Posted on 03/31/2015 9:49:18 AM PDT by Gamecock
Most evangelism programs, church growth tactics, and other attempts to reach the “unchurched” concentrate on Millennials, young urbanites, college types, and the suburban middle class. But, as Robert Putnam reminds us, the demographic that is the most unchurched is the working class, the lower income non-college-educated folks. A big segment of these blue-collar workers has just stopped going to church. They are also, with the personal and family problems that Putnam documents, arguably, most in need of ministry. This is ironic, since the working class used to be the biggest supporters of conservative Christianity. And yet, I’m unaware of any concerted effort to reach them, other than individual pastors in these communities doing what they can.I’m as middle class as they come, but I have a lot of affinity with these folks, having grown up in rural Oklahoma and working on jobs that for me were temporary ways of paying for school but for them were their permanent livelihoods. They are typically good-natured, hard-working, and admirable in many ways. But I can see in my old friends–more accurately, the adult children of those friends–the break-down that Putnam documents.
So many young men and women in this slice of the culture are just not getting married, showing no interest in it, being content to live together in serial relationships. The men are fathering children, but have little to do with them. The women choose to have children without bothering with a husband, but then they have to work multiple jobs to provide for them while often leaving them more or less on their own.
The individuals often derided as “red necks,” listen to country music rather than rap, metal, or other art forms criticized for their baleful influence. They never went to college to learn from a left wing professor about postmodernism and how morality is culturally relative. But they are as postmodernist and relativist as they can be. They are, arguably, casualties of contemporary thought, living out its consequences, but without the social capital that college graduates have that allows them to live a stable life despite their ideology.
Working class young adults are the farthest removed from the hippies of the ’60s, but lots of them in small town America smoke weed and are addicted to crystal meth.
This demographic is often conservative politically, but if they bother to vote they will do so for Hillary Clinton, since they see Bill as one of their own and his administration was the last time they were financially ahead.
They are often religious. I pity the new atheist who would hold forth in a red neck bar. But they tend not to go to church.
My sense is that these souls are imminently reachable. A generation or two ago, they were bulwarks of conservative Christianity, both Roman Catholics in the cities and fundamentalists in the country. They tend to hold a non-reflective “good-people-go-to-Heaven-and-bad-people-go-to-Hell” theology, but, sinners that they are–and they tend to know they are sinners–they can be receptive to the Gospel. They need teaching and discipleship. They need pastoral care. They need to be accepted as part of a spiritual community.
Can it be that American Christianity, with roots in this culture, has become so prosperous and middle class that it would rather not deal with people from this social class? I’m sure that one could have a more interesting theological discussion with a young college graduate than with the young man who fixes your car. Ministering to cool people allows indulging one’s own inner bohemian, and hanging out at coffee shops and film festivals is more pleasant for most church workers than going inside a run-down honky tonk. Research indicates that after middle class young adults just starting out go through their cool phase and get married and have kids (which most of them will), they will start going back to church. But the mechanics and construction workers and factory hands who go to the honky tonks probably won’t.
Certainly, we need to proclaim the Gospel to everyone, and I don’t want to downplay the importance of evangelizing millennials, urbanites, college students, and everyone else. But doesn’t the church need to give some attention to the main demographic where the unchurched are?
Furthermore, what Putnam says and what I’ve just said, doesn’t apply to all working-class people. Many have built loving marriages and are good parents. They have resisted the pathologies that Putnam documents. That they have done so against so many odds and at the cost of great struggle makes them even more admirable.
Many still are strong Christians and church members. In fact, I would say that most of our churches in the boarded-up small towns of mid-America and in the rust-belt cities still have them as their faithful backbone. That such churches are often struggling is a testimony that they are on the front lines of American Christianity. They and the pastors that serve them deserve more credit and more support.
Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2015/03/who-the-unchurched-really-are/#ixzz3VyznDXUI
Exactly.
I bet they watch Duck Dynasty.
thank you for posting this.
it is an important reminder to those of us in the urban churches trying to reach millenials in their condos, that there are other unreached populations as well
501(c)3 Churches slept with the devil and are now paying the price. Matthew 15:8-9
I am a boomer. Church offers me nothing.
My religion is in my heart and between me, God and His Son.
No 3rd party needed.
In the olden days churches were social constructs, not religious ones. It is rarely about ministry IMO.
>>Churches slept with the devil and are now paying the price. Matthew 15:8-9<<
IMHO (I seem to have them a lot right now), it is bad form to issue a reference without the underlying text.
Said text:
“8This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
9But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”
Mexicans play soccer on Sunday
Baloney.
