Notes
Notes
Chapter 1 Growing Young
1. Max De Pree, Leadership Is an Art (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 9.
2. Pew Research Center, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” May 12, 2015, http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/.
3. Pew Research Center, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.”
4. Some Pentecostal denominations are seeing great growth outside of the US in Asia, Africa, and especially Latin America. Pew Research Center, “Why Has Pentecostalism Grown So Dramatically in Latin America?,” November 14, 2014, http://www.pewresearch .org/fact-tank/2014/11/14/why-has-pentecostalism-grown-so-dramatically-in-latin -america/.
5. Conrad Hacket, “Emerging Adult Participation in Congregations,” http://www .faithformationlearningexchange.net/up loads/5/2/4/6/5246709/emering_adult_parti cipation_in_congregations_-_hackett.pdf.
Often cited as one of the most up-to-date repositories of data on US churches, the recent National Congregations Study highlights how quickly congregations are aging. Between 1998 and 2007, the number of regular attenders over age 60 in the 2,740 congregations surveyed jumped from 25 percent to 30 percent. During that same short time period, regular attenders younger than 35 dropped from 25 percent to 20 percent. Mark Chavez, “American Congregations at the Beginning of the 21st Century: A National Congregations Study,” http://www.soc.duke.edu/natcong/Docs/NCSII_report_final.pdf.
6. Pew Research Center, “The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States,” May 7, 2014, http://www.pewforum.org/2014/05/07/the-shifting-religious-identity -of-latinos-in-the-united-states/.
7. Pew Research Center, “Asian Americans: A Mosaic of Faiths,” July 19, 2012, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/07/19/asian -americans-a-mosaic-of-faiths-overview/.
8. A 2011 study of young adults indicates that approximately 59 percent of young people with a Christian background report that they have dropped out of church. David Kinnaman and Aly Hawkins, You Lost Me (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 23.
According to a Gallup poll, approximately 40 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds who attended church when they were 16 or 17 years old are no longer attending. George H. Gallup Jr., “The Religiosity Cycle,” The Gallup Poll, June 4, 2002; and Frank Newport, “A Look at Religious Switching in America Today,” The Gallup Poll, June 23, 2006.
A 2007 survey by LifeWay Research of over 1,000 adults ages 18 to 30 who spent a year or more in youth group during high school suggests that more than 65 percent of young adults who attend a Protestant church for at least a year in high school will stop attending church regularly for at least a year between the ages of 18 and 22. In this study, respondents were not necessarily seniors who had graduated from youth group. In addition, the research design did not factor in parachurch or on-campus faith communities in its definition of college “church” attendance.
Data from the National Study of Youth and Religion indicates that 20 to 35 percent of Roman Catholic and Protestant teenagers who were religious become young adults who are no longer religious. Christian Smith with Patricia Snell, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 109–10.
In a Pew study of faith transition for US adults in general, roughly half of the US population changed religion at some point in their lives. Pew Research Center, “Faith in Flux,” February 2011, http://www.pewforum.org/2009/04/27/faith-in-flux/.
Our estimate that 40 to 50 percent of high school graduates will fail to stick with their faith is based on a compilation of data from these various studies.
9. In the first two stages of our project, we wanted respondents to be anonymous, so we are not including their real names or other identifiable information when we quote or describe them. In the third and final stage of our research, we received permission to use real church names and other identifiable information.
10. When we use the phrase “fall away” from the faith, we don’t necessarily mean that students have “lost” their salvation but rather that they have moved away from a faith that places Jesus at the center of all they are and do.
11. One of our nation’s leading scholars on young adults, Jeffrey J. Arnett, observes a widespread return to faith after emerging adults become parents. Jeffrey J. Arnett, Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 177. Previous data studying young adults’ religious trajectories indicates that among baby boomers who left the church (overall at slightly higher rates than today), those whose families regularly attended church in childhood returned at rates of 65 percent for mainline Protestants, 72 percent for evangelical Protestants, and 52 percent for Roman Catholics. See Wade Clark Roof and Lyn Gesch, “Boomers and the Culture of Choice: Changing Patterns of Work, Family, and Religion,” in Work, Family, and Religion in Contemporary Society, ed. N. Ammerman and W. C. Roof (New York: Routledge, 1995), 61–79.
12. Our appreciation for this term increased thanks to the writing of brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath, who highlight “bright spots” as important data in the search to bring about change. Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch (New York: Broadway Books, 2010).
13. The exception to this is that even in congregations growing young, it’s challenging to build a year-round ministry to college students if there are few colleges located near the church. In those cases, the college ministry is often far more vibrant in the summer, when students who had been part of the church in high school return.
