Recently the Barna Group and the reThink Group teamed up to explore how having a child influences a parent’s connection to a church or faith community. Here are some highlights:
How parents say having kids affects their connection to a faith community:
50% did not change involvement
>> Most common among Northeast and West USA, atheists/agnostics (90%), non-Christian religions (70%), and among college graduates
20% increased already active involvement
>> Most common among lower income homes and Hispanics
17% began attending after a long period of not going
>> Most common among Republicans and political conservatives
5% became active in a faith community for the first time >> Most common among Midwest USA, Catholics, and Hispanics
4% became less active >> Most common among single parents, never married parents, and Asians
What I love about this study is it is a great example of why we can’t assume all people are alike or even that all subcultures are alike. Not every parent is affected the same way by having kids. And what is probable for college-educated atheist parents in the Northeast isn’t necessarily probable for a lower-income Hispanic parent in the Midwest.
Statistics like these are incredibly useful in letting us compare our sociological observations with scientific trends. They are a sounding board. However, one of the most important things you can do is learn the unique probability of the community that you are called to reach. Rather than surveys and polls, the best way to do this is listen, ask questions, get out into your community’s different cultures, and listen some more.
If you can understand the microstatistics of your community’s niche, then you can better understand how you can turn the bad statistics into good statistics.
For Discussion: - Describe the types of cultures that your ministry reaches.
- What do you do to better understand these cultures?
One of the wisest things a pastor can do is learn from other churches. Ministry is a busy vocation, so it is important use your limited time wisely when looking for churches to study.
There are roughly 320,000 churches in the United States, and obviously no one has time to study them all. In fact, few people have time to study all 421 churches from the 16 big “top churches” lists since 2004. If you are looking for some top churches to watch in America, I have created mashups of the top churches to study in the areas of growth, innovation, church planting, size, influence, and overall.
Earlier this month, Symantec published a list of the top 100 kids’ online search words for 2009 (ages 18 & under). The data comes from a free search monitoring service for parents called OnlineFamily.Norton.
As expected with a sample group including teenagers, some of the online search words are anything but innocent. However, what is shocking is that “porn” is the 4th most popular search word among kids ages 7 and younger.
Amusingly, “Norton Safety Minder” is the 46th most searched for phrase among kids 18 and under. Search results include instructions on how to temporarily disable OnlineFamily.Norton.
BAD SEARCHES FROM THE TOP 100 by boys and girls (ages 18 & under)
#4 - Sex (#4 for boys & #5 for girls) #5 - Porn (#5 for boys & #24 for girls) #32 - Boobs (#17 for boys) #82 - Pussy
TOP 25 SEARCHES segmented by age groups
You can learn a lot about someone by what they search for online. These top search results paint a pretty clear psychographic picture of the priorities, preferences, and habits of online youth.
Kids and teens are obviously learning and experimenting with adult content much sooner than many parents, kids’ ministries, and youth ministries realize. As Time magazine reported early this month, 40% of adolescents have intercourse before ever talking to their parents about safe sex, birth control, or sexually transmitted diseases. Parents often dread giving their kids the sex talk(s), but studies show that kids want to learn from their parents. Instead, many kids learn about sex through friends, the Internet, and experimentation.
Parents sometimes say things more vaguely because they are uncomfortable and they think they’ve addressed something, but the kids don’t hear the topic at all.
- Dr. Karen Soren :: New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital
From a children’s ministry perspective, it is important to realize that statistically quite a few 7-year-olds in your class are searching for porn and exposing themselves to things much more serious than what traditional lessons cover. Obviously, children’s ministries cannot be straightforward about sex, but being too vague doesn’t work either.
Perhaps there are subtle ways to layer lessons with mature spiritual principles. Ideally, children’s ministry lessons should clearly yet subtly word things in a way that trains, helps, and ministers to the kids who are hurting and/or have picked up bad habits while simultaneously “going over the heads” and still teaching the kids who still have their innocence. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done.
For Discussion: - What do you think about these online trends?
- How can churches help?
