype: Adaptive/Artist)
2001 -
Although they spend more time online than other generations, they value connectedness, intimacy and authenticity. They are optimistic, energetic, and driven by their passions. They will be vigorous builders of new institutions – virtual, physical and hybrid – that will shape the rest of the century. They are more likely to commit to congregations that recognize that they have gifts to bring, and that support them in developing their skills and talents in service to the world.
Churches are one of the last places that are multigenerational. Today, we may have as many as 5 generations worshiping together. In order to intentionally support the faith formation needs of all of our people, we need to attend to all of these generational differences when planning holistic faith formation ministries.
in summary
There are a number of other important signifiers of dramatic change in the last 50-100 years that could be documented here and analyzed for their impacts on faith formation ministry and other areas of congregational life. Suffice it to say that we find ourselves presented with stark choices. We are in that space Dr. Viktor Frankl wrote of, that space between stimulus and response, inviting the thoughtful use of our freedom and power. We can wait and watch to see what comes next, or we can engage the challenges and changes so that we decide with intention how we will faithfully respond.
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[1]. John Roberto, Faith Formation 2020 (Naugatuck: LifelongFaith Associates, 2010); Rev. Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi, Foundations, Findings, and Futures: Christian Faith Formation and Education in the United Church of Christ (United Church of Christ, 2012), http://uccfiles.com/pdf/UCCChristianFaithFormationandEducationReport.pdf; and from anecdotal conversations with Unitarian Universalist religious professionals.
[2]. Ingrid Lunden, “Nielsen: Smartphones Used By 50.4% Of U.S. Consumers, Android 48.5% Of Them,” Tech Crunch, Mat 7, 2012. http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/07/nielsen-smartphones-used-by-50-4-of-u-s-consumers-android-48-5-of-them/.
[3]. Michele Dillon, “What is Core to American Catholics in 2011,” National Catholic Reporter, October 24, 2011, http://ncronline.org/news/catholics-america/what-core-american-catholics-2011.
[4]. “Congregations And Beyond,” Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, April 27, 2013, http://www.uua.org/uuagovernance/officers/president/morales/192145.shtml/.
[5]. Households and Families 2010, 2010 Census Briefs, Lofquist, Lugaila, O’Connell, and Feliz, issued April 2012, United States Census Bureau.
[6]. David M. Csinos, “Questioning the Right Answers: Faith Formation in the Postmodern Matrix,” in Shaped by God: Twelve Essentials for Nurturing Faith in Children, Youth, and Adults, ed. Robert J. Keeley (Grand Rapids: Faith Alive Christian Resources, 2010), 160.
[7]. “Nones on the Rise,” The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, October 9, 2012, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/.
[8]. Sir Ken Robinson “Changing Education Paradigms” (video), October 14, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zDZFcDGpL4U.
[9]. Spirit Play is a Unitarian Universalist Adaptation of Jerome Berryman's Godly Play, based on Montessori principles, developed by Nita Penfold, D. Min., Rev. Ralph Roberts, and Beverly Leute Bruce.
[10]. “Tapestry of Faith,” Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, September 16, 2013, http://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/.
[11]. Emily Hanford, “Rethinking the Way College Students Are Taught,” American Radio Works, http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/rethinking-teaching.html.
[12]. The first online course offered in the spring semester of 2012 by MIT on Circuits and Electronics drew some 120,000 online students. Tamar Lewin, “Harvard and M.I.T. Team up to Offer Free Online Courses,” The New York Times, May 2, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/education/harvard-and-mit-team-up-to-offer-free-online-courses.html?_r=0.
[13]. Kathy Matheson, “Teachers Ditch Student Desk Chairs for Yoga Balls,” Yahoo! News, February 20, 2013, http://news.yahoo.com/teachers-ditch-student-desk-chairs-152403408.html.
[14]. Gail Forsyth-Vail, “Adapting Small Group Ministry for Children: An Implementation Plan with Sample Sessions,” Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, http://www.uua.org/documents/mpl/adapt_sgm_children.pdf.
[15]. Neil Howe and William Strauss, Generations: the History of America’s Future, 1584-2069 (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991).
[16]. Different theorists may place the generation breaks in different years, give or take a few years on either end. These dates are meant to be merely illustrative and not definitive.
[17]. John Roberto, “Faith Formation 2020” (workshop, 2012).
