A TASTER OF PRﾃ々EIS // THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE FOR CHILDREN, YOUTH AND MISSION INFORMING CONVERSATION - INSPIRING PRACTICE
ISSUE 1 | MAY 2014
TAKEN FROM THE GREEK, PRÁXEIS TON APOSTÓLON: THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. DENOTES A DEED THE ACTION OF WHICH IS LOOKED UPON AS IN PROGRESS.
At the Institute for Children, Youth and Mission, we believe that life affirming, life enriching and life transforming work among children and young people is a critically important task for the church. Whether this mission is directed to seeking the common good of all, seeking to nurture children and young people in Christian communities, or enabling the good news of the Gospel to be heard, experienced and explored this mission needs to be prioritised, performed well and passed on. At our heart, CYM is a mission-enabling organisation. Práxeis is a voice into that space. Our hope is that Práxeis will stretch thinking and stimulate discussion on children, youth and mission work. Our hope is that Práxeis will offer ‘wisdom’; more than cleverness; deeper than knowledge; more than thinking; ‘wisdom’ is found through action, participation and experience. Wisdom is what we hope the contributors will bring as they share their reflections on, research into and reactions to the challenging task of Christian work with children and families, young people and communities, schools and churches. Each issue will share well founded wisdom from practitioners and academics and ask you to mix this with your own understanding and insights. Sharing this communal wisdom - this practical wisdom we have worked hard to gain - is a vital element of supporting the work that goes on in churches and organisations across the UK. Those
2
of us working in children and youth work are well aware of the complexities of this challenge and the need to innovate in the practice we engage in. Understanding these complexities, and judging the success of our innovations, requires wisdom. We hope you will find that here. However, the wisdom we share with each other will never be enough to fully equip us to serve in this work. We will always be stretched beyond what we feel we understand and what we think we can offer. Práxeis captures this. Práxeis is the prophetic wisdom that comes from reflecting on our own understanding and action in conjunction with seeking God’s wisdom and the transformation of all we can do by the Spirit of God. How we do this is the primary focus of the conversation Práxeis will stimulate. We hope that Práxeis will speak into your context, your challenges and your calling to be part of God’s mission to children and young people. We hope that you will be able to draw on the wisdom it offers and share the wisdom you have through the blog pages, or articles of your own. Above all we hope that God’s wisdom is with you in all that you do.
Dr Nick Shepherd, CEO, Institute for Children Youth and Mission
MIKRO PRÁXEIS | FAITH IN ACTION
THIS IS AN ABRIDGED SECTION OF THE FULL ARTICLE, WHICH YOU CAN READ NOW BY DOWNLOADING ISSUE 1 OF PRÁXEIS FROM WWW.PRAXEIS-JOURNAL.COM
INTRODUCTION The Church of England has suffered from numerical decline in recent decades. The problem is not that adults are leaving the Church: it is that young adults are not joining. Half of the children of churchgoing parents do not attend when they reach adulthood. Simply put, ageing churchgoers are not being replaced. We know something from previous research about the impact of parental practice, affiliation and belief on the religiosity of their children. Two nonreligious parents successfully transmit their lack of religion. Two religious parents have roughly a 50/50 chance of passing on the faith. One religious parent does only half as well as two together. The results for attendance, self-described affiliation, and the importance of religious belief are very similar (Voas and Crockett 2005). What these results suggest is that in Britain institutional religion now has a half-life of one generation, to borrow the terminology of radioactive decay. The generation now in middle age has produced children who are only half as likely as they are to attend church, to identify themselves as belonging to a denomination, or to say that belief is important to them. The situation seems paradoxical. If parents regard religion as important – and one presumes that they do – why have they failed to pass it on to their offspring? One key question is whether we
CHILDREN AND YOUTH MINISTRY AND CHURCH GROWTH
DAVID VOAS UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX are seeing the effects of value change among young people or of value change among parents. It is possible that parents have simply become less committed to religious involvement by their children. As the value attached to autonomy has increased, adolescents are increasingly allowed to avoid church. Perhaps, though, things change if we exclude nominal Anglicans. We might naturally suppose that people who say that religion is very important in their own lives would include religious faith in their list of qualities that are especially important for children to learn at home. In fact, however, only 36% do so. Of the much larger number who say that religion is ‘quite important’ to them, a mere 10% mention faith as something important for their children to acquire. Among Anglicans who say that they attend services at least once a month, the figure is 28%. In other words, even religious Anglicans seem surprisingly reluctant to make inculcation of religion a priority in child-rearing. The key finding from analysis of the dataset we explored (for many countries and denominations) is that institutional involvement in a religion, including respect for the role of religious organisations, is the crucial characteristic in distinguishing between respondents who do or do not make religion a priority in raising children. It is not enough to regard religion as important, or to be ‘spiritual’: without some tie to an institution – past or current involvement in church, or a high regard for its
3
THE CHURCH GROWTH RESEARCH PROGRAMME Headline findings from a major piece of research conducted by the Church of England over 18 months - Survey of 11,700 churches in 2011.