The Walt Disney Company is giving refunds on Baby Einstein DVDs after acknowledging that they do not enhance infant brain development.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time under age 2 and <2 hours of screen time for over age 2 (screen time: TV, DVDs, computers, & electronic games).
For Infants: videos only teach infants to watch TV, which causes increased risks for obesity, attention problems, school difficulties, sleep disturbances, and anxiety.
For Preschoolers: well-designed educational screen media can improve language skills, reading, math, and school readiness. High school seniors who watched educational TV during their preschool years experienced higher grades, greater creativity, more reading, placing higher value on achievement, and less anxiety and aggression during high school.
The most important time in a child’s intellectual development is the first 3 years and in the womb. Babies begin to learn languages in the womb, and during 6-12 months, infants focus on learning the sounds of their native language and lose their ability to distinguish the phonetic sounds of other languages.
This loss of ability is because at birth, an infants brain has roughly 100 billion unconnected brain cells that immediately begin wiring the circuitry of the brain and learning. This wiring during infancy and early childhood actually overproduces neural connections (pruned later in life) for learning in a state of hyperawareness. Think of a child’s brain like wet concrete that is far more impressionable in the early stages and less and less impressionable with time (as the brain wires and prunes itself).
WHAT DOES SCREEN MEDIA DO TO KIDS?
Nothing Learned (a few exceptions for preschoolers)
Studies show children cannot reliably learn anything from an electronic screen until about 30 months. TV viewing before the age of 2 does not improve a child’s language and visual motor skills. However, there are a few very rare TV exceptions that have a positive effect for children ages 2-3. (via / via)
Stunted Language Development
Children need human social interaction to learn languages, which is why educational audio and screen resources have proved ineffective. Screen media replaces social interaction with humans or at least reduces verbal interaction, which causes babies to miss crucial developmental experiences. For 2-48 month olds, each additional hour of TV exposure is associated with a decrease of 7% (770 words) that the child hears from an adult. For every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs, 8-16 month olds understand an average of 6 to 8 fewer words than children who did not watch television. (via / via / via)
Stunted Eye Development
Staring a the small parameters of a screen may affect the development of a full range of eye movement. (via)
Decreased Focus & Increased ADHD
Watching screen media may reduce the length of time kids can stay focused. Each hour of television viewed daily between ages 1-3 increased the likelihood of disorders like ADHD by nearly 10% at age 7. (via / via)
Increased Aggression
98%+ of pediatricians say that media violence affects childhood aggression. 10 percent of real-life violence may be attributed to media violence. (via)
Increased Weight
Children who consistently spend more than 4 hours per day watching TV are more likely to be overweight. (via)
Increased Consumerism
U.S. kids see 40,000 commercials a year. Research shows a single exposure to a television advertisement affected preschool children’s brand preferences. A taste-testing study showed 60% of kids (ages 3-5) thought an identical burger in a McDonalds wrapper tasted better than an identical burger in a plan wrapper. (via)
Researcher Aric Sigman goes as far as claiming that TV is bad for both kids and adults in 15 ways: obesity, healing, heart trouble, metabolism, eyesight, Alzheimer’s, attention span, hormones, cancer, early puberty, autism, sleep, hunger, brain growth, and diabetes.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE CHURCH?
Using screen media in children’s ministry should be done with educated caution. Researchers agree that well-designed educational media can be effective for kids ages 2+.
Screen media has teaching challenges which can be overcome, but not everyone can achieve such a feat.
Blue’s Clues is perhaps the best example of what rigorous research, creativity, talent, and testing can achieve. Blue’s Clues tested and tweaked all episodes at least 3 times before going on air, and that investment paid off. On a 60-item test where Blue’s Clues watchers could correctly identify 50 items, the control group could only identify 35 items. (via)
Effective teaching, particularly with screen media, isn’t easy. If you want an effective children’s ministry, you need to do your homework and invest, invest, invest.
The majority of church leaders influencing other Church leaders (particularly in the Western hemisphere) through writing books, speaking at conferences, and doing the whole digital media thing are white men. Statistically, I expect this to change by the end of this century because of the demographic shift of Hispanics in the Western hemisphere and the growth of Christianity in the Eastern hemisphere.
