St. John, Atlanta (Druid Hills and Emory University area)
• Average worship attendance: 125 • Best young adult draw: Blended and creative worship (including contem- plative elements); social justice and outreach. • Words that describe your congrega- tion: Accepting, lovers of new experi- ences, ever-changing (due to creativity and demographics—near Emory University and Candler School of The- ology), courageous, embracing the words of Marty Haugen’s hymn “All Are Welcome,” inclusive, innovative, social justice conscious. • Words that describe your church’s young adults: Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered; professionals; pur- suing seminary-related careers; par- ents; unchurched or other-churched. • Most new members learn about the congregation through: Our reputa- tion for inclusivity, other members, Website. • When young adults enter your congregation, where do they get involved? Social justice, worship, outreach. • Gifts young adults bring to your con- gregation: Energy, open-mindedness.
Myrna Lance, secretary W
hen we read the Gospels in worship, we typically encounter a Jesus in his early 30s: a young adult,
something of a spiritual nomad, mov- ing in and out of places of worship. Yet for a church so focused on the ministry of this young adult, we’re often perplexed by questions about young adults in worship. What are today’s young adult spiritual nomads seeking in worship? How do they dif- fer from previous generations? Why aren’t more of them in worship? By pursuing any of these ques- tions, we don’t just risk overgeneral-
izing—we guarantee it. But any map of unfamiliar terrain (whether we’re mapping a city or the patterns of North American young adults in wor- ship) leaves out some detail in order to highlight landmarks and keep us from being overwhelmed.
Here are some basic landmarks on the wide terrain of North American young adults and worship, as well as three points of interest:
Low worship attendance In the U.S. about 18 percent of the millennial generation (born between 1980 and 2000) attends worship weekly or almost every week, according to the Pew Forum on Reli- gion & Public Life (Religion Among the Millennials, 2010).
So if you’re randomly approach- ing young adults trying to find some who worship frequently, you’re out of luck 82 percent of the time— a weak batting average of .180. By comparison, if you randomly approach Americans over 65, you’ll meet weekly attenders around half the time—a batting average of .500. In general, the trend in America is that adults attend worship more frequently as they age. But the type of church people attend is a better predictor of how often they go to worship than how old they are. For example, older evangelicals attend worship more often than young adult evangelicals. But even young adult evangelicals attend worship more frequently than any age demographic in mainline Protestantism.
In other words, different churches seem to develop different cultures around the frequency of worship attendance that are more significant than differences related to age.
‘Less religious’
For the past few generations, young adults (more than any other age demographic) have described them- selves as “less religious.” Today mil- lennials not only describe themselves as less religious but increasingly as not religious.
More than 1 in 4 young adults belongs to the “nones,” those who state their religious preference on surveys as “none.” These “nones,” the fastest growing religious demo- graphic in the U.S., are disproportion- ately comprised of young adults. As for those millennials who do
For a study guide, see page 26. For “Spiri- tual but not religious? Please stop boring me” by Lillian Daniel and “Spiritual but not religious as a starting point” by Amy Thompson Sevimli, find this story at
www.thelutheran.org/feature/august.
August 2012 21
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