14. The term emerging adult was first coined by Jeffrey J. Arnett in 2000. Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, “Emerging Adulthood: A Theory of Development from the Late Teens through the Twenties,” American Psychologist 55, no. 5 (May 2000).
15. We intentionally started with 15-year-olds (and not 13- or 14-year-olds) because we wanted to focus on high school–aged adolescents, which is when the precipitous faith drop-off seems to gain momentum.
16. Tim Clydesdale, The Purposeful Graduate: Why Colleges Must Talk to Students about Vocation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 201.
17. The 13 Protestant denominations are the Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God, Presbyterian Church USA, Evangelical Covenant Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist Church, Church of the Nazarene, American Baptist Churches USA, Church of God in Christ, Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, Episcopal Church, Christian Reformed Church, and Christian and Missionary Alliance.
18. Most of the nominations from the Fuller Youth Institute were congregations that have participated in our yearlong Sticky Faith Cohort training program.
19. “Noteworthy churches” were primarily those with a high percentage of young people attending the church or participating in specific congregational characteristics, or whose young people had high faith maturity as assessed by church leaders. The FYI research team added a handful of congregations to this “noteworthy” list because of their unique and creative approaches to faith formation. For more details about the research process, see the appendix.
20. Kara has a PhD in practical theology; Brad and Jake have master’s degrees and extensive theological training. Obviously, theology matters to us and shapes our research. To get a sense for many of the central theological tenets that have most influenced our research and ministry, see the statement of faith for Fuller Theological Seminary online at http://fuller.edu/About/Mission-and-Values/What-We-Believe-and-Teach/.
21. Defined as “participants.”
22. Approximately 14 percent of US congregations are considered “multiracial,” so we are pleased by the 31 percent of congregations in Stage 1 that fall into that category. Scott Thumma, “Racial Diversity Increasing in US Congregations,” Huffington Post Blog, March 24, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost .com/scott-thumma-phd/racial-diversity-in creasing-in-us-congregations_b_2944470 .html.
23. The primary reason that diversity increased is that our selection criteria in those two later stages tended to yield diverse congregations. A second and less influential reason that diversity increased is that in a handful of instances, as our team was choosing among churches, we opted for those with greater diversity.
24. Several quantitative and qualitative measures were used to assess spiritual vibrancy and faith maturity of young people, both indirectly (by pastors) and directly (by young people themselves). The primary quantitative measure we used is a nine-item scale utilizing significantly modified items from the Faith Maturity Scale popularized by the Search Institute. See Peter Benson, Michael J. Donahue, and Joseph A. Erickson, “The Faith Maturity Scale: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Empirical Validation,” Social Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 5 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1995), 1–26.
25. When we quote our advisors without footnoting a specific source, their comment occurred during a group meeting or one-on-one discussion with our research team.
26. Many of our findings have numbers and statistics to back them up. Others are drawn from on-the-ground observation during site visits. While we don’t want to debate the value of quantitative or qualitative research, know that this study utilized multidisciplinary methods to explore church effectiveness in order to provide a panoramic vista from which to take in both statistics and stories.
Chapter 2 Unlock Keychain Leadership
1. In the past few decades, there has been much attention placed on “missional” leadership, which emphasizes the sending nature of God and our “sent” nature as the people of God. Attention has also recently been given to “emergent” leadership, which paints leadership as highly flexible and responsive to our shifting culture. While there is great merit in both of these models, the keychain leaders we studied didn’t neatly fit either of these categories. Neither did they fit the “pastor as CEO” model in which leaders dominate decisions and little happens without their consent. In fact, the personality or approach of keychain leaders was difficult to classify with any one existing adjective or profile, including “purpose-driven,” “servant leadership,” or being “seeker-sensitive.” By naming these as a list of models that we did not find, we are not suggesting they are unhelpful. They all have certain merit and validity.
2. Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012), 190.
3. Robert Wuthnow, The Crisis in the Churches: Spiritual Malaise, Fiscal Woe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 6–7.
4. Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal, Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008), 13.
5. Ibid., 15–16.
6. The Harvard Business Review Press released a short, practical book that can help you spend one to two weeks tracking your time. See 20 Minute Manager: Managing Time (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2014).
7. This pastor shared how he was led to pursue greater health through Peter Scazzero’s book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life in Christ (Nashville: Integrity, 2006).
8. Candace Coppinger Pickett, “Relational Capacity, Personal Well-Being, and Ministry Performance: Consequences of the Evolved Social Brain” (unpublished dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, 2014).
9. De Pree, Leadership Is an Art, 11.
Chapter 3 Empathize with Today’s Young People
1. Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 14–15.