But for now, it is the white man’s world… so to speak. And unfortunately, unanticipated collateral damage can happen because of it.
UPDATE: To clarify, I am not saying that whites make up the majority of ministers globally. I am saying that whites make up the majority of church influencers with global platforms.
The problem with the majority of Church influencers being white men is that there is too much majority and not enough diversity. We need more diverse influential thought leaders in order to truly cater to the unique church methodology needs of each culture. Although white men can study other cultures, it is very, very difficult for a white man to understand as well as a woman what it is like to be a woman. It is difficult to understand perfectly what it is like to be Asian unless you are an Asian. And the same is true for blacks, Hispanics, Latinos, and all other races. In fact, many white men may not even realize there is a difference between Hispanics and Latinos.
REAL WORLD EXAMPLES OF WHITE MAN COLLATERAL DAMAGE
#1 :: Deadly Viper
Mike Foster of Ethur and Jud Wilhite of Central Christian Church (Las Vegas, NV) put together an incredible resource called Deadly Viper that discusses the subtle yet deadly leadership pitfalls that can ruin one’s ministry. Its presentation was a mashup of Asian cultures, Kung Fu movie humor, and gorgeous aesthetic design skills. As a white man artist and marketer, I fell in love with the outstanding creativity of its delivery, and its content challenged me to grow as a leader.
However, in my ignorance of knowing what it is like for some to be an Asian, I and many others did not see how this “fun” and creative presentation could be offensive, shameful, or hurtful to some Asians. NOW before you take sides and jump to conclusions, realize that the nature of Asian culture is typically one of high reverence for its ancestors, culture, and heritage. Also, realize that many Asians and Asian-Americans have had to live their lives with stereotypes and jokes (like chinky eyes) that get old and hurtful over time and can put them in a “box” professionally and socially. And for Asian Americans, some have grown up noticing how anti-Asian hostilities during and after WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam War have affected their fathers and grandfathers.
Growing up as an Ohio-born white boy, I didn’t have to experience that, but I did go to summer camp in Oklahoma where my perceived “New Yorker” accent was severely made fun of. I was fine with the teasing for the first hours, but it hurt after several days. I can’t imagine experiencing such “harmless” teasing my whole life.
With Deadly Viper, much of the objections have been over there not being enough care, tact, and reverence in the use of Asian cultures. Astonishingly, Zondervan, Mike, and Jud decided to pull the plug on the whole thing out of respect. DJ Chuang has a great debriefing on the whole Deadly Viper situation. And Eugene Cho speaks responsibly and passionately on the subject here, here, and here.
#2 Training for the Wrong Culture
What works for an upper middle class white man’s church that reaches upper middle class white people may very likely not work for a Hispanic church in the heart of Los Angeles. At a recent conference, a team member from a Hispanic church asked me how they should implement the techniques taught at that conference into a Hispanic culture that didn’t seem like a good fit. My answer was that they shouldn’t use those techniques. It wasn’t a good fit. Collateral damage occurs when you try to solve one culture’s problem by copying another culture’s solutions. It is like trying to fix a Lexus with BMW parts. Not everything will fit. We need platforms for more diverse church methodology training.
#3 The Bad Side of Short Term Missions On a previous post discussing the effects of short term missions, a long term missionary shared the following comment:
At a large convention in 1989, I was introduced as a speaker and the leader said, ‘David has lived with us for nearly ten years now. Hhe speaks our language. He understands and respects our culture. We have been sick, and he has cared for us. He has been sick, and we have cared for him. He has now earned the right to be listened to by us with attentiveness.’
When called by three paramount chiefs to a special meeting (the subject of the meeting was not communicated in advance). One chief after another asked the same question. ‘What is wrong with the Churches overseas when they send young people to Africa for two weeks? They arrive here and cannot communicate with us. They take photographs of our abject poverty. They eat the food of hungry people. They form friendships with a few people often of questionable character but who do speak English and translate for them, and then they leave with waves, smiles and promises, and we never hear from them again! What has happened to our Churches back in the West who once sacrificed and sent us their sons and daughters who came on a one way ticket, learned our language, identified with us in our lives and through perseverance, prayer, preaching and example taught us a better way to live!’