There is no question that the position of the institutional church in American life has changed radically in the last half-century or so. Indeed, there is hardly any aspect of our common life that has not undergone profound changes. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, these changes truly are historic in scope. Author and theologian Phyllis Tickle writes about this time as a “Great Emergence,” noting that every 500 years or so the institutionalized Church undergoes radical transformation that remakes the faith. The last such time was when Martin Luther posted his Ninety Five Theses in 1517. Now is another such time. In the course of developing a faithful proposal in response to our current circumstances, it is useful to look a little more closely at some of our contemporary sociological and demographic changes and consider their impact on our lives and our work as people of faith.
A number of books and reports have been written to document what ministers, religious educators, and other religious professionals have remarked on anecdotally. The last half of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st in the United States have been marked by changes that catapulted us from the Industrial to the Digital age. Changes in demography and family structures have moved at an astonishing pace.
Here are just some of the changes noted in the literature, changes that have significant impact on our traditional religious education programs, and which carry implications for the role of church in American life into the future.[1] These are broad-brush descriptions of general social and demographic trends; there may be multiple exceptions to each general sketch, but the trendlines are clear.
from modern to postmodern
We are standing in the midst of a shift in culture and thinking from Modernism to Postmodernism. Modernism arose out of the Enlightenment and spawned an Age of Reason, of ultimate confidence in the power of science and rationality and skepticism. The source of authority in modernism is the free individual. All truth can be both known and proven. Contained within modernism is an assumption of the inevitability of human progress - defined as Western progress - and a presumption that the rest of the world inevitably strives to be like us.
Postmodernism, as a thought response, affirms the diversity of human cultures and experiences and posits that there is not one, knowable, universal Truth. Human beings exist in community; communities create culture; cultures breed stories that tell real and knowable things about people in particular places at particular moments in time. What is true and good in one community may not be so in another corner of the world.
Postmodernism opens minds and hearts to wonder, allows room for mystery, and acknowledges there will be questions our sciences and studies may never be able to answer. We are called to neither worship nor reject science as a sole source of authority, but to make use of its elucidating powers as we discern those questions and concerns that call our spirits and bodies to their service.
Unitarian Universalism is well suited to serve this paradigmatic shift. Our faith draws from many sources – Jewish, Christian and Humanist teachings; wisdom of the world’s religions; and our direct experiences of transcendent mystery and wonder. We are practiced in holding two seemingly opposing things to be true at once. If we embrace the both/and nature of our faith, we will be better positioned to serve neighbors and seekers in a postmodern world than some of our siblings in other faith traditions with more staid dogma.
influence of individualism
With roots in the consumer-oriented culture that rose following World War II, and coming of age in the so-called “me generation” of the 1970’s, there has been an increasing focus on customization, commoditization, and personalization in our lives in general. We have gotten used to being marketed to in increasingly diverse ways. Our ideas, values, and opinions are now understood to derive from our own experiences and preferences, and not necessarily or even primarily inherited from familial or community expectations.
After World War II, American men returned to work in force, and manufacturing technologies evolved rapidly. For the first time in our nation’s history, luxury items became available and affordable on a large scale and Americans were encouraged to consume in order to contribute to a thriving economy. Consider how we came to expect customization and personalization over the decades through the example of the humble telephone. In the early decades of the 20th century, if a home had a telephone it would look pretty much identical from one home to the next – the standard issue black model from good old Ma Bell. By the 1950’s and 1960’s, a lightweight version of the phone was introduced and it became possible to have multiple telephones in a single house. Not only that, each phone could even be a different color to match that room’s décor. Today, those of us who carry smartphones – roughly half of all Americans[2] - have the option of decorating its home screen with our family photos, a level of customization not imagined fifty years ago
This kind of personalized marketing has been honed to a fine point online. Search engines, email hosting services and social media platforms “optimize” our online experiences by using our own words and browsing habits to provide us with ads for our favorite beverages or our preferred political candidate, and to suggest to us new friends and people we may want to ‘follow.’ Youth and children are considered a consumer market from an early age.