2. Institute of Design at Stanford, “An Introduction to Design Thinking Process Guide,” https://dschool.stanford.edu/sandbox/groups/designresources/wiki/36873/attachments/74b3d/ModeGuideBOOTCAMP2010L.pdf?sessionID=9a5d0a2a0cd5fb6c26a567b2636b19513b76d0f4.
3. Pew Research Center, “Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married—A Record Low,” December 14, 2011, http://www.pewsocial trends.org/2011/12/14/barely-half-of-u-s -adults-are-married-a-record-low/.
4. National Vital Statistics Report, “Births: Final Data for 2013,” vol. 64, no. 1, January 15, 2015, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data /nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_01.pdf; and T. J. Matthews and Brady E. Hamilton, “Delayed Childbearing: More Women Are Having Their First Child Later in Life,” NCHS Data Brief, no. 21, August 2009, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db21.pdf.
5. Arnett, Emerging Adulthood, 6.
6. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “America’s Young Adults at 27: Labor Market Activity, Education, and Household Composition: Results from a Longitudinal Survey,” March 26, 2014, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/nlsyth.nr0.htm.
7. Robert Schoeni and Karen Ross, “Material Assistance from Families During the Transition to Adulthood,” in On the Frontiers of Adulthood, ed. Richard Settersten, Frank Furstenburg, and Ruben Rumbaut (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 396–416.
8. Robin Marantz Henig, “What Is It about 20-Somethings?” New York Times, August 18, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1.
9. Some scholars actually prefer the term extended adolescence to emerging adulthood. We find extended adolescence a vivid term to describe the delay in transition to adulthood, but as a general rule, we will use the more common term of emerging adulthood.
10. Susan Y. Euling et al., “Role of Environmental Factors in the Timing of Puberty,” Pediatrics 21 (February 1, 2008): S167–S171.
11. See Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung, The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home (New York: Penguin, 2012).
12. As a result of this pace, only 15 percent of teenagers are getting 8.5 hours of sleep, which is the minimum amount required to function best. National Sleep Foundation, “Teens and Sleep,” http://sleepfoundation .org/sleep-topics/teens-and-sleep.
13. American Psychological Association, “American Psychological Association Survey Shows Teen Stress Rivals That of Adults,” February 11, 2014, http://www.apa.org/news /press/releases/2014/02/teen-stress.aspx.
14. American Psychological Association, “2010 Stress in America Findings,” November 9, 2010, https://www.apa.org/news/press /releases/stress/2010/national-report.pdf.
15. In a 2014 nationwide study of over 3,000 students, 57 percent of undergraduates and 58 percent of graduate students reported more than average or tremendous stress. Only four years prior, that percentage hovered around 49 percent. University of Michigan University Health Service, “National College Health Assessment,” https://www .uhs.umich.edu/ncha.
16. Clydesdale, Purposeful Graduate, 109.
17. Tim Clydesdale, The First Year Out (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 2–3, 39.
18. The 16 percent of young people in our study who confess that their church adds to their stress note that these anxiety-filled seasons occur during times of increased responsibility, usually around a specific event or program. Yet despite the stress added by these roles, young people still celebrate these leadership opportunities because they infuse their lives with greater meaning.
19. Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 10, 18.
20. Psalm 23:4.
21. Pew Research Center, “Teens, Social Media, and Technology Overview 2015,” April 9, 2015, http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/.
22. Danah boyd, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 127.
23. Andrew K. Przybylski et al., “Motivational, Emotional, and Behavioral Correlates of Fear of Missing Out,” Computers in Human Behavior 29, no. 4 (2013): 1841–48.
24. Mark D. Regnerus, Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 85.
25. Ibid., 121.
26. LGBTQ is an abbreviation for a cluster of sexual behaviors and identities including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (depending on the source of the designation). See Mark D. Regnerus, Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 8–9. As researchers, we are not taking a particular theological or ethical position about same-sex attraction, identity, and marriage. Throughout this book, we are merely describing what we observed in the churches that grow young, as well as what we’ve gleaned from additional research. For help on how to talk to young people about this complicated and provocative issue, see Jim Candy, Brad M. Griffin, and Kara Powell, Can I Ask That? 8 Hard Questions about God and Faith (Pasadena, CA: Fuller Youth Institute, 2014), and Can I Ask That? Volume 2, released in 2015.
27. Bill Albert, Sarah Brown, and Christine M. Flanigan, 14 and Younger: The Sexual Behavior of Young Adolescents (Washington, DC: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2003).
28. Chap Clark, Hurt 2.0: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 31.
29. Robert Wuthnow, After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 216.
30. According to the Global Enterprise Monitor 2014 Global Report, 18 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds were starting or running new businesses. Babson College, “Entrepreneurship Rebounds Globally in 2014,” http:// www.babson.edu/News-Events/babson- news/Pages/2015-gem-global-report-shows-ambition-rising.aspx.