They requested that I communicate this strong feeling to the overseas Church. This is a growing feeling across the world that short term missions teams are now walking well worn paths of other short term missions teams in many countries, but that they never stop in the area long enough to make a difference.
THE SOLUTION?
If you want to reduce you ministry’s collateral damage, you need to understand culture, meaning all cultures and not just the ones you are trying to reach. Ministry in a wired world has an added level of responsibility to be mindful of potential collateral damage. And if you do cause some damage, it is well worth looking at the gutsy and admirable way that Zondervan, Mike Foster, and Jud Wilhite handled Deadly Viper.
This is true regardless of what race, gender, social class, subculture, or generation you are. White men aren’t the only ones causing collateral damage. We’re just an easy target.
Mark R. Rank of the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis co-authored a study analyzing the financial circumstances of U.S. kids (ages 1-20) over a period of 30 years. Key findings include:
49% of all U.S. kids will be in a household that uses food stamps at some point during their childhood.
>> 90% of black kids
>> 37% of white kids
>> 91% of kids in single-parent homes
>> 37% of kids in married homes
Nearly 25% of all U.S. kids will be in households that use food stamps for 5+ years during childhood.
97% of U.S. kids by age 10 who are black and whose head of household is not married with less than 12 years of education reside in a food stamp household.
Even limited exposure to poverty can have detrimental effects upon a child’s overall quality of health and well-being.
- Mark R. Rank :: George Warren Brown School of Social Work
Alan Hirsch discussed fear of failure at Catalyst’s second lab. Here is what he said:
Victor Turner is a cultural anthropologist that studied the rituals and rites of passage for young African boys into manhood. The ordeal the boys would endure through their rite of passage created a bond deeper that community. It created communitas (takes community to the next level and allows the whole of the community to share a common experience, usually through a rite of passage).
Journeys of adventure can change you significantly.
One of the most profound sense of communitas in the US was 9/11.
In the Bible, when David was in the cave with his band of warriors, communitas was created. When Moses and the Israelites wandered the wilderness for 40 years, communitas was created. The exile formed communitas. Jesus and the 12 disciples were a journey of communitas, so was the group of 70.
The Church in the west is in big, big trouble. The Church is fine in the east. The early church and the Chinese church grew exponentially (BOOM!) despite their persecution. Mission is risky. If you create a community that avoids all risk, the people are stifled.
In trying to reach men particularly, we can learn from this. We can journey together. C.S. Lewis says, “Women are face-to-face creatures, and men are side-by-side creatures.” There is something about a bonding experience that we can learn from, experiences like Habitat for Humanity.
Creating artificial environments at church do not prepare people to cope with the rest of the week. Middle class has an obsession with safety and security. The problem is that we undermine our ability to engage the real world. No wonder we form religious enclaves. We easily forget the good things that God has done for us when we are in a safe zone.
The Barna Group released an interesting study this morning exploring how faith varies by church size. Surprisingly, there is a significant difference between the average faith of big churches versus small churches. The only factor that did not vary by church size was whether a church attendee had prayed during the past week.
The tipping point for religious differences seems to be at a church size of 200 adult attendees. However, house churches (roughly 20 adults) have religious beliefs and behaviors more similar to those of large conventional churches of 500 rather than conventional churches of less than 50.
Big Church (1000+) vs. Small Church (1-100) Faith
The Bible is totally accurate in all the principles it teaches.
75% big church
60% small church
I have personal responsibility to tell others my beliefs.
61% big church
41% small church
My religious faith is very important in my life.
90% big church
82% small church
Satan/devil is a living being not just a symbol of evil.
51% big church
30% small church
A good person cannot earn a place in Heaven.
55% big church
33% small church
On earth Jesus Christ did not commit sins, like other people.
74% big church
49% small church
God is the omnipotent, omniscient creator who rules all.
90% big church
81% small church
In addition the study discovered that adult attendees of large churches are more likely than adult attendees of small churches to read the Bible, volunteer at church, be a college graduate, be affluent, and have kids. For more statistics, read The Barna Group’s article.