Now consider how this expectation of customization and personalization extends to our religious lives. Americans who grew up in a religious tradition are increasingly comfortable rejecting elements of their doctrine that don’t align with their personal beliefs, essentially customizing their faith experience to fit their personal needs and interests. A good example of this phenomenon is reflected in recent reporting that the majority of American Catholics believe they can be good Catholics “without obeying the church hierarchy’s teaching on birth control (78%).”[3] Adults raised in a church do not feel the same loyalty to remain in that church or even within the same faith tradition as their grandparents did. Adults who come into a new church may feel no compunction about leaving the congregation after a single negative experience there, perhaps to seek another church that might ‘fit’ them better. We refer without irony to ‘church shopping,’ conflating the process of finding a home for one’s soul with seeking out one’s preferred cola, or looking for a good deal on a pair of sneakers.
In some families, children and youth are catered to not only by retailers and manufacturers, but also at home by parents who are willing to make ‘deals’ with their children about when they can skip Sunday School or quit coming to church altogether (often after Coming of Age). There are numerous pressures on families, some described below, that may lead them to think of church as one more optional extracurricular activity among others to choose from and make deals around. Children and youth are under a lot of pressure and have highly scheduled lives. Many may be quite effective in arguing that their needs are better served through time chilling with friends, gaming, or watching YouTube videos. Certainly the entertainment industry and its marketers make the newest video game or new series on Netflix look a lot more appealing than a morning at church!
These same parents would likely not make deals about skipping their Monday-Friday schools, or allow their children to quit seeing the dentist when they turn 13, but we do not have a cultural ethos that teaches us it is as important a responsibility to tend to our children’s spiritual health as it is their medical, dental and emotional health. As a general rule, we should ask if we have done enough to explicitly lift up this communal responsibility or to equip young parents with the language and resources to feel capable of caring for the spiritual well being of their families. The challenge in our work is to resist the popular view of church as commodity and lift up church as community instead.
choice over chance
A century ago, it was largely a foregone conclusion that a child born into one faith community would remain a member throughout their whole lives. The teachings and values of that faith community would define the choices they made, even to the extent of choosing a spouse. It was a given that the faith community would continue to play a prominent role over their lifetime, and likely that their children would grow up worshipping in the same congregation as their grandparents. Today, Americans are much more transient and mobile. For many it is simply not logistically possible to remain in the church one grew up in. People are also increasingly comfortable shopping for a religious home that most closely suits their individual needs instead of remaining in the church of their childhood. Alternatively, many people feel increasingly comfortable cobbling together their spiritual lives with elements of various traditions that speak to them personally, rather than choose to align with any one faith tradition or congregation. They may attend Catholic Mass on Christmas and Easter, resonate deeply with the Passover story, and study Buddhist meditation year-round.
Once again, as a faith tradition that honors the sacred center of other world religions, Unitarian Universalists may be uniquely poised to serve this cultural shift. The challenge, however, is that even seekers who find their way to us may still have no interest in being identified as a Unitarian Universalist or in being part of a congregation – even a congregation which embraces diverse theological outlooks. And those who may decide to align themselves with a Unitarian Universalist congregation may have no lived experience of participating in congregational life. The invitation is for us to create accessible entry points and intentionally equip our laity for spiritual leadership. The Rev. Peter Morales opened up an important conversation with his white paper, Congregations and Beyond[4] inviting new thinking and attention to serving seekers beyond those who ‘belong’ to congregations in the traditional sense. Our challenge and our invitation for the ministry of faith formation is to draw an expansive circle of us, and develop faith formation resources, events and practices to meet people where they are – inside our church buildings and beyond their walls.
family structure: end of the nuclear age
According to the US government’s 2010 Census, the iconic American nuclear family comprised of a married mother and father and their children accounted for 20.2 % of all American households, down from 23.5% in 2000, and stunningly down from 45% in 1960.[5] In little more than a half century there has been a radical diversification of family structures.
A number of factors contributed to this diversification. We have seen an increase in single-parent families through both choice and divorce, which has become less stigmatized and legally easier to obtain. Technology has made it possible for more single individuals to become parents through in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, and medical advances make pregnancy possible much later in life. Globalization has contributed to a dramatic increase in cross-cultural adoptions. There are more couples choosing to raise children together without marrying at all, and there are more same-gender couples choosing parenthood and where available choosing marriage as well. Overall, adults are waiting to begin families until later than their parents, and much later than their grandparents did.