Wait until this comng Sunday, Easter Sunday comes, the churches will be packed.
Discuss.
Now granted I have a small subset, as I attend one church in my city. But my church is made up of millennials, at 55 I am truly one of the oldest people there.
I have scratched my head wondering what all these young professionals are doing here. After all, the media portrays that demographic as not being churched.
Jesus said if we love him, we’ll keep His commandments. I go to church not because I feel like it, or because I feel particularly blessed or always loved, but because it’s my way of saying “I love you” to Jesus.
As far as ministry opportunities, I know that the members at my church are swamped with too much work and not enough laborers, so we would welcome anyone who wished to pitch in with grateful hearts.
Good article.
I know many of these types, they can sound conservative and Christian, but being uneducated in it, they have absorbed a lot of the media message and may sound conservative, while saying that they will vote democrat, or they may sound like a Christian, while parroting anti-Christianity that they have absorbed from the media and TV and they can end up as more of a libertarian type, rejecting actually voting as a Christian.
These are the people that at first glance you feel like you are both roughly on the same page of life politically and religiously, but after a few minutes of conversation, you find yourself listening to the media’s talking points about the major issues and public figures of the day.
Perhaps you listen for a while and think that the guy is a natural for Palin or Cruz, but when you mention the name, boom, he sounds like MSNBC.
>>Jesus said if we love him, we’ll keep His commandments.<<
Nothing in the Commandments about going to church. The IV (both versions) says “keep the Sabbath Holy.”
Nothing about Church.
To take a day from labor and concentrate on God? Yep, I do.
Hebrews 10:25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Meeting with who? Certainly doesn’t mean family, but other believers.
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James 5:16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
How do you confess your sins to if you stay home and don’t go to church?
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1 Peter 5:1-4 To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder ... Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.
Do you have a shepherd? Someone that is the overseer of your soul?
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Hebrews 13:17
Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.
Who must give an account for you? Clearly this means someone else.
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Luke 4:16 says, “He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.”
If it was the habit if Jesus, and he never said stop doing this, why should we stop going to the Lord’s?
You are veering into Catholicism, with which I have a interesting relationship.
As for the rest, I can certainly find as many quotes (Matthew, my man) saying religion is between an individual and God alone.
Cherry picking Biblical quotes does not serve you, I nor God.
But I appreciate your desire to minister to me and take it with the love you undoubtedly intended.
Bless you and thank you.
Granted as well that my own experience might well be considered subjective, But:
I am redneck as redneck can be. Pretty much anything to do with being a cowboy, a farmer, or a hillbilly, I have done, and I have done it in spades. By far and away, all my friends are redneck too - I live the country life, and have done so by the hospitality of my kith and kin across most of the Midwest and the Rockies. And everywhere I have been has been exactly the same: If there is anywhere that faith is still strong in this nation, it is among those Country folks. Salt of the Earth.
I thank YHWH I was able to raise my kids up Country, simply because the Country way offers far less dangers to young adults - Moonshine, whiskey, beer, and women... maybe a little weed... I don't endorse those things but that is WAY less to worry about than what city life would expose them to. Do they rebel and kick up their heels? sure they do. But they have far more chance of coming back to what their daddy and mamma taught them than their city-side contemporaries.
Elders are still respected. Not only respected, but loved. Women are still respected. All are mindful of the children to include the young adults... God is in everything, even the music (which cannot be said among any others). These folks grow up praying, be it at the dinner table, the grange party or rodeo, and yes, even NASCAR, 4WD, and Performance Boating events. They grow up poor and dependent upon the land and weather, and nothing will bring you closer to God than that.
These are my people,and I have preached, be it by word or song, around many a campfire, in honkytonks, standing on a tailgate at a bonfire, or in the back of a mechanic shop or woodmill (btw, the comment, 'I’m sure that one could have a more interesting theological discussion with a young college graduate than with the young man who fixes your car' is most certainly false). If y'all can't get them to come to your preachin' then you ain't preachin' the Word. That's just a fact. Folks get tired of feel-good psychology and debates on Plato vs. Socrates.
Thanks for your perspective!
(Oh, I am the biggest redneck in my church as well. Granted I am an overeducated redneck, but still.)
**You are veering into Catholicism**
How? I am doing nothing more than quoting Scripture.
**As for the rest, I can certainly find as many quotes (Matthew, my man) saying religion is between an individual and God alone.**
Salvation certainly is between man and God. No argument there. But the verses I am quoting are more about the Christian life.
**But I appreciate your desire to minister to me and take it with the love you undoubtedly intended.88
Thanks! And it was.
**Bless you and thank you.**
And you too.
Excellent article. Thanks.
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