4
MIKRO PRﾃ々EIS | FAITH IN ACTION
functions –people tend not to make religious transmission a priority. The religiously unaffiliated and people who say “I have my own way of connecting with the divine” are unlikely to see transmission as important, even if they regard religion as important in their own lives. By contrast, churchgoers or members of religious organisations, and people who say that the church answers moral and family problems, do want to see children raised in a faith. Being connected to church makes one significantly more likely to see religious faith as important for children (Voas and Doebler 2012). THE CHURCH GROWTH RESEARCH PROGRAMME Retaining children and youth is critical; it is easier to raise people as churchgoers than to turn the unchurched into attenders. Recent history suggests that gains and losses during adulthood are roughly in balance; the challenge is to retain the new generation. As part of the Church of England’s Church Growth Research Programme, we conducted a survey of 1,700 churches to try to identify the factors underlying growth and decline (Voas and Watt 2014). While retaining the young generation is crucial to the Church as a whole, it does not necessarily follow that parish churches will only grow if children are well represented. As it happens, though, there is indeed a positive correlation between the child:adult ratio and church growth at the local level. These positive correlations are found for all measures of growth, including growth in adult usual Sunday attendance. Although it is never easy to identify the causal mechanisms – families produce growth, but they are also attracted to churches that are growing – it seems plausible that children help to keep churches healthy. Churches where children are well represented are twice as likely to be growing as those where they are scarce. The survey included a number of questions about activities and staffing for young people. Of course there is a chicken-and-egg problem of interpretation: parents may only come to a church that provides for their children, but the amount of provision for children is strongly influenced by how many there are. Thus it is no surprise that churches with a good proportion of children are more likely than others to have a range of appropriate programmes. With data from just one year, we cannot say how far the activities attract
CHILDREN AND YOUTH MINISTRY AND CHURCH GROWTH
the children or the children generate the need for the activities. In any event supply and demand are likely to be mutually reinforcing. What we can do, however, is to see which types of programmes or staff are most closely associated with growth. In the survey we asked questions on a range of programmes and activities. We are particularly interested in which variables show the largest influence on two outcomes: the ratio of children to adults, and church growth. The strongest association is with Sunday schools, not because they are unusual (81% of responding churches had them) but because not having a Sunday school is a sign that there are no children. Most of the items are also correlated with growth, though the associations are a good deal weaker than for the child:adult ratio. Being linked with a Church school (particularly if it is oversubscribed) also has an important influence. The existence of youth programmes also has an impact, suggesting that the churches that are most successful in attracting children have provision for teens and young adults as well. The results for church growth are interesting. Here the Church school has a key role, with youth programmes also appearing to have an effect (if falling just short of statistical significance, controlling for all of the other variables listed above). Youth retreats, conferences or camps make a difference; only 21% of churches in the sample have them, and they may be taken as a sign of real investment in youth work. Uniformed youth organisations remain negatively associated with growth, as are (more surprisingly) special services for schools, which more than three quarters of churches provide. Overall the findings underline the importance of retaining young people, particularly in the critical period of adolescence and early adulthood. They also suggest that the best programmes are likely to involve new ways of building community with and among the young, and may require considerable amounts of time and effort. In their written comments on the reasons for church growth, our survey respondents recognised the importance of attracting young families to church. A handful of respondents wrote about youth work or ‘young people’ in general, but most gave the impression that they are primarily interested in children. While that strategy has the benefit of focusing on families, it may not address
5
the crucial transition from child to adult attendance. An additional difficulty is that extensive provision for children and especially youth requires a critical mass and so may not be possible for smaller churches. Some degree of specialisation, whereby one particular church in an area becomes the ‘family church’, is probably inevitable.