These changes contribute to a decline in family religious socialization. Traditionally, marriage and parenthood are milestone moments that draw young adults back into active participation in their church. Delaying marriage and parenthood delays the return to the church and weakens any lingering connections to the faith tradition they grew up with. At the same time there has been a radical increase in the acceptance of interfaith marriages, leading to a decline in participation in some faith traditions when one partner of the couple leaves the faith of their childhood and adopts that of their spouse. In other cases, the couple may choose a new faith tradition together, or may choose to remain unchurched. Unitarian Universalism, with its liberal theology and its affirmation of the sacred center of the world’s diverse faith traditions, is in theory well suited to serve interfaith families.
our networked world
Humans have always created social networks. Through the use of social media, we have the ability to build expansive networks that cross all kinds of boundaries. These networks can be leveraged in ways that were not possible before the advent of these technologies. Networks of families, friends and colleagues can instantly share joys and sorrows. Crowdfunding sites can raise thousands of dollars in a matter of days or weeks with the support and promotion of friends, and friends of friends.
Christian author and children’s pastor David Csisnos sees implications for the way churches approach faith formation by recognizing that “formation is no longer about forming an individual person, but forming a member of a community that will, in turn, influence the wider world. In the postmodern world, all people have the power to form one another’s faith.”[6] This is also good news for Unitarian Universalist religious leaders. We have long affirmed each person’s free and responsible search for truth and meaning. A challenge for us moving into the future will be to create safe spaces and structured opportunities for seekers to come together and share the search by leveraging the networks people already belong to, and nurturing new networks both among parishioners and between congregations. As much as individuals will trust in their own experience of wonder in the world, they will also seek a community in which to make meaning, to co-create the stories that are carried out into the world, and to help transmit the stories of who we are as a people of faith into the future.
rise of the ‘nones’
The Pew Forum on Religion and Family Life[7] reports a steady rise in the number of “Nones,” that is, Americans who report no religious affiliation in its annual survey. In 1972, those reporting no religious affiliation accounted for 7% of all surveyed. In 2010, in the span of just over a single generation, that number had more than doubled to 18%. There has been a commensurate decline in the number of Americans identifying with Protestantism (which would include Unitarian Universalism) from 62% of Americans surveyed in 1972 to 51% in 2010. Many people increasingly define themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” For some, this represents a rejection of sectarianism and what they see as the evils that have been done in the world through religious fundamentalism. For some this is a reflection of the increase in religious pluralism and the invitation to ‘try out’ different houses of worship and faith practices. Some of the “nones” piece together a spiritual life that draws on multiple traditions and practices and some of the “nones” are content to live without explicit spiritual beliefs and practices. As a faith tradition that does not require a belief in God or ascription to any creed, Unitarian Universalism again seems well positioned to serve the growing number of “nones.” But another stark statistic from the Pew Forum makes it unlikely that we should expect significant growth from this quarter. According to its report, among those surveyed (summer 2012) who identify their religion as “nothing in particular,” only 10% say they are actively looking for a religion that would be right for them.
If we believe that Unitarian Universalism has a saving message and a vital mission in the 21st century and beyond, our challenge in response to the growing number of “nones” is to magnify our footprint in the world, to raise our visibility in our communities, to move beyond our congregational walls to meet people where they are, because the “nones” are overwhelmingly not going to come looking for us. Encouraging our current members and religious professionals to adopt a more evangelical relationship to our faith is one way to raise the profile of Unitarian Universalism in the tens of thousands of networks that our members and friends already belong to. Some may argue that evangelism is inherently contrary to our Unitarian Universalist commitment to respect other faith traditions and the religious choices that our friends, families and colleagues freely make, but I contend that this is a both/and proposition, and not an either/or. Sharing the good news of our own faith tradition, and how it guides us in living lives of meaning, and supports us through challenges is quite different from trying to persuade people to forgo their own beliefs and adopt ours as the only road to salvation. We have been careful to not disparage the spiritual paths of others; sometimes so careful that we feel shy or embarrassed to even talk about faith in public. We have long been encouraged to develop our “elevator speeches” – brief explanations of Unitarian Universalism that could be shared over the course of an elevator trip. In an era when many are questioning the very purpose of religion and with the loudest public voices of faith tending toward extremism, fundamentalism and exclusivity, we have a unique opportunity and an obligation to lift up our truth that religion can be and is a source of good and comfort in a broken world.
