i have just been at a gathering organised by trinity wall street considering young adults spirituality and religious practice. by way of preparation people attending were invited to read robert wuthnow’s book after the baby boomers: how twenty and thirty-somethings are shaping the future of american religion.
one of the points that i found interesting in the book was that young adults have an extended period before getting married and having children (if they do). this means that there can often be a 10 year period of extended young adulthood. church attendance in this age group has been in decline, but the most interesting part about that is that the young adults who are attending church tend to be married with kids – church somehow is appealing to and catering for families better than single people. so this extension of young adulthood compounds the decline.
the second point and this doesn’t come as a surprise is that the way young adults make meaning is by tinkering (or bricolage if you want the cultural studies term). i was invited to give a presentation on this theme… here’s a couple of quotes i pulled out…
The single word that best describes young adults approach to religion and spirituality – indeed life – is tinkering. A tinkerer puts together a life from whatever skills, ideas and resources that are readily at hand… Tinkerers are the most resourceful people in any era. If specialized skills are required they have them. When they need help from experts they seek it. But they do not rely on one way of doing things. Their approach to life is practical. They get things done and usually this happens by improvising by piecing together an idea from here, a skill from there and a contact from somewhere else.
Like the farmer rummaging through the junk pile for makeshift parts the spiritual tinkerer is able to sift through a veritable scrap heap of ideas and practices from childhood, from religious organisations, classes, conversations with friends, books, magzines, television programmes and web sites. The tinkerer is free to engage in this kind of rummaging…
i’m sure most of us recognise this sort of approach to lots of areas of life. i explored this theme a bit when i was doing my MA drawing inspiration from de certeau’s ideas of making do and developing a set of tactics to negotiate the practice of everyday life. wuthnow adds that life’s uncertainty these days makes tinkering a necessity as we constantly face scenarios that require creative improvising. further, the electric information environment has meant we can access and draw on the resources from diverse sources, traditions, networks and institutions without relying on experts and freed from institutional constraints.
so the 48 hour gathering was a reflection on this and what it implies or what questions it raises, in this case, for episcopalians.
a few of the questions i raised were:
can we view religion as a cultural resource? (david lyon raises this question in his book jesus in disneyland) i.e. are we prepared to take the risk of putting the insights, treasures, liturgies, theologies etc out there for people to weave into their lives as they tinker? and how might we go about this?
what skills do people need to be able to tinker? and related to this do people need some spiritual capital or theological capital to tinker? this is a challenging area. i think the answer is yes but often people don’t have a lot – they think google is enough! a parallel could be drawn here with improvisation in music which will be much richer and more creative if the person knows the traditions and has done the work in terms of learning their craft – that will free them up. the same is true for spirituality – those that know the tradition, the scriptures, the theological takes, spiritual practices, liturgies, other improvisations that have been made etc will have much more to draw on. the problem for churches is that their tradiitions often feel like they are heavily policed, something to be protected rather than something to be creatively opened up, made open source and tinkered with.
if there is this extended period of young adulthood where there are little support structures in place (young adults see friends as key in terms of navigating life’s choices ) could mentoring or being a soul friend help? is this an area where the church could make a creative contribution?
and lastly how can we encourage communities of tinkerers? i have found being a part of a community like grace amazing in terms of friendship, support, faith development and creative spirituality. it’s located in the church but with space to explore and tinker (not that we have ever used that term!).
i talked about tinkering with worship, sharing stories from alternative worship;
tinkering with church – emerging church, fresh expressions and all that and the way that a set of permissions has been created in the church of england so that can happen within the life of the church;
and tinkering in mission – stories of mission in the emerging culture
it was a good time, as ever at these things the best conversations happen in the gaps. i hope the guys there will be enabled to do the imaginative work and negotiate space for creative ways to explore this further. it was at trinity’s retreat centre which is in conneticut in an amazing setting, with the most incredible food. i now have 24 hours in new york before my flight…
So glad to hang out with you albeit briefly today. Hope the “Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibit at MOMA rocked for you like it did for me.
Hi Jonny,
We started a fresh expression of church with a Saturday evening mass last Fall. I’ve also noticed that the young adults who do come are indeed married with kids. I myself am married with two small children. The Saturday worship has evolved into a family focused style. But I am also noticing that single young adults are starting to drop by on a somewhat regular basis. I’m wondering if this sense of community with families and children is actually drawing single people who are looking for community and indeed for some a sense of stability in family life.
Love the Proost site, use your stuff all the time in our worship.
