Two blogs ago I began a series looking at context, claiming that the CHURCH universal has always had local expressions, in which the eternal truths of the gospel have been interpreted and made known in culturally relevant forms within many different particular contexts.
I’d like to expand on this thought theologically. Just as God was incarnated in human form through the historical life of Jesus Christ, so also today God is incarnated in human form through the historical life of a local congregation. Each congregation is the body of Christ, formed in a certain context. This means the local congregation has been shaped by that context and in turn, influences that context with the gospel message.
Thus, churches are contextual, and are called to continually do the work of contextualization, which is the work of reading one’s context and translating the gospel message and ministries of the church into one’s context.
Context refers to two arenas to read in doing the work of contextualization:
- Immediate–local community
- Larger–region, country, place in history
Context refers to both the immediate context, the local community, but also the larger context of the region, country, and time in history in which a congregation exists. Thus we may speak of a congregation in the context of Sunnyvale (my town), which is flavored by the culture of Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Bay area, California, the United States of America, etc. We may speak of a congregation’s context also including the denomination of which they are a part. We may also speak of context in terms of time-it means something different to be the church in 21st Century America than it did to be the church in mid-20th Century America.
Some “Buckets” of the Larger Context:
- Religious Trends in the US
- Shift from Modern to Post-Modern society (and living in between with both!)
- Immigration Trends in the US
Today I will focus on—-Religious Trends in the US: (Taken from the 2008 Pew Report Website, or click here for PDF version of the report)
Note to clergy: We are often aware of these larger religious trends, but as I work with congregations, I find that an amazing number of lay leaders are not. Helping people see these trends can be helpful in two ways: 1) People don’t feel alone when they see how their church has been impacted by these larger trends AND 2) They feel a greater urgency for change.
In 2006:
- 25% of age 18-29 are religiously unaffiliated
- 16% of all adults are unaffiliated
- 18% of all adults are mainline Protestant Churches
- 51.3% of adults are Protestant (this category consists of 3 groups, one of which are the mainline Protestants)
The Pew Report compares the unaffiliated percentages from the youngest and oldest group, concluding that the decline of the mainline Protestant churches is likely to continue:
- 25% of age 18-29 are unaffiliated, compared to the 8% of those 70 and older.
- 43% of age 18-29 are Protestant, compared to 62% of those 70 and older.
Mainline Protestant churches across the country have a higher proportion of older members, and white members.
From 1970-2006, the proportion of Protestants has greatly decreased, while the proportion of religiously unaffiliated people has significantly increased. Through the 1980’s, unaffiliated ran between 5%-8%, but is now almost doubled at 16%. Of this percentage, 6.3% are “secular” unaffiliated and 5.8% are “religious” unaffiliated. (1.6% are atheist and 2.4% are agnostic). Of the 16% unaffiliated in the total population, 44% were raised Protestant and 27% were raised Catholic.
The West coast has the largest proportion of unaffiliated, including atheist and agnostic, so these percentages of 16%, 1.6% and 2.4% would be higher for California than for other parts of the country (unaffiliated in California runs 22%). There are less mainline Protestants in general on the West coast. Of the total 18% of mainline Protestants in the US, 19% are in the Northeast, 22% are in the Midwest, 17% are in the South and 15% are in the West (14% in California).
What does all this say? For West coast mainline Protestant churches, if you think “doing church” is getting harder and harder, that’s because it is! More young adults are unaffiliated, thus partially explaining the lament of many congregations– that young adults are no longer coming to church. Since 44% of the total 16% religiously unaffiliated were raised Protestant, and 27% were raised Catholic, this means that a majority of these people have some familiarity with the Christian story.
It is interesting to put these statistics alongside John 4:34-36:
34“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.”
Religiously unaffiliated people in the U.S. doubled from 1970 to 2006, and one could see this as a ripe field for harvest. This field probably contains soil that would need to be tilled and softened, followed by planting and nurturing seeds. This is a long process in which reaping may come at a later day. Do churches have patience for this kind of work?
Next week: Postmodernism
After Note, Trends by Zip Code: Another way to get at religious trends would be to look at the data on the American Religion Data Archive for your zip code. http://www.thearda.com/
Click one of the links in this sentence to see a sample of how I reported of this data for United Methodist or Presbyterian USA in Santa Clara County, CA.
To prepare your own document such as this: On this home page scroll down to US Congregational Membership Reports, Enter the church’s zip code and hit “GO”. Copy and paste all the info into a separate WORD doc.[1] This will give you the most recent report.
Do the same with the 1990, 1980 and change (see horizontal tabs under red “Report”) Copy and paste. You are looking for the change from 1990-2000 (and you can include 1980).[2]
You are mainly paying attention to that first bar graph with “Evangelical Protestant,” “Mainline Protestant,”…..to “Unaffiliated.” NOTE: as a mainline church, you are included in “Mainline Protestant” and not “Evangelical Protestant.” The latter is the designation for non-denominational churches outside of Mainline Protestant.
You want to capture the data for Mainline Protestant, Catholic, a few other religions and then most importantly, “Unaffiliated.”
This would be an excellent document to discuss at one board meeting, asking the following questions:
- What do you see about the larger religious profile of your county?
- What does that mean for your church?
- How do the movements in the religious profile of your county mirror the movements in your congregation’s data?
1. There’s a lot of other stuff you can explore on this website. For fun, you can scroll down to very bottom of home page, enter your data and take the “Baylor 2005″ survey and see how you compare to others in the nation with your demographic profile.)
2. You can also attempt to make a customized report by clicking on US Map further down the home page from UC Congregational Reports. Click on Report, choose type of report. I suggest using the dot method of constructing your area. Copy and paste the report generated into a WORD doc.
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