Nurturing faithful and life-affirming partnerships with other houses of worship, non-profit agencies, arts organizations, or government entities in our local communities will be another way to bring our churches and our faith to the public eye by meeting our neighbors in the public square. Already, rich partnerships are being explored denominationally between Unitarian Universalists and our brethren in the United Church of Christ. Our co-authored Our Whole Lives curricula stand as a tribute to the great gifts we bring to the world beyond our congregational walls when we do not fear to live our values out loud in public.
finding meaning in a ridiculously stimulative world
Author and education/creativity expert Sir Kenneth Robinson has noted that we are living in the most richly stimulative time in human history. Our children “are being besieged with information and calls for their attention from every platform – computers, from iPhones, from [advertisements], from hundreds of television channels.”[8] He further notes that the current system of public education “was conceived in the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment and in the economic circumstances of the Industrial Revolution.” The Sunday School model of most Protestant churches, including most Unitarian Universalist congregations, arose from similar circumstances. Meanwhile, the rest of our culture has shifted radically and rapidly into the Information Age through the Digital Revolution. Information is ubiquitous and democratized. If previous generations worried that the telephone would be the death knell of polite conversation, today’s parents bemoan texting, tweeting, and instant messaging with equal fervor. Parents who were chided as youth for watching television or listening to Walkmans while doing homework, now try to limit the screen time of children and youth who may have television, radio, three conversations with friends and homework happening simultaneously on the same laptop computer.
The late 20th and early 21st centuries have also seen the rise in childhood diagnoses, in particular of ADHD, Asperger’s Syndrome, and other Autism spectrum disorders. Anecdotally, religious educators have noted dramatic increases in numbers of students with one or another of these diagnoses, as well as an increase in the number of students with stress and anxiety related disorders, and of children and youth with multiple diagnoses.
Another related phenomenon might be called the Overscheduled Child Syndrome. Childhood play once occurred spontaneously and organically in homes and neighborhoods populated by larger families, many of which had mothers at home who kept watchful eyes on all. As more women entered the paid workforce, and as family sizes shrank, these organic opportunities gave way to scheduled ‘play dates.’ At the same time, the American economy increasingly assumes a college diploma for even entry-level positions, leading to increased competition for acceptance into colleges. Families have increased the expectations that their children and teens will participate in extra-curricular activities, and everything from Little League and soccer practices to play rehearsals; from regattas to piano recitals are routinely scheduled throughout the week. In the years since Title IX passed in 1972, more and more girls are participating in organized sports, which has led to even greater demand on limited municipal recreational resources. Communities have felt the pressure and responded to the need by expanding practice and game times to every day of the week. In an increasingly secular country, Sunday mornings are no longer held as a universally sacred time, and extracurricular activities are regularly scheduled in conflict with our traditional Sunday School time. Religious professionals have noted the more sporadic attendance of families on Sunday mornings because of this, and because of one-week-on/one-week-off shared custody arrangements, among other scheduling demands on our families.
Religious professionals have also reported a sharp decrease in the number of parents who are willing - or able - to participate as volunteers in their congregation’s Religious Education or Sunday School programs. Religious educators running cooperative Sunday School models are increasingly granting exemptions to the ‘mandatory volunteer’ rule. Among the most common reasons for granting exemptions are overextended and highly stressed parents who may –
· be single parents holding multiple jobs, or
· have one or more child(ren) with special challenges, or
· be actively caring for aging and ailing parents in addition to their young children.
The needs of families coming through our doors and the scheduling pressures upon them are so much greater than they were even a single generation ago. We have made some changes around the edges of our traditional Sunday School model over the years. Some congregations are returning to a “one-room schoolhouse” multi-age model of religious education. Some use Spirit Play[9] which is more interactive than some traditional curricula. The UUA has published a series of curricula, Tapestry of Faith,[10] that is available online for free. This allows parents as well as teachers and religious professionals to have access to all the lessons. Theoretically, at least, students could access lessons shared on the days they could not attend Sunday School in person.
These changes, adjustments and improvements have been good and valuable steps, but many of our congregants continue to expect that the most significant faith formation their children and youth receive will occur in an hour or two on Sunday mornings, through religious education classes.
sustainability
Anecdotally, a number of religious professionals are reporting Sunday School programs that are struggling under their own weight. In many churches, Religious Education programs are the largest single area of ministry when measured by number of volunteers and participants. Between teaching teams for every grade level, youth group advisors, coming of age mentors, and Sunday morning nursery staff, as well as volunteers for annual events like a holiday pageant or teacher recognition day, or those RE programs which offer adult educational activities, the Religious Education program engages a significant percent of adult congregants. As families and the demands on them have changed, our Sunday School models remain heavily volunteer dependent and some are finding that model increasingly unsustainable.