31. Smith and Snell, Souls in Transition, 72.
32. US Census Bureau, “New US Census Bureau Report Analyzes US Population Projections,” March 3, 2015, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-tps16.html.
33. Pew Research Center, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.”
34. Pew Research Center, “Children Under 12 Are Fastest Growing Group of Unaccompanied Minors at U.S. Border,” July 22, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014 /07/22/children-12-and-under-are-fastest -growing-group-of-unaccompanied-minors -at-u-s-border/.
35. As Christian Smith, lead researcher of the NSYR, describes, “For most of their lives, from preschool on, most emerging adults have been taught by multiple institutions to celebrate diversity, to be inclusive of difference, to overcome racial divides, to embrace multiculturalism, to avoid being narrowly judgmental toward others who are out of the ordinary.” Smith and Snell, Souls in Transition, 80.
36. Ibid., 80–81.
37. Andy Stanley, Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 159.
Chapter 4 Take Jesus’ Message Seriously
1. Dean, Almost Christian, 3.
2. Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of America’s Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 162–65.
3. Dean, Almost Christian, 3. Elsewhere she locates MTD more historically in some of the unhealthy aspects of Western culture: “After two and a half centuries of shacking up with ‘the American Dream,’ churches have perfected a dicey codependence between consumer-driven therapeutic individualism and religious pragmatism. These theological proxies gnaw, termite-like, at our identity as the Body of Christ, eroding our ability to recognize that Jesus’ life of self-giving love directly challenges the American gospel of self-fulfillment and self-actualization” (p. 5).
4. George C. Hunter III, The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West . . . Again (Nashville: Abingdon, 2000, 2010), 94.
5. Nancy T. Ammerman, “Golden Rule Christianity: Lived Religion in the American Mainstream,” in Lived Religion in America, ed. David Hall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 196–216.
6. Including terms related to “Son of God” and to the Trinity, or “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
7. Another study examining teenagers’ articulation of Jesus—who he is, what he has done, and why it matters—concluded that a majority of Christian adolescents hold incomplete images of Jesus when compared with orthodox faith. In fact, only about a quarter of the respondents believe Jesus is fully God and fully human. See Jen Bradbury, The Jesus Gap: What Teens Actually Believe about Jesus (San Diego: Youth Cartel, 2014).
8. Seventy-eight percent of college-age young people ages 19 to 23 in our study mentioned Jesus, sonship, or Trinity in their responses, which is notably closer to just 2 out of 10 leaving Jesus out of the gospel. It’s also worth noting that in previous research for Sticky Faith, 35 percent of young people did not mention Jesus in their responses to the question, “What does it mean to be a Christian?” The question was slightly different, but in this CEYP study, Jesus-centered responses were 5 percent more common. See Kara Powell, Brad M. Griffin, and Cheryl Crawford, Sticky Faith Youth Worker Edition (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 29.
9. One resource to help emerging adults develop a redemptive gospel narrative is Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014). Also see Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010).
10. Nancy Ammerman suggests, “Creating and telling stories of faith is at the heart of how congregations provide a heritage their children can take with them. Precisely because they will indeed take that heritage to many other places as adults, the stories told and experienced are essential.” Nancy Ammerman, “Journeys of Faith: Meeting the Challenges in Twenty-First-Century America,” in Passing On the Faith: Transforming Traditions for the Next Generation of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, ed. James L. Heft, S.M. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 49.
11. Formation experts David Setran and Chris Kiesling conclude that three things need to happen in order for emerging adults to move beyond MTD: reshape their loves (longings and desires), urge them to costly sacrifice, and call them to a life “with Christ” marked by regular practices and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. See chapter 2, “Spiritual Formation: Reversing Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” in David P. Setran and Chris A. Kiesling, Spiritual Formation in Emerging Adulthood: A Practical Theology for College and Young Adult Ministry (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 29–53.
12. Willard describes it this way: “History has brought us to the point where the Christian message is thought to be essentially concerned only with how to deal with sin: with wrongdoing or wrong-being and its effects. Life, our actual existence, is not included in what is now presented as the heart of the Christian message, or it is included only marginally.” Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1998), 41.
13. Similarly, in their study of congregations identified as exemplary in youth ministry practice, Martinson, Black, and Roberto conclude, “The purpose of youth ministry in the congregations we studied can be summarized in a single goal: making disciples of Jesus Christ. These congregations focus their youth ministries on Jesus Christ and engage young people in discipleship, witness, and service that transforms their lives. Effective youth ministries make a significant impact on the personal faith of young people by deepening their relationship with Jesus, helping them understand the faith better, applying their faith to daily life and serious life choices, and sharing their faith with others.” Roland D. Martinson, Wesley Black, and John Roberto, The Spirit and Culture of Youth Ministry: Leading Congregations toward Exemplary Youth Ministry (St. Paul: EYM, 2010), 14.