Easter Peace,
Sam Rose
Mission Priest
St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada
Good observations, good points. i’m particularly interested in boomer/x-gen cuspers like myself (those of us in our 40s) and with children largely grown up (or separated from) many are indeed tinkering (like gen x proper), but without the church background or else the feeling that it is – as you say – too heavily “policed” to be useful. And so many are left floundering, frustrated and giving up. This is why i feel alt.worship is so important – it provides the opportunity to receive the tools and skills to continue tinkering freely. And i completely agree with the observation that single gen x/y are not in church while the ones with children are. Is trad church too family focussed? i believe so! My own son is a good example – 22 and single, a strong faith and still attends a weekly off-site small group but rarely worships at the church that meant so much to him as a teenager. his explanation is the lack of relevance he now finds there.
i’m beginning to wonder too if at least part of the relevance thing is excellence? Gen x/y seem to me to be big on excellence (perhaps a result of the “you can do anything you set your mind to” culture). Many churches seem to recognise this but rarely deliver, at least in technical terms in worship (bands, multimedia and so on). It could be that people with children are largely more forgiving of standards than singles, after all, raising kids is a messy busyness…? Certainly i was more tolerant of my church when my kids were little than i am today. A sample size of 1 isn’t very scientific, but observation lends creedence to the idea perhaps? Any thoughts??
mlcm
Jonnya and I talked about the mistakes in seeing emerging church as solely outreach to young adults and I hope he’ll blog about this – I noted how here in the States ministry tends to be focused on children, youth, young adult and then an outreach to seniors. The assumption seems to be that those who are 35-65 have found their groove (married, job, kids) when in fact, that’s a time when many crises occur both professionally and personally.
Jonny,
thanks for the chat over beer and good food at the center. I’ll take your recommendation and check out Peter Rollins’ book. Hope you time in NYC was a fun one. I’m looking forward other opportunities for connection and collaborations. Tom and I might be at Greenbelt this summer.
Peace,
Eliacin
I’m totally with you on the extension of young adulthood in our culture and the ways in which these young adults (including me) are trying to piece together meaning, butI’m not sure if I’d agree if “tinkering” is the right word to describe it.
Tinkering suggests that what we have is pretty much ok, and the effort is being put into making it work, or making it work better.
Maybe a better, if less elegant word, would be “bodging” (in the british sense). The attempt is to pull together different resources, in an often inexpert and awkward kind of way because there is no one resource that offers us an adequate way of making meaning.
I think that rather than current resources needing to be tinkered with to make them work for us, the need is to bodge together some way of making meaning, drawing from as many different resources as necessary.
glad you enjoyed the gathering, i’ve found them a great bunch in past years myself.
sounds like useful input too.
i think there may be a difference between UK and US partly here? just aware that those of us who were in on the ealry days of Alt Worship like Jonnyy and I were ‘tinkering’ then (and i remember starting tinkering with some pretty unsuitable stuff to start with to) and we are cuspers to use the phrase from above. now if i am right then whilst many of my age group now have their own grown up kids, truth is we are still tinkering and looking of for the kind of realtional and worsjip spaces that Wuthnow is indentifying for the young adults of the states.
i remeber something you said Jonny at a Univeristy Cahplains conference severla years back which was something like ‘teenagers where invented int eh 1950’s and uninvented in the 1990’s, or something to that effect…ie generations who never leave youth culture are growing up into adults and middle aged ones at that who will…well still tinker.
BTW i think the issue of gifitng tinkering is essential…and very challenge in an anglican church that thinks you need and agreed worship text most of the time!
thanks again, jonny. it was good to get to know you, if only for a bit.
next time you’re anywhere near texas…
— paul soupiset
thanks for the comments…
mary i kind of agree about the word in english which is why i prefer bricolage, but the reason i used it was i was invited to give a talk responding to wuthnow’s book that people had been asked to read. and tinkereing is the word he settles on.
his definition is fine but to a lot of people it does sound like tweaking rather than something more radical. an image that came to mind for me was from the film waterworld where the world has totally changed (coevered with water). kevin costner dives down to the old world and collects a few items and brings them up to put them to totally different usage in the new world. that sits with the definition fine!
Steve – Until recently the dialogue in the US seems to be dominated by the postevangelical emergent stream – a conversation that I sense is very necessary for those coming from evangelical traditions who are struggling with their own set of issues. As an Episcopalian, I have been attracted for years by what was going on in the UK Anglican stream. The US Episcopal Church appears to have hit that level of crisis similar to what Jonny and others have told me was happening over with the UK Churches in the 1980s. I am grateful for people like Jonny who have the insight and kindness to deal with seeing the churches take the same exploratory steps they took years ago. So yes there is a bit of a time warp here that I know can be frustrating at times but we are seeing some incredible signs of hope. The spirit is at work despite what you read about the US Episcopal Church crises in the papers.
great post
I know this is a bit late in the posting, but I had some time to muse on it and I would be curious if anyone had some responses…
http://vialogue.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/ted-talks-worth-talking-about-robert-full-on-engineering-evolution-and-missional-tinkering/