In the world of secular education, the same kinds of shifts and pressures on families and students are being noticed, and in many arenas, shifts in approach and pedagogy are being experimented with. Respected college professors such as Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur are giving up lecturing in favor of peer instruction.[11] Esteemed institutions like Harvard, Princeton and MIT are offering a number of their courses online for free.[12] And in public schools, many districts are experimenting with technology like smart boards and tablets. Still others are experimenting in more low-tech ways, such as replacing desks and chairs with tables and balance balls.[13] Although it is still too early to gauge the efficacy of MOOC’s (Massive Online Open Courses) or other recent innovations, these feel like well-discerned experiments in response to specifically identified social and demographic trends from which we might be able to take lessons.
inheriting the unchurched
Many of our churches’ newest members, and current Religious Education students, have come to us after years (or even lifetimes) of not belonging to any house of worship. As one UUA district staff member put it, “they don't have any sense of how we do things around here - a blessing in that they aren't held captive to any particular model, but a curse because they don't necessarily understand church or (congregational) commitment.” And those who come to us from other faith traditions do not necessarily understand how a covenantal tradition differs from a creedal one. Our curricula and Religious Education ministries have been largely created and supported with a goal of helping children and youth grow into Unitarian Universalist adults. At the same time, we know that an excellent indicator of youth and young adult religiosity is the consistent religious practice of their parents. A sizable number of our current RE students are not coming to us from homes with a history of consistent Unitarian Universalist religious practice.
Still, rather than focusing our faith formation efforts on building adult and family Unitarian Universalist identity and faith formation, we focus instead on religious education programming that teaches children curricular content in traditional Sunday School classes that meet a maximum of 30 – 40 times per year. Actually, many religious educators would put the maximum number of Sunday School classes closer to 25-30, and that presupposes perfect attendance, which we know is extremely challenging for today’s families. When you factor in absences for illness and other family or team obligations, one religious educator routinely tells parents that he has about one full day a year (24 hours) to impact their children’s spiritual development.
The most consistent example of congregational adult faith formation tends to center on Sunday morning worship. A small percentage of our congregants avail themselves of Adult Education classes (in the congregations that offer them) on topics that are already of interest to them. A larger number of congregants have engaged in recent years in Small Group Ministries, a very successful model of spiritual growth and deepening which also builds community and strengthens congregational and associational identity. The model has been adapted for use with children and youth as well.[14]
While some congregations hold new member classes for adults, we have no denominational requirements of membership. Most of the explicit Adult Faith Formation opportunities favor a traditional teach/learn paradigm, and privilege academic learning styles and preferences. By and large, we have not treated the faith formation of parents and other adults with the same priority as the faith formation of children and youth. Increasing the diversity of opportunities and providing easy access points and multiple modalities for a range of learning styles may contribute to a culture change in our congregations, wherein Unitarian Universalists take it as a given that our faith calls each of us to be engaged in our own spiritual development, no matter what our age, how much information we know, or how many classes we have already taken. The journey does not end at high school graduation, or at the end of the membership journey class, just as our faith doesn’t stop when the chalice is extinguished at the end of Sunday morning worship. Unitarian Universalists, no less than any other people of faith, yearn for deep connection and community throughout our lives.
Many of us strive to be held to account for living good lives and serving the cause of Justice in some small way every day. Others of us feel the need to return to our spirit’s home in times of especial joy or challenge. When we encourage one another to live a Full Week Faith, our spiritual connections deepen with regular practice and it becomes a core marker of our identity and orientation in the world, as opposed to merely a title we don on Sunday mornings with our church clothes.
growing unitarian universalists
When I make the assertion that the goal of religious education is forming the current and future generations of Unitarian Universalists, I am aware that I am making some assumptions. It is my strong assertion that this is deeply in the core of our work as religious professionals, and that is as it ought to be. However, I am also aware that this may be not be a shared assumption among our laity. One religious educator conveyed a heartbreaking conversation with a parent who did not want the congregation’s RE program to “make her children think they were Unitarian Universalists.” She wanted her children to be free to make that decision themselves when they grew up. It struck me as a profound distortion of our covenant to support the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Yes, we value, promote, and affirm our children’s rights – and the rights of all – to faithfully and freely engage in the spiritual search for what is right and true. But I want our children to know that by that very act, they are part of our religious community of seekers. This very act is part of how we know ourselves to be Unitarian Universalists. I want them to know we are their community and we have promised to be their spirit’s home. And I want them to know they do not have to wait until they grow up to know themselves to be part of our Unitarian Universalist faith community.
