By Kent E. Fillinger
This Christmas, you might be
looking forward to your adult children returning home. Or maybe they’re home
already.
A Pew Research Center report
found that 15 percent of millennials (ages 25 to 37) were living at home in
2018, nearly double the rate of older baby boomers when they were in that age
range.
In fact, a smaller percentage of people in the rising generations are checking off the four major life events that historically have signified “adulthood”: leaving home, getting married, becoming a parent, and getting a job. And the percentage of adults in the 25 to 34 age range who had accomplished all four major life events fell from 45 percent in 1975 to 24 percent in 2016, according to Kassira Absar in “Delayed Adulthood: The Millennial Falsehood,” at www.apmresearchlab.org.
The Census Bureau dubbed this
new stage between childhood and adulthood as “emerging adulthood.” Other
researchers have called it “prolonged adolescence.”
It’s not my intent to bash or
belittle young adults (millennials), but rather to share the research data to
identify relevant trends impacting culture and the church. Let’s examine each
of the four traditional markers for adulthood to check their status today.
Leaving
Home?
“The rise in young adults living at home is especially prominent among those with lower education,” according to Pew researchers Kristen Bialik and Richard Fry. “Millennials who never attended college were twice as likely as those with a bachelor’s degree or more to live with their parents (20% vs. 10%)” (from the article, “Millennial Life: How Young Adulthood Today Compares with Prior Generations,” February 14, 2019, www.pewsocialtrends.org).
And 25 percent of young people
aged 25 to 34 living in their parents’ home—or about 2.2 million—neither go to
school nor work.
More and more parents are
providing homes for their aging children to live in, but fewer parents are
positively influencing those children to attend church. From 2000 to 2018, the
share of those aged 18 to 34 who never attend religious services has more than
doubled to 36 percent (see “Cradles, Pews and Shifting Politics,” by Gerald F.
Seib, Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2019). Only 27
percent of adults under age 30 attend a worship service weekly (see “Less God,
Less Giving?” Karl Zinsmeister, Philanthropy, Winter
2019).
Church leaders like the ones
who read this magazine obviously will see a problem in this, but society at large
should be worried, as well.
Americans who attend worship
services weekly and pray daily are more likely to volunteer in their community,
be involved in community groups, have stronger links with their neighbors, and be
more engaged with their own families. They also make more charitable
contributions—even to secular causes—than the nonreligious.
The trend toward decline in
church attendance and participation over the last two decades should heighten
concerns for churches. That said, parents with adult children still living with
them should take advantage of their proximity and work to revive their
children’s faith. It’s never too late to renew the biblical model of parents
training their children to follow God. Besides, when they’re living with you,
you have a captive audience.
Marriage
and Parenthood?
More than half of Americans today
do not consider marriage and parenthood as determinants of adulthood—this is a
shift from the historical norm. Instead, they place a greater emphasis on
education and employment.
Young people today are
delaying marriage compared with prior generations. In the 1970s, 8 in 10 people
married by the time they turned 30. Today, it’s not until age 45 that 8 in 10
people have married. In 1968, the typical American woman first married at age
21; for men it was 23. Today, the average ages are 28 for women and 30 for men.
The percentage of adults who
never marry is increasing with each successive generation. If current patterns
continue, an estimated one-in-four of today’s young adults will have never
married by the time they reach their mid-40s to early 50s (from “Millennial Life,”
Bialik and Fry).
Delayed marriages and no
marriages for young adults will naturally result in fewer babies being born. Last
year, births were at a 32-year low in the U.S. Interestingly, the birthrate
among older women, aged 35 to 44, increased last year (from “Cradles, Pews and
Shifting Politics”).
These trends obviously will
have major implications for our nation, but from a spiritual perspective, staying
single negatively impacts church attendance, participation, and religious
affiliation. According to Pew Research, 43 percent of married couples attend a
religious service at least once a week compared with only 27 percent of those
“never married.” Twenty-eight percent of married couples attend some type of
religious education at least once a week compared with 18 percent of those
never married. And 55 percent of married couples identified themselves as “Evangelical
Protestants” compared with only 18 percent of those never married.
The landscape of “lost people”
will continue to look much different moving forward. This should cause churches
to expand their focus and change their strategies to reach the growing segments
of people outside the church who are single or married and have no children.
Education
and Employment?
Young adults today are better
educated than prior generations. More women than men complete at least a
bachelor’s degree.
“Over 60 percent of
college-age people get some type of financial help from their parents. It’s no
wonder when you consider the average cost of a 4-year degree is over $40,000,”
according to Nate Calvert (“4 Reasons Delayed Adulthood Is an Increasing
Trend,” natecalvert.com). “We’re seeing a larger and larger percentage of
college-age adults getting financial assistance from home.”
Students who borrow money
today leave college with an average debt of more than $30,000. This debt will
impact their ability to live on their own, get married and have children, and
give to the church and other related ministries and causes.
More young men are falling to
the bottom of the income ladder. In 1975, only 25 percent of young men had
incomes below $30,000 a year (in 2015 dollars). By 2016, that share rose to 41
percent. Between 1975 and 2016, the share of young women who were homemakers
fell from 43 percent to 14 percent.
Responding
to the New Face of Adulthood
New realities require new
strategies. Reaching this generation of young adults requires a different
approach from prior generations. The churches that target one
demographic—nuclear families with two parents and children—will be relevant only
to a small subset of society. It will limit a church’s evangelistic
opportunities and effectiveness.
Here are four action steps
your church can take today:
- Invest in a demographic study to identify who
lives in your surrounding communities.
- Evaluate your church’s ministries and primary
messages to see if they’re designed for the majority people groups living in
your ministry region.
- Decide on ministry changes or additions that
are necessary to better reach those people groups living in your community.
- Start making those strategic changes one at a
time while explaining the “why” behind the changes before, during, and after to
your congregation.
Kent
E. Fillinger serves as president of 3:STRANDS Consulting, Indianapolis,
Indiana, and regional vice president (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan) with
Christian Financial Resources.
0 Comments