14. As they run, young people need us running alongside them, balancing challenge with ample support. Challenge without support can lead to toxic pressure to perform and ultimately to burnout. Support without challenge, on the other hand, leaves us coddling young people in their pursuit of self-soothing distractions. Entertainment is what happens when we don’t do either well.
15. Our quantitative faith maturity measure included nine items. See the research method and procedures in the appendix and on our website, www.churchesgrowingyoung .org, for further details.
16. For example, the story of David and Goliath becomes an admonition to be brave rather than a story of God’s miraculous rescue, or the parable of the sower becomes about our character as “good soil” rather than about God’s character as a generous sower.
17. Smith and Snell, Souls in Transition, 149.
18. For additional resources on how to explain the Bible within a larger narrative, see Mark Novelli, Shaped by the Story: Helping Students Encounter God in a New Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 2008); V. Roberts, God’s Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002); and N. T. Wright’s For Everyone series.
19. If the liturgical year is unfamiliar in your tradition, a quick online search will yield a number of free introductory resources. Some calendars include more seasons than others, but the most common are Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary (or Common) Time. Another helpful resource is Joan Chittister, The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010).
20. For a current version of the Reformation catechisms paired with contemporary teaching, see the complimentary resources developed by Tim Keller and Sam Shammas at www.newcitycatechism.com.
21. For more of the findings from this study, see Thomas Bergler and Dave Rahn, “Results of a Collaborative Research Project in Gathering Evangelism Stories,” Journal of Youth Ministry 4, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 65–74, and a related interview with Dave Rahn by Brad Griffin, “Re-Storying Conversion: Listening to Students’ Accounts of Coming to Christ,” available at https://fuller youthinstitute.org/articles/re-storying -conversion.
22. Richard Peace, Conversion in the New Testament: Paul and the Twelve (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).
23. Sharon Daloz Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Young Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 198.
24. Powell, Griffin, and Crawford, Sticky Faith Youth Worker Edition, 143–45.
25. The Fuller Youth Institute created a two-volume small group study to help teenagers and emerging adults explore some of the most common hard questions of faith. See Candy, Griffin, and Powell, Can I Ask That?: 8 Hard Questions about God and Faith and Can I Ask That? Volume 2: More Hard Questions about God and Faith.
26. See Steve Argue, “From Faith to Faithing: Could Faith Be a Verb?,” http://stickyfaith .org/articles/from-faith-to-faithing. Note that the term faithing is also used by Sharon Daloz Parks in Big Questions, Worthy Dreams.
27. Sociologist Robert Wuthnow similarly describes young people’s faithing process as tinkering: “The single word that best describes young adults’ approach to religion and spirituality—indeed life—is tinkering. A tinkerer puts together a life from whatever skills, ideas, and resources that are readily at hand. . . . If specialized skills are required, they have them. When they need help from experts, they seek it. But they do not rely on only one way of doing things.” Wuthnow, After the Baby Boomers, 13.
Chapter 5 Fuel a Warm Community
1. See for example Exod. 23:9; Deut. 10:18; 14:29; Matt. 25:34–36; Rom. 12:13; Heb. 13:2.
2. Christine D. Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 13.
3. Theologian Andrew Root asserts that this experience of belonging is most deeply felt when a young person senses that they are not the target or object of a ministry leader’s efforts but rather a person engaging with other persons. Root encourages adults to participate in the act of “place-sharing,” in which adults see and enter the reality—and suffering—of young people’s lives; in this space of authentic interaction, Christ is present. See Andrew Root, Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From a Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007).
4. This approach and phrase were championed by the Young Life movement in the mid-1900s, eventually making their way into church-based youth ministry practice.
5. The lack of mentoring in the church has been noted by others as a significant problem to address related to the retention of young adults. A 2014 Barna report found that young adults who continue their involvement in a local church beyond their teen years are twice as likely as those who don’t to have a close personal friendship with an older adult in their church. Seven out of 10 millennials who dropped out of church did not have a close friendship with an older adult, and nearly 9 out of 10 never had a mentor at their church. See Barna Group, Making Space for Millennials: A Blueprint for Your Culture, Ministry, Leadership, and Facilities (Ventura, CA: Barna, 2014), 48.
6. Kara Eckmann Powell, Brad M. Griffin, and Cheryl A. Crawford, Sticky Faith: Practical Ideas to Nurture Long-Term Faith in Teenagers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 75.