I have heard similar heartbreaking stories from other religious educators, stories that sadly betray what is almost a fear of indoctrination (for lack a of a better word) from some of our members. Perhaps it is connected to the generalized secularization of American public life. Perhaps it is related to some parents’ painful experiences of strict faith communities in their own childhoods. Whatever the reasons, there seems to be a reluctance on the part of some parents to see themselves as caretakers of their children’s healthy spirits, in addition to their healthy minds and bodies. This is part of a culture much larger than our own associational or congregational cultures. We will not single-handedly change it. We can, however, focus more explicitly and intentionally on including parents and extended families in our faith formation ministries – not merely as volunteer teachers, but as recipients of faith formation ministry themselves. We have a responsibility to provide resources and mentoring to equip parents to truly embrace their role as their child’s first and most consistent religious educator, and caretakers of their children’s minds, bodies and souls. To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, if we want a vibrant Unitarian Universalism for the next generation, we shall have to begin with the parents.
generational theory
In 1992, Neil Howe and William Strauss published a definitive work, Generations: the History of America’s Future, 1584-2069, in which they described generational patterns in American society and from which they predict how society may be shaped in the 21st century.[15] The work has been widely digested and applied to congregational life. We are currently in a moment of transition between generational leadership in many areas of our communal lives. We are witnessing the waning of the Baby Boomer generation, whose members are reaching the age of retirement at a rate of 10,000 individuals each day, and the ascension of the Millennial Generation, whose members are reaching the age of majority at roughly the same pace. Members of Gen X and Millennials are on the whole more fluent and comfortable in the emerging digital landscape than their Boomer and Silent Generation elders, even though the clear majority of our elders are adopting cell phone and internet technologies as well. Our congregations remain intentionally multi-generational, and yet our institutional structures maintain models created by the Silent Generation, and struggle to find ways to invite Millennials or even Gen X-ers into congregational leadership. Briefly, drawing from the work of UUA field staff Kimberly Paquette and Renee Ruchotzke, the following are broad descriptions of the generations likely to be represented in our pews.
GENERATION NAME [16]
Silent Generation
(archetype: Adaptive/Artist)
1925-1942
This generation was generally overshadowed by their predecessors (the GI Generation) and their successors (the Boomers) and seeks tolerance, inclusivity, and a sense of fairness from congregations. They’re builders of institutions and fiercely loyal to them. They are consistent financial stewards. Growing up in troubled times, they believe in the ethic of personal sacrifice. They value being wise elders and the institutional memory of their churches. As this generation ages and steps down from leadership, they would appreciate recognition of their contributions.
Baby Boomers
(archetype: Idealist / Prophet)
1943 - 1961
This generation loves big ideas and believes in the power of individuals to create change. Growing up in peace and prosperity, they had freedom in their youth and young adulthood to pursue individual dreams. The majority of Boomers today are living in times of major personal transition, either becoming empty nesters or entering retirement. They are looking for a sense of purpose and willing to take leadership to advance big ideas in service of grand ideals. They would be happy to inspire and mentor the next generation of dreamers and doers.
Gen-X
(archetype: Reactive/Nomad)
1962 - 1981
This generation seeks practical solutions to big picture problems. The cohort is about half the size of the Baby Boomers on the one side and the Millennials on the other. They were the first of the “latchkey” children, coming home to empty houses while their parents were at work. Left to fend for themselves in some ways, they are realists and pragmatists. They also highly prize diversity in all areas, from food to friendships, to worship styles.
Millennials
(archetype: Civic/Hero)
1982 - 2000
Millenials are not ‘joiners’ in the traditional sense. They are not joining social clubs or community institutions in any significant numbers. In terms of congregational stewardship, it is noted that the loss of one Silent in a congregation requires the addition of 15 Millennials to make up the same level of financial support over a lifetime.[17] They are coming into their own as a societal force and seek encouragement and guidance of older generations as they ascend to leadership. They are more likely to create their own spaces in church (i.e., beginning young adult social groups) than to join established boards and committees.
