On Wednesday Night, Sep 7^th , we will be studying some demographics. I recently had 2 articles “hit my inbox” on the same day about two large demographic groups in our society.

The first article was about a 75 million person group called  “Millennials” who were born between 1980 and 2000 and are currently between 16 and 36 years of age. According to the Pew Research Center, this group loves to consider themselves politically independent but tend to vote liberal on issues like big government, gay marriage, marijuana legalization,  immigration, etc. About two thirds do not classify themselves as “a religious person.” The reasons they gave for becoming “nones” are:

-being raised in the church and seeing the hypocrisy of some members,

-belief in science instead of God, and

-distrust of organized religion.

Instead of building relationships in person, millennials often make connections through electronic social media. Only about 1 in 4 millennials is married when about half of the “baby boomers” were married at that age. How does the church reach the 29% “unchurched” in this group?

The second article was about another 75 million person group called “Baby Boomers” who were born between 1946 and 1964 and are currently between 52 and 70 years of age. According to the Christian Index, half of this group has no affiliation with a local congregation. In the next 10-15 years, this group will be dealing with problems associated with aging like health issues and a shortage of retirement funds which will force many to continue to work past the traditional retirement age. Since the world is more mobile than ever before, many boomers live hundreds of miles from their family. How does the church reach the 16% “unchurched” in this group?

There’s another group “sandwiched” in between these 2 groups that doesn’t seem to get as much research called  “Generation X.”  This group was born between 1965 and 1979 and are currently between 37 and 51 years of age. This group is also “sandwiched” between parenting their children and caregiving for their parents. Generation X was the first generation where their parents had access to birth control pills and legal abortion – still they number 65 million. Gen X trends and attitudes fall in the middle between Boomers and Millennials when it comes to politics and religion. This generation was the first generation to grow up with computers, video games, and MTV.  There was also a doubling of the divorce rate with “no-fault divorce” and the term “latch key kids” described the number of children who were home alone because both mother and father were still at work. According to Pew Research, these factors have worked together to make Gen X “savvy, skeptical and self-reliant…and not giv[ing] much of a hoot what others think of them.” How does the church reach the 21% “unchurched” in this group?

Please answer the following question as we prepare for this discussion. (You may select more than one.)

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