7. This is true across most American churches. Holly Allen and Christine Ross conclude, “Though church leaders endorse intergenerationality in general whenever they cite biblical metaphors such as ‘the body of Christ’ or ‘the family of God,’ in practice American mainline and evangelical churches generally conduct many of their services and activities . . . in age-segregated settings. Consequently, in the second decade of twenty-first-century America, all generations of the faith community—babies through nonagenarians—are seldom together.” Holly Catterton Allen and Christine Lawton Ross, Intergenerational Christian Formation: Bringing the Whole Church Together in Ministry, Community, and Worship (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012), 30–31.
8. Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 11.
9. See Warren S. Brown and Brad D. Strawn, The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Neuroscience, Psychology, and the Church (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 125.
10. Chap Clark also uses the helpful Pauline metaphor of adoption to encourage the enfolding of young people into the community. Adoption forces us to change when we become family. When you adopt a child, the family system itself must change so the child can become part of the system. Adopting people (of any age) into the church is the call of the gospel. Clark urges, “Adoptive ministry mandates that it is the responsibility of those in power to draw in, to include, and to equip all those who feel like outsiders so that they feel included in the very center of the family of God.” See “Adoption: Re-envisioning Youth Ministry and the Family of God,” in Chap Clark, Adoptive Youth Ministry: Integrating Emerging Generations into the Family of Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 2.
11. It’s worth noting here that despite the fact that we studied churches that are pretty warm, 10 percent of our interview respondents still wish that they had even more warmth and community! This highlights just how important warmth is for young people.
12. Brad’s church was one of 363 churches identified by 35 nominators as engaging young people well. While his church participated as one of 259 churches in Stage 1 and 41 churches in Stage 2, Brad never participated directly in any research communication or data gathering via surveys or interviews from his congregation. All data was analyzed anonymously and with names and other identifiers removed, including for the process of inclusion in Stage 2. See the research method in the appendix and at www.churchesgrowingyoung.org for more details about the selection method.
13. In the provocative book Slow Church, the authors explore connections between the “slow food” movement and Scripture’s vision of the church community embedded in a local neighborhood. While they offer a number of critiques and counternarratives to the “fast church” movement (akin to fast food), they conclude with a pair of remedies that sound a lot like warmth: eating together and sharing in conversation. See chapter 11, “Dinner Table Conversation as a Way of Being Church,” in C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison, Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014), 208–22.
Chapter 6 Prioritize Young People (and Families) Everywhere
1. First Baptist’s changes model what immigration researchers Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut call “selective acculturation,” where first-generation immigrant parents and second-generation children adapt to culture positively, “embedded in a co-ethnic community of sufficient size and institutional diversity to slow down the cultural shift and promote partial retention of the parents’ home language and norms.” Their research finds that selective acculturation is “closely intertwined with preservation of fluent bilingualism and linked, in turn, with higher self-esteem, higher educational and occupational expectations, and higher academic achievement.” Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut, Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 54, 274.
2. Sticky Faith has been part of this shift, but we also applaud the influential work of our friends at Orange for pioneering incredible momentum within children’s and youth ministry toward more intentional partnership between families and churches. See www.orangeleaders.com.
3. “The best general rule of thumb that parents might use to reckon their children’s most likely religious outcomes is this: ‘We’ll get what we are.’” Smith and Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching, 57. The importance of parental example is confirmed in a number of studies, including Pam E. King and Ross A. Mueller, “Parental Influence on Adolescent Religiousness: Exploring the Roles of Spiritual Modeling and Social Capital,” Marriage and Family: A Christian Journal 6, no. 3 (2003): 401–13.
4. Note that these findings were based on Stage 1 surveys of pastors assessing parent participation and young people’s vibrancy and faith maturity, not the later interviews of parents and groups of young people.
5. Leaders regularly cite the statistic that 50 percent of all marriages in the US end in divorce. New data suggests this is inaccurate. According to the Census Bureau, 72 percent of those who have ever been married are still married to their first spouse. Included in the remaining 28 percent who are not married to their first spouse are those whose spouse has passed away. Given this data, one reliable estimate concludes that 20 to 25 percent of first marriages end in divorce. Shaunti Feldhahn, The Good News about Marriage: Debunking Discouraging Myths about Marriage and Divorce (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2014), 19–22.
6. Elizabeth Marquardt, Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005), 48, 59, 85.
7. Arnett, Emerging Adulthood, 60–61.
8. Marquardt, Between Two Worlds, 155.
9. This saying is popularly attributed to Peter Drucker, though he did not include the direct statement in his own writings.
10. Italics added in this version but not in the original survey.
11. One midwestern Roman Catholic cathedral in particular stirs reverence, awe, and a sense of rootedness in tradition that matters deeply to both young and old.
12. Judith M. Gundry-Volf, “The Least and the Greatest,” in The Child in Christian Thought, ed. Marcia J. Bunge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 34.
13. Mary Ann Hinsdale, “‘Infinite Openness to the Infinite’: Karl Rahner’s Contributions to Modern Catholic Thought on the Child,” in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought, 428.
14. See www.orangeleaders.com for more resources and a detailed look at the Orange strategy.
Chapter 7 Be the Best Neighbors
1. See Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2008), 23. Crouch credits cultural critic Ken Myers for this phrase as used in Albert Louis Zambone, “But What Do You Think, Ken Myers?,” re:generation quarterly 6, no. 3 (2000).
2. Timothy J. Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 22.
3. By using these terms, we mean joining God in “righting wrongs” in the world so that all people might have the opportunity to flourish or to experience the shalom (holistic well-being) that God intends.
4. Quote from Kuyper’s inaugural address at the dedication of the Free University. Found in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 488.
5. Makoto Fujimura, Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life (New York: Fujimura Institute and International Arts Movement, 2015), Kindle edition, location 7041.
6. Gabe Lyons, The Next Christians: The Good News about the End of Christian America (New York: Doubleday Religion, 2010), 59.
7. Pew Research Center, “The Most and Least Racially Diverse U.S. Religious Groups,” July 27, 2015, http://www.pewresearch.org /fact-tank/2015/07/27/the-most-and-least -racially-diverse-u-s-religious-groups/.
8. Soong-Chan Rah, The Next Evangelicalism: Releasing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009), 12.
9. Specifically, statistically significant correlations were found between diversity at this level and emphasizing social justice and serving others in need; teaching people how to interact with cultural and societal issues; helping people understand that faith is about more than behaviors or following rules; having engaging worship services; faith influencing friendships; and having young people who take time to read and study the Bible.
10. For more helpful discussion on this topic, see chapter 5 on vocation in Setran and Kiesling, Spiritual Formation in Emerging Adulthood.
11. We found a positive relationship between churches being intentional in engaging cultural issues and both vibrant faith in young people and overall church participation in identified measures of church health.
12. Crouch, Culture Making, 67.
13. US Census Bureau, “Most Children Younger Than Age 1 Are Minorities, Census Bureau Reports,” news release, May 17, 2012, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb12-90.html.
14. While we’ve heard of this idea from multiple sources, it can be found in Chris Heuertz and Christine Pohl, Friendship at the Margins: Discovering Mutuality in Service and Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010).
15. For more reflection on approaching service, mission, and justice with more reciprocity, see Chap Clark and Kara Powell, Deep Justice in a Broken World: Helping Your Kids Serve Others and Right the Wrongs around Them (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007) and David A. Livermore, Serving with Eyes Wide Open: Doing Short-Term Missions with Cultural Intelligence, updated ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013).
16. Kara Powell and Brad M. Griffin, Sticky Faith Service Guide: Moving Students from Mission Trips to Missional Living (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 17.
17. For example, see Gen. 12:1–9; 1 Sam. 3:1–21; Isa. 6:1–13; Jer. 1:1–10; Matt. 4:18–22; 16:24–28; 20:20–28; 1 Pet. 2:9–10.
18. Mark Labberton, Called: The Crisis and Promise of Following Jesus Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014).
Chapter 8 Growing Young in Your Context
1. This work has taken place through our Sticky Faith Cohorts, which are learning communities of churches that participate in a yearlong dynamic interplay between research and the implications of research for specific church contexts. The cohort process includes a church/youth ministry assessment, monthly online webinars, two three-day summits in Pasadena, a strategic plan for implementing change, and customized coaching.
2. Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), 14.
3. Scott Cormode, “Leadership Begins with Listening,” Fuller Theological Seminary, http://leadership.fuller.edu/Leadership /Classes/CF565/Wk01-03/Leadership_Begins _with_Listening.aspx.
4. Appreciative Inquiry is an effective approach to listening well in order to bring about change. Our colleague at Fuller Seminary, Dr. Mark Lau Branson, has successfully applied this approach to congregations. See Mark Lau Branson, Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry and Congregational Change (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004).
5. To better understand how pastors can respond to “longings and losses” and “the things that keep people awake at night,” please see D. Scott Cormode, Making Spiritual Sense: Christian Leaders as Spiritual Interpreters (Nashville: Abingdon, 2006), xiii–xvi.
6. Scott Cormode, “A Shared Story of Future Hope,” Fuller Theological Seminary, http://leadership.fuller.edu/Leadership/Re sources/Part_2-Three_Ways_to_Lead/IV _The_Cultural_or_Interpretative_Ap proach_to_Leading/D_Meaning_Making _Leaders_Proclaim_Vision/1_A_Shared _Story_of_Future%C2%A0Hope.aspx.
7. Ammerman, “Journeys of Faith,” 49–50.
8. Heifetz and Linsky, Leadership on the Line, 102–16.
9. Scott Cormode, “Leading for Transformative Change,” Fuller Theological Seminary, http://leadership.fuller.edu/Leadership /Resources/Part_4_Leading_for_Transformative_Change.aspx.
10. Ronald A. Heifetz and Donald L. Laurie, “The Work of Leadership,” Harvard Business Review, December 2001, 135.
Appendix
1. For example, in the Stage 1 survey, church leaders were asked to think of a young person with vibrant faith in Jesus Christ and then describe three to five characteristics of what that young person’s faith looks like. The leader then rated (based on that description) what percentage of the young people in their church have a vibrant faith. A youth leader was also asked to select the percentage of young people in the congregation who participated in particular faith practices or actions believed to correlate with mature faith. In Stage 2 interviews, participants were asked to rate how true particular statements were of their congregation, such as, “My congregation effectively equips people to grow as followers of Jesus Christ.” Young people themselves were asked to rate how true particular statements were that might describe their own faith practices. These statements comprised a nine-item scale utilizing significantly modified items from the Faith Maturity Scale popularized by the Search Institute. See Benson, Donahue, and Erickson, “The Faith Maturity Scale,” 1–26. Finally, during Stage 3 site visits, the research team assessed vibrant faith through observation and asking interview and focus group participants for their perspective on the spiritual vibrancy of the church. While none of these measures alone were comprehensive or gave the team a full picture, they provided a sufficient understanding to accomplish the goals of this project.
2. While multiple scholarly works formed the basis for the research design, the research team found Anne Colby and William Damon, Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment (New York: Free Press, 1992); and Pamela Ebstyne King, C. E. Clardy, and J. S. Ramos, “Adolescent Spiritual Exemplars: Exploring Spirituality in the Lives of Diverse Youth,” Journal of Adolescent Research 29, no. 2 (2014): 186–212, to be particularly helpful in the development of an exemplar methodology. The work of several sociologists of religion, including Nancy Ammerman, Christian Smith, and Robert Wuthnow, were also invaluable to the overall research design.
3. In addition to submitting names of 15 noteworthy churches, nominators were also invited to submit the names of up to 10 churches that are “more typical in their engagement of young people.” This group of more typical churches was not central to the project’s exemplar methodology but was pursued as a matched comparison sample in order to examine if any significant differences would be found between the more typical and noteworthy churches.
4. Nominators were provided with the project’s working definition of an effective church.
5. While designing this nomination process, the research team considered providing more specific criteria. However, after much discussion the decision was made to leave the criteria somewhat open to the interpretation of the nominator. This allowed the team to identify and learn from a wide variety of churches that the expert nominators believed to be noteworthy, including those that might not fit the initial expectations of what the research team thought it meant for a church to be effective. This resulted in nominated churches that were perceived as effective in their engagement of young people.
6. For example, one question in this scale was, “How intentional is your congregation in planning activities that cultivate relationships where peers can share honestly with each other?”
7. For example, “What percentage of the young people in your congregation take time to read and study the Bible?”
8. To view the survey instruments used in each stage of the research, please visit www .churchesgrowingyoung.org.
9. Since the Stage 1 analyses demonstrated a relationship between these characteristics and church effectiveness, the research team found them to be viable selection criteria.
10. The team determined that this characteristic was the most broadly stated of the eight and most widely interpreted by Stage 1 participants. Therefore, the team sought to understand the topic better in Stages 2 and 3 rather than use it as selection criteria for inclusion in Stage 2.
11. The research team determined to wait to conduct interviews and focus groups with minors (ages 15 to 17) until the church site visits in Stage 3. This decision was made so that the project could be explained and informed consent could be obtained from parents in person.
12. For example, one question in this scale was, “How true is it that your church teaches people how to interact with cultural and societal issues?”
13. For example, one question in this scale was, “How true is it that you talk about your faith with others who are not Christians?” An example of an open-ended question about faith maturity is, “In a few sentences, how would you describe the central message of the gospel, or Good News, of Christianity?”
14. Participants were asked to indicate their household income as compared to their perception of the national norm.
15. For example, one church was going through a significant staff change as three of its paid leaders had left the church since the time the Stage 2 interviews began. This change would have made it difficult for the FYI research team to conduct the necessary research.
16. These composite scores were calculated based on average ratings for each church of the statements, “My church effectively equips people to grow as followers of Jesus Christ,” “My church equips people to follow Jesus in their job, at school, or the other daily activities of life,” and “My church helps people know and understand the gospel, or Good News, of Christianity.”
17. Fuller’s statement of faith can be found online. To better understand our beliefs, please visit http://fuller.edu/About /Mission-and-Values/What-We-Believe -and-Teach/.