Homeland or
i-generation
(archetype: Adaptive/Artist)
2001 -
Although they spend more time online than other generations, they value connectedness, intimacy and authenticity. They are optimistic, energetic, and driven by their passions. They will be vigorous builders of new institutions – virtual, physical and hybrid – that will shape the rest of the century. They are more likely to commit to congregations that recognize that they have gifts to bring, and that support them in developing their skills and talents in service to the world.
Churches are one of the last places that are multigenerational. Today, we may have as many as 5 generations worshiping together. In order to intentionally support the faith formation needs of all of our people, we need to attend to all of these generational differences when planning holistic faith formation ministries.
in summary
There are a number of other important signifiers of dramatic change in the last 50-100 years that could be documented here and analyzed for their impacts on faith formation ministry and other areas of congregational life. Suffice it to say that we find ourselves presented with stark choices. We are in that space Dr. Viktor Frankl wrote of, that space between stimulus and response, inviting the thoughtful use of our freedom and power. We can wait and watch to see what comes next, or we can engage the challenges and changes so that we decide with intention how we will faithfully respond.
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[1]. John Roberto, Faith Formation 2020 (Naugatuck: LifelongFaith Associates, 2010); Rev. Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi, Foundations, Findings, and Futures: Christian Faith Formation and Education in the United Church of Christ (United Church of Christ, 2012), http://uccfiles.com/pdf/UCCChristianFaithFormationandEducationReport.pdf; and from anecdotal conversations with Unitarian Universalist religious professionals.
[2]. Ingrid Lunden, “Nielsen: Smartphones Used By 50.4% Of U.S. Consumers, Android 48.5% Of Them,” Tech Crunch, Mat 7, 2012. http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/07/nielsen-smartphones-used-by-50-4-of-u-s-consumers-android-48-5-of-them/.
[3]. Michele Dillon, “What is Core to American Catholics in 2011,” National Catholic Reporter, October 24, 2011, http://ncronline.org/news/catholics-america/what-core-american-catholics-2011.
[4]. “Congregations And Beyond,” Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, April 27, 2013, http://www.uua.org/uuagovernance/officers/president/morales/192145.shtml/.
[5]. Households and Families 2010, 2010 Census Briefs, Lofquist, Lugaila, O’Connell, and Feliz, issued April 2012, United States Census Bureau.
[6]. David M. Csinos, “Questioning the Right Answers: Faith Formation in the Postmodern Matrix,” in Shaped by God: Twelve Essentials for Nurturing Faith in Children, Youth, and Adults, ed. Robert J. Keeley (Grand Rapids: Faith Alive Christian Resources, 2010), 160.
[7]. “Nones on the Rise,” The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, October 9, 2012, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/.
[8]. Sir Ken Robinson “Changing Education Paradigms” (video), October 14, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zDZFcDGpL4U.
[9]. Spirit Play is a Unitarian Universalist Adaptation of Jerome Berryman's Godly Play, based on Montessori principles, developed by Nita Penfold, D. Min., Rev. Ralph Roberts, and Beverly Leute Bruce.
[10]. “Tapestry of Faith,” Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, September 16, 2013, http://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/.
[11]. Emily Hanford, “Rethinking the Way College Students Are Taught,” American Radio Works, http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/rethinking-teaching.html.
[12]. The first online course offered in the spring semester of 2012 by MIT on Circuits and Electronics drew some 120,000 online students. Tamar Lewin, “Harvard and M.I.T. Team up to Offer Free Online Courses,” The New York Times, May 2, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/education/harvard-and-mit-team-up-to-offer-free-online-courses.html?_r=0.
[13]. Kathy Matheson, “Teachers Ditch Student Desk Chairs for Yoga Balls,” Yahoo! News, February 20, 2013, http://news.yahoo.com/teachers-ditch-student-desk-chairs-152403408.html.
[14]. Gail Forsyth-Vail, “Adapting Small Group Ministry for Children: An Implementation Plan with Sample Sessions,” Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, http://www.uua.org/documents/mpl/adapt_sgm_children.pdf.
[15]. Neil Howe and William Strauss, Generations: the History of America’s Future, 1584-2069 (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991).
[16]. Different theorists may place the generation breaks in different years, give or take a few years on either end. These dates are meant to be merely illustrative and not definitive.
[17]. John Roberto, “Faith Formation 2020” (workshop, 2012).