Where churches had paid staff (apart from clergy), we asked which roles they fill (administrator, verger, music director, etc.). Controlling for other variables, the largest effects came from employing a children’s or youth worker. Churches that employ a children’s / youth worker are only half as likely to be declining as those with paid staff in some other function.
Once again, then, we find a connection between the investment in young people and church growth. While the long-term importance of generational replacement is clear at a national level, it is striking to find that it also seems to be in the interests of parish churches to make youth ministry a priority.
DAVID VOAS
David is a quantitative social scientist with a background in demography. He is the National Programme Director in Great Britain for the European Values Study and co-director of British Religion in Numbers (www.brin.ac.uk), an online centre for British data on religion. He serves on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Sociology and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. He is currently leading an investigation of religious and secular morality in Europe, and has been commissioned by the Church of England to study church growth and decline. READ THIS ARTICLE IN FULL BY DOWNLOADING ISSUE 1 OF PRÁXEIS NOW AT WWW.PRAXEIS-JOURNAL.COM
REFERENCES Voas, David & Crockett, Alasdair (2005) Religion in Britain: Neither believing nor belonging, Sociology 39(1): 11-28 Voas, David & Doebler, Stefanie (2013) Secularization in Europe: An analysis of inter-generational religious change, in Value Contrasts and Consensus in Present-Day Europe, ed. W Arts & L Halman, Brill. Voas, David & Watt, Laura (2014) Numerical change in church attendance: National, local and individual factors. Church of England. www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/progress_findings_reports
6
MIKRO PRÁXEIS | FAITH IN ACTION
for volunteers, new workers and established practitioners.
COURSES AVAILABLE AT CYM FOUNDATIONS Engage: Children’s ministry
Training designed for you, whatever your entry level and whatever your needs.
Engage: Youth ministry Enable: Schoolswork DEGREES FdA in Community Based Pioneer Ministry BA (Hons) Children and Family Work with Practical Theology BA (Hons) Schools, Youth and Community Work and Practical Theology (JNC) BA (Hons) Youth Work and Communities and Practical Theology (JNC) BA (Hons) Youth and Community Work and Practical Theology (JNC) CONTINUING EDUCATION MA Youth and Community Work with Practical Theology (JNC) MA Professional Practice with Practical Theology
"Training with CYM has helped me to develop holistically and encouraged me to become more confident personally and professionally." Sarah, Engage student & Church Youth worker #inspringchange
“Making the decision to carve out this period of time to have the space to think, learn, be challenged and supported, to support others, try new things, see different practice …..will be the best decision you ever make!” Sam, CYM BA graduate & Director of MSYN #inspiringchange
“The MA from CYM is academically stretching, theologically robust, and practically relevant for ministry today.” Ali, CYM MA graduate & Diocesan Youth Advisor #inspiringchange
PRﾃ々EIS is a free online Journal published bi-annually by CYM. MIKRO PRﾃ々EIS is just a taster... You can download PRﾃ々EIS Issue 1: Faith in Action, now at:
In PRﾃ々EIS Issue 1 FAITH IN ACTION: