Lausanne World Pulse – Mission among Young People in “Secular” Europe
By Jonny Baker
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In the United Kingdom, there have been two recent research projects into the spirituality of 14 to 25-year-olds.1 Both were based on personal interviews with groups of young people. Making Sense of Generation Y was commissioned under the assumption that there is a rise in interest in spirituality among young people. The goal was to try to “tease out” this spiritual interest through discussions of various expressions of popular culture.
The approach to “teasing out” spiritual seekers was subtle, using indirect lures rather than a direct approach. The conclusion, which was initially difficult for the researchers, was that the assumption was wrong: “We argue that the allegedly widespread phenomenon of a growth in eclectic spiritual seeking among young people is illusory.”2 Researchers concluded that young people are not interested in spiritual things, but rather that it is a story the Church likes to tell itself. Their interviewees’ worldview, what the authors describe as a “happy midi narrative,” revolves around young people and their friends being happy together in the here and now and overcoming problems through those friendships toward that end.
Buried Spirituality, published a year earlier, took a much more direct approach. Phil Rankin sought groups of young people and used two direct questions out of which conversation grew: Would you perceive yourself to be spiritual? and What do you think the word “spiritual” means? His findings were very different. Young people were open and willing to engage in conversation around these questions. He concluded that young people are asking spiritual questions, are keen to reflect upon spirituality, and many are having spiritual experiences. However, this spirituality is often buried within the pressures of everyday life and not always named because young people struggle to find a language with which to articulate these experiences.
Both reports also commented on young peoples’ perceptions of church, and here they occupy some common ground which makes for pretty uncomfortable reading. “Boring,” “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” “uncool,” and “culturally alien” come out in Generation Y,3 while Rankin can only summarise the views in the sentence, “Church is s**t.” This may seem shocking; however, he argues strongly that this is the most honest statement: “The vast majority of young people do view the church as irrelevant, controlling, etc., but it is [this] description that seems to combine these negative observations.”4
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Jonny Baker works for the Church Mission Society, developing and supporting mission and new ways of being church in the emerging culture. He runs proost.co.uk, a creative company that produces inspiring resources that fuel faith. Baker is a London independent photographer and blogs at jonnybaker.blogs.com. |