Six religious types

 I recently mentioned a book I was reading called Souls in Transition by Christian Smith and Patricia Snell. It is not a fast read as it describes an ongoing study of teens and young adults and their religious beliefs and practices. There are a lot of statistics, but there are also numerous stories that bring life to those figures. It is an excellent book for anyone working with young adults or churches wanting to reach persons 18-23.

The authors have identified six different types of young adults when it comes to religion and spiritualty. I believe they describe people of all age groups and found the chapter very interesting. You'll have to read the descriptions for yourself, but the types are

• Committed Traditionalists
• Selective Adherents
• Spiritually Open
• Religiously Indifferent
• Religiously Disconnected 
• Irreligious

There is no majority type in this list. The two largest minority types are the Selective Adherent and the Religiously Indifferent. Except for the first group, the remaining groups simply give little, if any, thought to Christianity or religion. This is one reason it is so hard to reach this age group. Christianity and the church is seldom even on their radar screen. There is too much else to do that seems more pressing. Some admit when they get married or older they may give more thought to faith issues and the church. However, by then their secular worldviews may prevent that from happening.

Why have persons in this age group developed such a disinterest in religion? There are many reasons, but I think one is that many were never exposed to religious teaching when they were younger. My parents took me to church almost every Sunday. I attended Sunday school, Vacation Bible School, morning worship service, and, often, the evening services. We went to revival meetings. As a teen I began to drift away from that, and as a young adult the age of this study had mostly abandoned the church and the teachings I had learned as a child. However, those teachings didn't leave me. In my later 20s I came to realize how much I needed God in my life and returned to Him and my earlier faith.

Unfortunately, many Boomer parents (my cohort) didn't take their children to church. They were not exposed to the teachings I learned as a child. Most haven't walked away from their faith; they never had a faith to begin with. I knew what I needed to return to; they don't know where to go when life starts crushing them.

It will take very intentional actions on the part of a church to reach this age group. Simply doing what the church has always done in the past probably won't get the job accomplished. I'm not sure many churches will be willing to give up their traditional practices in hopes of reaching an age group that shows little interest in God or Christianity. Perhaps that is why God is raising up so many new churches. They don't have to worry about traditions. They can simply do whatever they need to do to reach an age group that most of our churches are not reaching. If your church wants to reach this age group it will have to decide what it is willing to do to make that happen. As one pastor has said, their church will do anything except sin to reach new people for Jesus Christ.