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'A recent survey of the Anglican Communion has shown that
the average Anglican is aged between twenty and thirty, is
brown-skinned, poor, lives in the Two-thirds world, and is
evangelical.' So wrote Chris Sugden five years ago. The contrast
with the Church of England could not be more stark. As far
as average age is concerned, those between twenty and thirty
are the least represented group in the English church. In
the last two decades of the twentieth century the numbers
of people attending church while in their twenties dropped
by 45%. This decline is accelerating. The 1990s saw a loss
in this age group of half as many again as that of the 80s.
The Church of England suffered the largest part of this decline
in the 90s.
But work with young adults is vital. I am chairman of the
Soul Survivor Trust and therefore have a major commitment
to ministry among teenagers. But all those who work with adolescents
know that they are going through a major time of identity
formation. They are exploring Christian faith while, at the
same time, discovering who they are. Young adults are beyond
adolescence but have often not yet made irrevocable life commitments.
Our ministry with them is vital as it can result in life long
Christian vocation.
Culture change
The Church's struggle to hold on to younger people should
not surprise us. The last few decades have seen a cultural
shift of substantial proportions. According to a recent book
by Callum Brown, the 1960's saw a social revolution which
brought about 'The death of a culture which formerly conferred
Christian identity upon the British people as a whole.' In
other words Christendom - where Christian belief provided
the context for public debate and the Church was seen as central
to society, even by those who don't go - ceased to function.
It did not disappear as a way of viewing the world. It just
became a minority opinion. The children who grew up in the
sixties and seventies (often known as the Baby Boomers) may
have rebelled against Christian morality, and experimented
with drugs and Eastern religion, but they did know the Christian
story from school and Sunday school. Many of their children,
(often known as Generations X and Y) do not. They are not
shaped by it and they see no reason to take it seriously.
The closing decades of the twentieth century were also the
decades of the new electronic media. Tex Sample has written
'It is no secret that those most influenced by electronic
culture participate in church at far lower levels than those
of previous generations.
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I believe that the failure of the church, as of yet, to
deal with the changes brought on by an electronic culture
is a basic factor in the lower levels of participation of
post-World War 2 electronic generations.' For example up to
500,000 young people a week go clubbing (more than those who
attend spectator sports, cinema, theatre, live music and comedy
combined).The watershed age group for clubbing is the mid-twenties.
Although more and more thirty year olds and over now attend.
To those raised in the rock era, or whose musical boundaries
do not extend beyond Classic FM, this is an unknown world.
The massive cultural changes of the last twenty years have
resulted in a radically different way of seeing and interpreting
the world. These social forces change the way we experience
time and space. 'At a profound social level, time and space,
the very matrix of human social life, are undergoing radical
social restructuring.' We communicate electronically across
the world 'in no time.' We live in a society which expects
everything to be 'instant.' Distance is no longer an obstacle.
So the neighbourhood is no longer a commitment. Mobility is
a norm. The power of places to provide identity is being 'replaced'
by the power of flows of information, capital and power in
a networked society. Whether or not 'postmodern' is the best
title for this cultural era, what is clear is that it is both
different to what has gone before and 'normal' to young people
and young adults. It requires a renewal of imagination about
the form of mission and therefore the form of the church.
Rather than be surprised at the lack of young adults in the
church, we should be grateful that we have any at all. We
are in a new missionary situation and a significant proportion
of young adults cannot be reached by the Christendom based
strategies with which the Church of England is accustomed.
As Andrew Walls has written 'It is now too late to treat Western
society as in some sort of decline from Christian standards,
to be brought back to the church by preaching and persuasion.
Modern Western society, taken as a whole, reflects one of
the great non-Christian cultures of the world.' We have no
choice about being missionaries.
Gospel priority
The Church of England is not called to reach this emerging
generation because of falling numbers, or because it needs
to do so to survive. The Church of England is called to reach
them because the gospel requires it. The licensing of any
reader or priest includes the reading of the preface to the
Declaration of Assent. Every licensed minister agrees that
the Gospel must be proclaimed afresh 'in each generation'.
But in a time of cultural change 'to proclaim afresh' has
ecclesiological implications. When culture changes the church
cannot remain the same. In particular the geographically based
parochial system needs to be supplemented by a network approach.
In a paper for the House of Bishops Michael Nazi Ali has written
that 'the shapes of the church in the future will be both
territorial and networked.'
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The Church of England is a national church. It has a commitment
to reach all types of people in all places, not just where
it is easier, or in the ways that it is used to. As Robin
Greenwood has written 'The agenda of the local church must
always be to include rather than exclude. Unconsciously churches
reject large tracts of humanity by failing to make provision
for them to find a 'space' which they can occupy without automatically
denying their culture, music, way of speech, or capacity to
handle texts and concepts.' For young adults to find a space
we will need new approaches to church and patterns of discipleship.
There is then a tension today between our church structures
and our missionary responsibility. But our core identity is
missionary, or we have no claim to be a national church!
First steps
But first steps to establish ministry focused on young adults
are already being taken in the Church of England. Christian
Research have done helpful work on the characteristics of
Generations X and Y. St. Thomas Crookes in Sheffield is one
of the largest Anglican churches in the north of England,
with up to 2000 attending on a Sunday. 80% of the congregation
is under 40, most in their twenties and thirties. Tribal Training,
a year's discipleship course pioneered at St Thomas's is now
being offered by parishes in London, Canterbury, Cheltenham
and Dublin. The Tribal Generation website offers imaginative
resources, links and support. At the summer New Wine events
an 'emerging generation' seminar track began last summer and
will be developed further this year. Our target audience at
the Soul Survivor Summer festivals is 13 to 25. A series of
seminars for 20s was introduced last year, alongside a series
of seminars for young leaders.
Future articles in this series will spell out the main principles
for working with this generation and their culture. But work
must begin with an understanding of their world and the way
they see it. In a post-Christendom context mission is 'go
to' not 'come to'. New ministries established will have to
be hospitable to their culture and concerns. As Robin Greenwood
wrote, it has to provide a 'space' for them. They will often
need to belong before they will either believe, or be open
to whatever changes in behaviour the gospel may require of
them.
It is often said that children in the church are part of the
church of today not the church of tomorrow. Of course, this
also applies to those in their twenties. But at a time of
profound cultural change we either plant the gospel and the
church into this emerging generation; the first adult generation
of a new cultural era. Or in a few decades time the gospel
will be alien to most age groups in our nation. The gospel
must be 'proclaimed afresh' in this generation, for the sake
of many future generations. What seems like an experiment
for a minority of Anglicans may well shape the whole Church
of England for years to come.
Graham Cray
Article by The
Church of England Newspaper
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