Trendwatch

Group, Jul/Aug 2003

Now the bad news-most parents do little or nothing to model a vigorous faith life or proactively help their kids to grow in their faith. They've essentially abdicated those responsibilities and looked to church "specialists" to do the job.

The Barna study found that almost nine out of 10 parents of children under age 13 (85%) say they're primarily responsible for teaching their kids about faith in God. But researchers say most parents "do not spend any time during a typical week discussing religious matters or studying religious materials with their children." Instead, those parents functionally hand off almost all of those responsibilities to their church.

According to Barna, parents take a hands-off approach to faith nurturing at home because they:

* are struggling with their own faith commitment;

* feel ill-equipped to do the work;

* have no plan for their kids' spiritual development;

* don't consider faith-nurturing a priority;

* haven't sought training in how to build faith in their children;

* have no standards or goals to shoot for; and

* aren't accountable to anyone for their efforts.

Barna's researchers discovered that just one out of five parents of children under 13 (19%) has "ever been personally contacted or spoken to by a church leader to discuss the parent's involvement in the spiritual life and development of their youngsters."

"Churches only get one or two hours a week with these children," says George Barna. "Parents have them for many hours each week and experience numerous opportunities to teach... vital principles in a range of settings and situations. The more intentional a church is about giving parents the confidence and the tools to raise up spiritual champions, the more effective we found the congregation's parents to be as spiritual mentors."

In the "collateral blessing" department, the NSYR study found that actively religious families raise kids who are more likely than their peers from nonreligious families to:

* admire their mother and father;

* not run away from home;

* eat dinner with their parents; and

* have mom and dad involved in their social lives.

Study director Christian Smith says, "There is a consistent association across a variety of measures that more religiously active families with early adolescents in the household exhibit signs of stronger family relationships."

Here's irony for you: Yet another big-name researcher, George Gallup, just released a poll that found more than three-quarters of Americans (77%) believe the overall health of the country depends "a great deal" on the spiritual health of the nation.

the career-ification of ministry

According to a new survey of pastor salaries conducted by Duke University's Divinity School, the typical minister's pay has clawed its way to the $40,000 plateau. What's more, for the last 25 years clergy compensation has increased faster than inflation.

Let's break a pinata!

Well, put your stick down and take heed of a sobering warning from one of the survey's co-directors. Becky McMillan, also a Methodist minister, says the competitive, free-market strategies used by churches to determine a pastor's salary are twisting a "calling" into a "career."

McMillan says, "The fact that we use the free market to determine how much we pay clergy suggests that we view them as paid employees who compete for the position, and not as people who are called and compelled by God to spread the gospel."

The study urges Protestant churches to find ways to narrow the gap between pastors of large and small congregations-to provide all pastors with a "living wage."

(Editor's Note: Watch for our exclusive biennial youth ministry salary survey report in our November/December 2003 issue.)

bloggers take over the world

In 1997 a handful of techno-nerds came up with a way to use the Internet to muse and vent and rant about their daily emotional microcosms-they built online "Web logs" now known, of course, as blogs. Six years later the blogging world is dominated by average teenagers who are racking up thousands of "page views" on their blog sites every day, and marketers are exploring ways to convince influential teen bloggers to sneak product endorsements into their rants.

In the last year, the blogging service provider blogspot.com experienced a five-fold increase in unique visitors to the site-from 240,000 per month in early 2002 to 1.3 million in early 2003. That's an explosive cultural force that's still in mid-detonation. For teenagers growing up inside the Internet sphere, blogging offers an unprecedented chance to. . .

* Express strong opinions without risking social backlash-Meg Hourihan, co-founder of blogger.com, says in a Christian Science Monitor interview, "It's a great way for quieter, shy kids to participate. . . [Blogs] take away the advantage from the loudest person and highlight people who actually add something to the conversation."

* Inject meaning and importance into their everyday lives-High school junior Natalia told CSM, "If I have a strong emotion about something, be it joy, anger, frustration, confusion, or anything else, I will usually try to put [it] into words. . . My blog is freedom. It's an outlet for ideas and thoughts that don't have another place to go."