David Kinnaman

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Faith after COVID-19: How many flocks will survive digital 'worship shifting' trends?

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Faith after COVID-19: How many flocks will survive digital 'worship shifting' trends?

Television professionals who survived the past decade have made their peace with terms like "binging" and "time-shifting."

But how, pray tell, can clergy embrace "worship-shifting"?

The coronavirus crisis has plunged pastors into digital technology while trying to replace analog community life with online worship, classes and fellowship forums. These changes have frustrated many, especially believers in ancient traditions built on rites requiring face-to-face contact. But many worshippers have welcomed online worship.

These changes have altered the "fundamental relationship that many young adults have with their churches," said David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, which does research with a variety of religious groups. "We're hearing about worship-shifting, as people use all the tech in their homes to fit services into their own schedules, just like everything else they watch on all those screens.

"This is another way people are using social media to renegotiate the role the church plays in the lives of their families."

The question religious leaders are asking, of course, is how many people will return to their pews when "normal" life returns. But it may be several years before high-risk older believers decide it's safe to return, even after vaccines become available. Younger members may keep watching their own local services, switch to high-profile digital flocks elsewhere or do both.

In talks with clients, Kinnaman said he is hearing denominational leaders and clergy say they believe that, in the next year or so, some churches will simply close their doors. Early in the pandemic the percentage of insiders telling Barna researchers they were "highly confident" their churches would survive was "in the high 70s," he said.

“Now it's in the 50s. … Most churches are doing OK, for now. But there's a segment that's really struggling and taking a hit, week after week."

After reviewing several kinds of research -- including patterns in finances and attendance -- Kinnaman sent a shockwave through social-media channels with his recent prediction that one in five churches will close in the next 18 months.

In "mainline" churches, he is convinced this number will be one in three, in part because these rapidly aging Protestant denominations have lost millions of members -- some up to 50% -- since the 1960s.

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How do some young Americans remain believers while living in 'digital Babylon'?

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How do some young Americans remain believers while living in 'digital Babylon'?

Soon after the Internet boom in the 1990s, the Christian consulting firm WisdomWorks obtained software that could run automated chat groups -- allowing anonymous teens to ask candid questions.

Mark Matlock and his team called the project "Wise Intelligent Guide (WIG)."

Tech-savvy young people were careful, often repeating easy questions over and over to determine if the "bot" was truly autonomous, as opposed to being operated by hidden adults. A typical user would then probe with relatively safe questions -- like "Does God exist?"

Finally, there would be the "actual question the teen wanted to ask, usually about sex, depression, suicide, or abuse," noted Matlock and Barna Group President David Kinnaman, in their new book "Faith for Exiles." Typical questions: "How do I know if I am gay? What does God think about masturbation? What happens to people who commit suicide? I had sex with my boyfriend; what should I do?"

That was two decades ago. Today, most teens would use their omnipresent smartphones and take these personal questions straight to Google -- a secular oracle offering guidance on topics that religious leaders often avoid.

"The church has bubble-wrapped itself in an attempt to avoid thinking about the truly disruptive forms of technology that are everywhere in our world," said Kinnaman, reached by telephone. "Most church leaders think they can just use technology as a way of reaching people. … They aren't looking at the real impact of all this on their people. It's easier just to look the other way."

Meanwhile, practical decisions on tough lifestyle and religious questions often have long-term consequences.

Religious leaders have been forced -- after waves of Pew Research Center polling -- to acknowledge the surge in Millennial Americans (born 1981-1996) who now identify as atheists, agnostics or "nothing in particular" when asked about religion. In a 2019 update, Pew noted that 40% of Millennials are "nones."

The goal of the "Faith for Exiles" study was to find patterns among young Americans (18 to 29 years of age) who were raised as Christians.

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Faith and the Millennials -- it's complicated

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LOS ANGELES -- When pollster David Kinnaman went to college two decades ago, his Generation X life was surrounded by electronic screens and all the gadgets that connected to them. There were TV screens, movie screens and new computers, some of which even had speakers. There were VCRs, CD players, cassette recorders, video cameras and other cool devices. The hottest trend was "email" that allowed students to do something Baby Boomers could only dream about -- send private, instant messages to friends in nearby dorms or around the world.

Pop culture was huge. Technology was powerful. But today, all those devices have evolved into one life-changing screen carried by millions of so-called Millennials -- the smartphone. And through these screens stream the myriad channels, icons, brands, apps and voices that are shaping a generation.

But what religious leaders and educators must understand is that this updated "screen culture" has created the opposite of a unified youth culture, said Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, a faith-centered research firm. While it's accurate, for example, to say pop culture is in "some ways the new religion," that doesn't mean all digital consumers raised during past quarter century share one faith -- quite the opposite.

"Pop culture is becoming a new religious grid, it's becoming the filter through which they examine and interpret their reality," he said, speaking at a national conference in Los Angeles held by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (the global network in which I teach, through the Washington Journalism Center).

The smartphone "screen age is dictating this new 20-something reality," which should affect everything from how churches address sexuality to how colleges teach the Bible, he added. "How it is that we will disciple in this ... digital Babylon is terribly important for us to consider."

The bottom line: The pieces in the puzzles that complicate so many of young lives have been radically individualized. Thus, the Millennials mantra: "It's complicated."

This includes faith. Over the past decade, Kinnaman noted, Barna researchers have conducted 27,000 interviews with Millennials (ages 18-31) and found that more than half of those with a Christian background have, at some point, stopped going to church.

In his book, "You Lost Me," Kinnaman noted that 10 percent of these straying Millennials are "Prodigals" who have lost the faith -- period. Another 30 percent are "Exiles," who to some degree remain inside a church, but feel lost and cannot find a comfortable niche. The largest segment -- 40 percent -- are "Nomads" who have left the institutional church, but still claim the label "Christian."

The hard truth that many religious leaders have never accepted, he added, is that Millennials are merely walking the do-it-yourself spirituality path used by many of their parents. Nomad faith is now the American way.

"What we learn in our research," he said, "is that a majority of Americans are Christian nomads -- adults of whatever generation. Right? We see that most adults in the country are Christian, and yet very few of them are very active as Christians. They have accepted the IDEA of being Christians."

This reality is now affecting how young Americans make decisions about sex, marriage, family life and careers, with more and more Millennials delaying the burdens, commitments and uncertainties of adulthood.

In the 1960s, he noted, 77 percent of women and 66 percent of men had -- by age 30 -- completed the major transitions of life, such as leaving home, finishing school, achieving financial independence, getting married and having children. In 2014 these numbers were quite different, with 46 percent of women and a mere 31 percent of men having made these steps into adulthood by age 30.

Will it be a challenge for older adults to offer spiritual guidance as young Americans struggle with these issues? Obviously, said Kinnaman, because adults are adults and peers are peers.

"This is a generation that wants ... be engaged with people, with diversity, with friends from around the world, with different points of view, with different religions, with different perspectives," he warned the educators in attendance.

"If you tell them that you have to choose between being friends with somebody and their faith, they will choose being friends. They will choose relational connection over what you think they need to believe in terms of orthodoxy. ... We are finding that with Millennials their peers are their moral and spiritual compass."