Spiritual but not religious: reaching an invisible generation.

Welcome to a journey into a new time with a new generation. I invite you to engage the lives of the first postmodern generation in America. Using the research of sociologists and the theological lens of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we will develop a conversation with the spirituality of this young adult generation. We will identify their giftedness, consider joining their faith journeys, and imagine possibilities for unleashing their gifts for ministry in Christ's church.

In November 1994, Peter Drucker wrote an article for the Atlantic Monthly entitled "The Age of Social Transformation." He argued that in one century, the United States had experienced three major economic shifts. The century began with over half of all Americans working either on farms or in agribusiness. By 1950, over half of American workers were either factory employees or in offices supporting those factories. By 1990, more than 75 percent of all American workers were either producing or transmitting information.

Drucker pointed out that Americans have been nimble in making the necessary economic transitions from one era to the next. America has not been as nimble, he argued, in reworking its social, moral, and spiritual life.

Others have studied and written about a cultural shift to this new time in the West. In 1979 Jean Francois Leotard wrote a small essay for the Canadian Government entitled "The Post-modern Condition, A Report on Knowledge." His work provided new language for describing the philosophical shift that had been talking place in Europe and elsewhere since the 1960s and helped a new generation find a common frame of reference within which to understand a shift in consciousness occurring in western civilization. Stanley Grenz's A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996) is an excellent presentation of a related condition or question: Is this a post-Christian as well as a postmodern era?

These descriptive and analytical works place a challenging question before the Christian church: What does postmodernity mean for how Christians go about living the faith today or dis-cerning the presence of God in the face of a new generation? Or, put more directly, How have we, the latest generation of the church's leadership, been doing theologically and strategically in participating with God in passing on faith to this next generation?

For the last forty years I have been tending this catechetical and evangelical task and working with the challenges inherent in these questions: Will our faith have children? Will our faith have adults? Will our faith have leaders?

During the forty years of my "watch," the bridge carrying children and youth from baptism to mature faith has become less and less effective. The Lutheran Church has become a prime example of "faith drift" occurring among mainline Christians.

Often people tell me that I ought not be concerned with faith drift among youth and young adults. Their argument is that faith drift has regularly occurred in young adulthood. The conventional wisdom is that young people will leave the faith when they are confirmed, turn 16, get a driver's license and go out on their own. These young drifters will wander in a spiritual wilderness for six, eight, ten, or twelve years and return to participate in faith life when they get married or have a child.

I've never quite been able to understand such logic. Why should it be "automatic" or accepted that our young adult baptized sisters and brothers in Christ develop the foundations of their adult life outside of the faith community? These are years when young women and men enter and develop their great intellectual powers, a time in which they are developing friendships that often last a lifetime. They are discerning their calling--finding their place in God's great work in the world--a calling that might well develop out of the giftedness God's Spirit is waiting to unleash within and through them. In this time of life they meet persons from whom many will choose a mate.

With such crucial life decisions at stake, is it not important that they worship or participate in the community of the faithful or engage in ministry? It is disturbing that the prediction that young adults return when they marry or have their first child has not come to pass among the Boomer generation, and it is not coming to pass for this first postmodern generation. Many Boomers and "Xers" have not returned but have simply swelled the ranks of the unchurched.

Other young adults, however, never leave the faith in which they were raised. In fact, approximately 10 to 12 percent not only don't leave, but lead. What is it about these people? Do they have a God gene? Will we discover that faith is, in fact, passed on physically and/or physiologically? Brain studies tell us there may be some physical influence; but my guess is that this is not fundamentally a matter of genetics.

I have chosen to listen to the voices of young people who have stayed with the practice of their faith. As I listen to their life stories, I ask: Are you spiritual? Is there faith in your life? As I listen to their faith stories, I ask: How does church or a faith community fit into your life?

I want to share with you what our research team is discovering as we review these stories of life, faith, and church. But first I want to provide a backdrop for those stories by exploring the larger face of this first postmodern generation of young adults.

The invisible generation

The group of young people aged 18 to 30 is an invisible generation." At the height of the Baby Boomer generation (born 1943-1961), 4.3 million children were born in one year in America. At the depths of the Baby Buster generation (born 1962-1981), only 3.1 million children were born in America. Following the Buster generation, the Millennial generation (born 1982-present) is even larger than the Boomer generation. The Buster generation is lost in the shadows of the larger generations on either side. It has becomes an invisible generation.

Today's 18- to 30-year-olds grew up in a time in which children were devalued. Forty percent of them say, "I was a latchkey kid. I raised myself. I grew up alone." Societal transformation--all the changes of which Drucker spoke in his Atlantic Monthly article--was taking place during the years these young adults were growing up. Very often they were lost in a complex web of changing human identity, relationships, and lifestyles.

Disconnected from the church, this young adult generation's religious drift is more expansive and has continued longer. On almost any Sunday, these young adults are absent, invisible in our churches. As their faith experience shifts, more young adults go away and stay away. The chasm between the language, the symbols, and the music of the church and the realities of their world has become very great. They often feel like strangers in their church's places of worship.

Who is this generation? Do we really know? Have we formed our opinions from bits of information about a very rich and complex cohort of humanity? There are many partial and contradictory pictures. Some of these studies are fictional and many are anecdotal.

Douglas Coupland wrote a fictional account of the lives of young adults entitled Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991) which gave this generation an inadequate if not inaccurate identity in popular discourse. Craig Miller in Post Moderns (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 1996) has given us a snapshot through his "spring break studies." These pictures leave out huge numbers of people. The full spectrum of class is not included--we do not have accurate representations of many ethnic groups and cultures in these studies.

Roman Catholics have studied some persons of this generation. Dean R. Hoge at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., has focused most of his research on Roman Catholics who have stayed with the faith (Young Adult Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001). Faith Popcorn, a New York City researcher, has done a good deal of marketing research on this generation. But there is nothing like the studies of Roomer-generation Presbyterians by Hoge, Robert Wuthnow, and Clark Wade Roof that culminated in Roofs book Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999)

Perhaps George Barna's work GenerationNEXT (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1995) best represents this generation. In 1994 and 1995 he did a study of 13- to 18-year-olds in which he discovered six characteristics about this generation who are now 19 to 24. This generation is serious about life, convinced that the quality of life is at stake in their decisions, stressed out (school, peers, and families are sources of stress, with emotional and relational violence being the critical issues), self-reliant ("I grew up alone and independent, and I'll continue to live that way"), skeptical (they have little faith in people and institutions), and spiritual--and their spiritualities are mystical, diverse, and often syncretistic.

Barna calls people of this generation survivors; they have been through much human pathos. They are realistic rather than idealistic. But, Barna's study is not representative across classes or ethnic groups, even though he attempted a fair representation.

My research at Luther Seminary is an attempt at getting a clear understanding of this generation through their own voices. I have discovered this to be a demographically unique and diverse generation. I have found great ethnic, educational, geographical, and class diversity. There are 69 million persons in this Buster generation (born 1962-1981) in the United States compared to 79.2 million Roomers (born 1943-1961) and 80.4 Millennial kids (born 1982 to present). The two huge demographic groups on either side of the smaller Buster generation can make them feel as though they are invisible in the larger culture.

Joel Kotkin in The New Geography (New York: Random House, 2000) calls this generation "social pioneers." Forty percent of them grew up in families where their parents divorced. Thirty-five to forty percent say, "I raised myself." These people do not return regularly to their homes to celebrate Christmas, anniversaries, and birthdays. Their peers have become their friends, their communities, their families. They experience high rates of drug use, AIDS, violence, and mobility--often moving at critical junctures in their lives. AIDS has been a major factor in shaping their attitudes toward sexual relationships. They have suffered the consequences of their parents' generation' slack of relational commitments and accountability.

This "invisible" generation has great ambiguity in their lives regarding career, family, future, and sexual identity. Virtual relationships often provide significant communities of support. Recently, I spent time with a young woman who has been "dating" a man for a year, yet she has seen him only once. They have been communicating via the Internet. They are both introverts and are majoring in English and journalism and find this way of developing a relationship satisfying. I wonder: Is this virtual relationship enough to build a life on?

High rates of depression and suicide, later first marriages, later first children, and materialism characterize this generation. They are by nature independent; they question authority, work long hours at jobs while in high school and college, and remain single longer. They are "technopolites," growing upon computers, electronic communication networks, global awareness and interactivity, and sitcom neighborhoods. They live in a world that is Wired and wireless--marked by instant, constant communication.

Those aged 18 to 30 are "mediavores"--conversant with TV, music, MTV, VH1, movies, and the Internet. They are immersed in pop culture. This media world creates a certain kind of shared consciousness. They are accustomed to infomercials; carefully honed consumer materialism has been regularly pitched into their lives.

There is a great interest among this generation in spirituality, but few are interested in religion. Most find religion boring, trivial, and unengaging. Most know little of the major faith traditions. Their spirituality and morality are shaped by pop culture. They are self-absorbed and yet they serve others in very direct ways. They browse a spiritual marketplace.

This generation will often speak of themselves as isolated and skeptical of institutions, especially marriage and family; they express anger regarding other generations and the future. Ecology and global sustainability are major concerns for many of them. Miller found in his studies (Post Moderns) that 21 percent see their future as very good, while many others have mixed and ambiguous expectations.

What they have in common is a post-modern consciousness. They have no common metanarrative that gives coherence to a universal world. They have lived in a deconstructionist philosophical environment and have regularly experienced global information overload. Their challenge lies in handling all this information. Experience is their prime referent regarding truth: "If we've experienced it, we know it to be true." Their kinetic and aesthetic sensibilities have integrated with one another. Rationality as a prime way of knowing is giving way to a world of multiple intelligences and competing realities. They hold these many worlds in tension. Leonard Sweet calls this process of merging contradictory and competing realities into common, shared experience the "double ring" (soul Tsunami [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999]).

Their response to our society's emerging pluralism and multiculturalism is often either relativism or fundamentalism. Whatever else their response, power differential concerns regularly lie behind their questions. They want to know who holds the power. For this generation, change is fast-paced, constant, and chaotic.

My Hein Fry colleague Tom Beaudoin is convinced that consumer capitalism may be the emerging metanarrative of this generation. Television has provided them hundreds of hours of highly honed storytelling through advertisements that have shaped this generation's sense of the world. Beaudoin argues that this metanarrative is in fact fast becoming global in scope.

A comprehensive research project

I believe that there is a great deal of important data regarding this generation missing in the research literature, that this generation is far more richly nuanced in its life experience, its struggles, its strengths, and its gifts than has been discovered thus far. Moreover, I see this generation as an incredible gift rather than primarily as a problem generation. Together with John Roberto at the Center for Ministry Development in Naugatuck, Connecticut, and Wes Black at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, we at Luther Seminary are doing qualitative research with this generation. We are listening carefully to youth and young adults aged 10 to 35. We are listening to their stories. From these conversations, our goal is to develop a quantitative research survey, similar to the longitudinal study called Monitoring the Future that was conducted over thirty years by the University of Michigan.

Our vision is to do something like Hoge and his collaborators did in their study of Boomers. They started with Presbyterians who had been baptized and confirmed and followed them into their tenth year after confirmation. That study became a baseline from which Roof presented a remapping of American religion among Boomers in his book Spiritual Marketplace, mentioned earlier.

Discoveries so far. What we have discovered is that roughly 75 percent of young men and women leave the church between the ages of 16 and 24. Forty percent who leave the church return by age 35. Thirty percent of those return to other denominations. Many young men and women now are swelling the ranks of congregations best described as nondenominational.

Among the 25 percent who have stayed involved in the church, we have discovered varying combinations of eight characteristics we call faith factors. Many of these "participating young adults" say faith was deep in the identity and practices of their family. One young woman said in an interview, "In my family, faith was in our armpits and our pores!" These faith participants speak about mentors being a vital part of their faith. Significant relationships with leaders whose faith is a vital part of their own lives have had a huge impact, whether these leaders are coaches or teachers or people in the church--pastors, Sunday school teachers, or youth directors. Generally they have three or more of such faith-filled leaders in their lives.

Service in the name of Christ is important in keeping these young adults in church. They speak about the power of "doing God" with others--that is, seeing God at work through them making a constructive contribution to other people's lives. Being apprenticed into leadership early is another experience they cite as being a significant factor in sustaining their faith.

Another factor these young men and women who stay and lead say was critical for them was having a safe and open place during their senior high and college years to ask tough questions, be in relationships with other persons like themselves, and have the opportunity to do good in the world. They tell us how important excellent senior high ministries are. Post-high school young adult ministries are equally important. The church needs to discover, recognize, and utilize their gifts.

For young people who remain in congregations, worship is found to be interesting because it is an engaging intersection of the gospel with their lives. Another major influence that keeps them connected to a church is. friends from a faith community who invite them to worship, Bible study, or support groups.

The final component that has kept these young adults involved in the church is Christian community support during times of transition or crisis. They face crises in the lives of their friends--overdosing on drugs, suicide, and conflict at school. They tell stories of intimidation and emotional abuse in their high schools. These young adults face family crises such as parents divorcing or losing their jobs. One young woman said, "I got pregnant when I was 15, and my church walked every step along the way with me, and I know I am here today because they cared--they were tough, honest, and truly helpful."

In fact, following young people into all aspects of their lives, including their hardships, is at the heart of this research. As I follow, I sense that this is not a lost generation but a generation invisible to much of the world and certainly to the church. As I get to know this generation I see an emerging spirituality, an emerging hunger for God and God's presence in all of life, especially the one real public world in which they live.

The emerging faith of the first postmodern generation

I take up the emerging spirituality of this generation in "conversation" with the life and theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The central themes of Bonhoeffer's life and theology provide immediate connections with the real lives and spiritual quests of this postmodern generation.

Quality relationships, theological vitality, and ethical integrity are major dynamics in young adult spirituality. At the heart of their faith is a God who is present, active, alive, and at work in real lives in the real world. Their spirituality is characterized by personal and communal authenticity. They are drawn to a transforming faith that takes action in everyday life. Suffering and service are critical dynamics in their search for truth and meaning. Consequently, Bonhoeffer's life and writings ring true with them.

Where is God among the men and women of this interesting generation? What is God up to in their lives? Let us follow their God stories, their faith stories.

Most youth and young adults in the United States are believers. Many are not in church. Whether Gallup, Roper, Harris, or Yankelovitch and White do the research, they regularly find that 90-92 percent of those who are 20 to 30-something say that they believe in God. These young adults have some sense that their existence is connected to God. Most pray with some regularity. Most deem the church unnecessary in their faith because they find it out of touch, trivial, and foreign.

Miller's study Post Moderns, which took place during spring breaks of 1992 and 1993, involved three hundred college students gathering on the east coast of Florida. Listening to these young men and women, he discovered that 77 percent believed that God is creator and 15 percent of them believed in witchcraft. These diverse phenomena are not unusual in the stories that we are hearing from young men and women of this postmodern generation. Some 56 percent said they believed in the power of prayer, whereas 44 percent of this group said that they hardly ever attended church.

Barna's study of religious beliefs and behaviors of youth (GenerationNEXT) led him to an interesting conclusion:

The most crucial point is that teenagers these days are highly spiritual, but they are not very religious, nor are they naturally inclined to embrace Christianity as their faith of choice. They are, after all, the first generation of Americans to be raised without the culturally established assumption that they would start their religious explorations with Christianity and continue to seek a faith system only if Christianity was found wanting. There is a beginning place that looks at the world as a larger market of religious possibilities.

Beaudoin wrote a provocative book, Virtual Faith (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), regarding his own experience and that of lower- to upper-middle-class 20- to 30-somethings. He cited four spiritual values or struggles in the lives of young women and men. The first value reflects particularly strong and varied response to institutions. Some of this generation expressed ambivalence toward institutions, as in "Whatever," or "Who needs them?" Others of this generation are skeptical or cynical about them. Only a small number embrace and are deeply invested in traditional institutions.

A second core value in the spirituality of this generation, says Beaudoin, is the centrality of personal experience. He noticed as he listened to his contemporaries that if they had experienced it, it was true. Experience is a prime indicator of that which is true and important. Suffering is especially seen as a test of genuine faith and truth.

The third struggle Beaudoin noticed is this generation's ambiguity about their identity. They are alive in a time where the major indicators of what it means to be man, woman, heterosexual, homosexual, elder, adult, married, or single are ambiguous, confused, and contended. For example, Robert Bly in Sibling Society argues that very few people even want to be adults let alone become elders in America. So many of life's basic foundations are up for grabs as young men and women make their way from childhood to adulthood. Consequently, many are asking: "How do I know who I am?"

The fourth struggle and also their core faith question, according to Beaudoin, is this: "With most people off doing their own thing, with everyone around me pursuing his or her own agenda, will there be someone there with me, for me?" It is the question of fidelity.

Let us take a quick broad-stroke view of how this generation's God-questions are emerging.

Many youth and young adults struggle with God and religion. Some of these are skeptics or cynics. They find traditional understandings of God unrelated and even contradictory to their experience. Moreover, they find they don't have good places to work through these contradictions and God's disconnectedness from life.

Tori Amos, the daughter of a Baptist minister, is one spokesperson for this generation. Tori has pursued many interesting faith questions in her work. Her video God is evocative and sometimes shocking. Many in her generation see this video as a critique not only of Christianity but also of other world religions. She is considered by some a "prophetess" who scathingly critiques traditions in which she and her "followers" desperately want to be grounded, but they experience them as inattentive to or disconnected from their worlds. Tori finds traditional faith unresponsive to her own pain and the suffering of the broader human condition.

In my interviews, I find many young men and women feeling the same as Tori Amos. The common message I hear is that God is distant, disengaged, or impotent; the church is out of touch, unengaging, self-serving, even destructive.

A second group of young people in this postmodern generation are spiritual seekers. They struggle with God and religion and have yearnings and impulses that lead them to a diverse spiritual marketplace. Many of these young people have pieces of the tradition somewhere in their past experience--a parable of Jesus, phrases out of the creed, or particular prayers they learned as they were growing up.

If Tori Amos resonates with a certain group of skeptics and cynics, U2's song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" (Joshua Tree) is an anthem for the seekers of this generation. With the words "I have run through the fields. I have scaled these city walls. But I still haven't found what I am looking for," U2 poignantly articulates the voice of the seeker. Born and raised in Ireland, having experienced the everyday terror of the hatred acted out between Roman Catholics and Protestants, U2 gives voice to the paradoxical impulses of hopefulness and hopelessness, searching and wonderment. Their music contains portions of the tradition and a search through an array of human possibilities, including formal religious creeds and practices, yet the emptiness prevails. This anthem of the postmodern generation includes the ancient paradox: I want to believe. I do believe. I don't believe. Help my unbelief.

Some common voices among the spiritual seekers of this generation include: God is somewhere, but hidden or not available to me; the church doesn't mean and do what it says or what it claims. I estimate that skeptics and seekers comprise about 70 percent of this first postmodern generation.

Of the remaining young adults, I find a group of 10 to 15 percent of them incredibly intriguing. They are evangelical, sectarian, Roman Catholic, and mainline disciples and leaders. Some have continued their childhood faith beginnings to spiritual maturity and leadership in their religious communities; some of these disciples and leaders have experienced adolescent or young-adult faith transformations or conversions that have resulted in new Christian lifestyles. Most of them are in age-level focused or "niche" ministries. I find very few of these young adults in traditional worship services in congregations on Sunday mornings. They are "invisible" to their faith traditions.

These young people express and demonstrate a strong commitment to faith. They profess, "Jesus Christ has transformed my life; he is the Lord of my life; I am his disciple; he is the Truth; he gives me direction; Jesus healed me; I belong to his body. These are my sisters and brothers in Christ." Faith gives their lives purpose, direction, and meaning; they know they belong to the body of Christ.

Bonhoeffer's framework

All three of these groups of young men and women are engaged in spiritual struggles that were also lived and articulated in the life, writings, and death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer's writings are a fruitful framework for engaging postmodern young adults.

What is it about Bonhoeffer that speaks to this generation and the postmodern condition? Bonhoeffer's work is focused on a particular concrete narrative that makes universal claims, yet is open to others and their truth claims. Bonhoeffer asserts that Jesus Christ lives and God is present and active. His theology is vital and robust. While he asserted that Jesus is the primary interpretive lens for faith and life, Bonhoeffer listened to a great variety of religions and philosophers and found them helpful, often correcting and augmenting his own tradition's errors and lacunae.

According to Bonhoeffer, theology addresses the question: Who will be there for me?--this generation's primary spiritual question, according to Beaudoin--and asserts that Christians are called to be there for others. Bonhoeffer addresses the questions of fidelity and integrates these questions with assertions of call and of purpose.

Bonhoeffer loved the church and at the same time chastised it when he saw it stray from the gospel. He participated in the Confessing Church and in a clandestine seminary. He worked this love/hate relationship with the church not from afar off but from within, asking the critical questions: Where is the center? Where are the boundaries? and How does one work with ambiguity? Bonhoeffer was not afraid to act if the ambiguity did not give way to clarity. He took bold action even in uncertainty. He worked the tensions not just with his incredibly fine mind but also by risking his life.

In Bonhoeffer, experience, reason, and behavior come together. Bonhoeffer is neither suspicious of nor afraid of experience. For him experience is not sentimentalism, and reason is not abandoned. Tough questions are asked and worked. Behavior is integrated with experience and reason. It is this integration that speaks to the hearts and lives of this young adult generation. It speaks to their longing for authenticity. Bonhoeffer' s integrated life and thought provides them a model for life and presents Christianity as deeply incarnate, truth as flesh and blood, life and suffering.

This generation resonates with Bonhoeffer' s integration of individual and community, freedom and obedience, church and world. Truth as suffering becomes perhaps the largest connection of all. They see in Bonhoeffer authenticity as action and as pain. Bonhoeffer's vulnerability does not paralyze or become sentimentalism. Brokenness is taken into the life and action of faith. This kind of talk and living is impressive and persuasive to a disconnected, searching generation.

The church does well with settlers but not nearly as well with pilgrims, that is, people living in transition theologically, morally, relationally, and geographically who ask tough questions. Bonhoeffer was a pilgrim joined by God on a complex spiritual, intellectual, moral, relational, emotional, and physical journey in a time of great historical transition. In Bonhoeffer they see faith shaping the questions, decisions, and actions along the way.

In Bonhoeffer, we find commitment, language and action, an engaging voice--a guide in mission and ministry with this postmodern generation. Here is what he wrote that particularly speaks to them.

On religionless Christianity:

All Christian thinking, speaking and organizing must be born anew out of this prayer and action. It is not for us to prophesy the day. The day will surely come when humankind will once more be called to so utter the Word of God that the world will be changed and renewed by it. It will be a new language perhaps quite non-religious but liberating and redeeming as was Jesus' language. It will shock people and yet overcome them by its power. It will be the language of a new righteousness and truth proclaiming God's peace with humankind and the coming of his kingdom. (Letters and Papers from Prison [New York: Macmillan, 1972], 300)

On Christ in a world come of age:

The question is Christ and the world come of age. The weakness of liberal theology was that it conceded to the world the right to determine Christ's place in the world. In conflict between the church and the world, it accepted the comparatively easy terms of peace that the world dictated. Its strength was that it did not try to put the clock back. And it generally accepted the battle. Even though this ended with its defeat. (Letters and Papers from Prison, 327)

Other facets of Bonhoeffer's theology that connect with this generation's thought, word, and life include his theology of sociality. Here is what he said in Communio Sanctorum:

It is in relation to persons and community that the concept of God is formed ... Christ existing as the congregation.

The more theologians that considered the significance of the sociological category for theology, the more clearly the social structures, or the social intentions, of all basic Christian concepts have emerged. Person, primal state, sin, and revelation are fully understandable only in relation to sociality. (Sanctorum Communio: A Dogmatic Inquiry into the Sociology of the Church [London: Collins, 1963], 22, 6)

Bonhoeffer argues for the peculiarity, the deeply nuanced particularity of God, and simultaneously he finds at the heart of God a relationship, a community. His is a theology of freedom and responsibility. God is free not from humankind but for humankind. Christ is the word of his freedom. God is here, not as an eternal nonobjectivity but graspable in his Word within the church. (We have discovered that many effective young adult ministries are thoroughly sacramental; the Lord's Supper is at the heart of a good many of those effective ministries.)

Bonhoeffer says,

For the first time I discovered the Bible...I had often preached, I had seen a great deal of the church and talked and preached about it.... But I had never become a Christian. I had never prayed or prayed only very little.... Then the Bible, and in particular the Sermon on the Mount, freed me from that. Since then, everything is changed. It became clear to me that the life of a servant of Jesus Christ must belong to the church, and step by step it became clearer to me how far that must go. (In Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian Contemporary [New York: Harper and Row, 1970], 155)

On Christocentric reality: "The meaning of history is found in the humiliated Christ" (The Cost of Discipleship [New York: Macmillan, 1963], 62). "The one who is present in Word, Sacrament, and Church is at the center of human history and nature" (Christ the Center [New York: Harper and Row, 1978], 60).

In The Cost of Discipleship Bonhoeffer states, Costly discipleship, a living and obedient faith in Jesus Christ, had been replaced by belief in doctrine about faith. The Sermon on the Mount had been conveniently set aside by regarding it as law rather than gospel. This result was cheap grace instead of the costly grace of true discipleship.

Bonhoeffer's focus on spiritual community speaks to this young adult generation.

The community of the Spirit is the fellowship of those who a recalled by Christ. In the Spiritual realm the Spirit governs. In the human community, psychological techniques and methods govern. In the former, naive unpsychological, unmethodological, helping love is extended toward one's brother or sister. In the latter, psychological analysis and construction prevail. In the one the service of one's brother or sister is simple and humble; in the other service consists of a searching, calculating analysis of a stranger. (Life Together [New York: Harper and Row, 1954], 32)

Ministries with postmoderns

Effective ministries with postmodern young adults will be deeply and richly theological. Christian leaders and faith communities ministering with this generation are going to have to wrestle with a large spectrum of human pathos and theological responses.

This complex theological work must be multidimensional. It must be historical, descriptive, systematic, and strategic.

First, we must do historical theology with this generation. It is going to be critical that together with them we study the Christian story and know it well. The power of the Old and New Testaments as well as the history of Christian thought must be brought to bear on the real and complex pathos of this generation's personal, communal, and global experiences and concerns.

Second, we must do descriptive or contextual theology together. This calls for reading the world not primarily as a sociologist or psychologist or political scientist. We must combine those disciplines with explorations that ask, Where is God in this? and What is God up to? God is out ahead of us at work in the world. How do we go about looking at a particular community, a particular context, with a sense of a God's presence and active participation in all of life?

Third, this theological work will be systematic. We will need to join this generation in asking tough questions and seeking correspondence and coherence in faith's response to life's contemporary complexities. Even more important, we must pursue the difficult ethical questions, especially the questions of power and authenticity, such as, Does our speech and acting cohere for the sake of all people?

Finally, this theological enterprise is going to be strategic. What languages, what practices, what relationships, what models are we going to utilize in pursing these deep, connective questions in the light of God's action in Jesus Christ? All four of these theological disciplines will need to be worked and integrated in community. Bonhoeffer was a living example of such theological enterprise. His life, thought, and ministry is a vital case for our consideration.

Effective practices for ministry. Several interesting, fruitful emerging languages, practices, and models of ministry hold great promise for ministry with this generation.

Craig Dykstra, in Growing in the Life of Faith (1997), and Dorothy Bass, in Practicing Our Faith (1997), present key practices through which beliefs and values can be integrated with life so that this generation can "participate in the faith" in which they might come to believe. These practices will be critical in authentic and effective ministry with young adults. Young men and women report the deep impression the prayers of parents have made on their lives. One of the most important actions that a parent or a grandparent can take is to talk to God directly, specifically, and gracefully about their kids and grandkids. Young people speak of the power of knowing that someone has prayed about them and their lives. Bass cites eleven other practices that when integrated in everyday life are particularly influential in shaping vital faith. These practices include worshiping God together and singing our lives, telling the Christian story to each other, exploring Scripture together, confessing our sin to each other, forgiving and working with each other's failures, engaging in faithful acts of service and witness, giving generously of our gifts, exercising hospitality and care, listening to each other and testifying the faith to each other, knowing and tending our community, and honoring the body.

Search Institute's research identifies acceptance and support as well as guidance and direction from elders and peers as important factors in young-adult faith and life. Living in community and serving others in response to concrete community needs are important components in effective young-adult ministries. The Institute's studies find service to be a connection between this generation's spirituality and participation in worship and communities of faith.

Three strategies. Three distinct strategies or sets of practices are working well in young adult ministries around the country: niche ministries, cross-generational ministries, and intergenerational ministries.

David Gortner has identified five models of niche ministry effective particularly in the American "technopolies" where so many young adults are congregating. The models include (1) the market, which makes the Christian message deeply contextual in media and style; (2) the hearth, which creates a safe haven and a nondemanding environment where there is a sense of warmth, hospitality, and acceptance; (3) the fanfare, which provides powerful, awe-inspiring experiences that evoke the divine; (4) the system, which provides clear ways in which to define matters of right and wrong; and (5) the narrative, which helps participants search out their identity around a Jesus or God story.

Spirit Garage and The Basement Church are "grunge," or "Xer," churches in the young-adult subcultures of Minneapolis and Portland. They are possible only because of the mother church. They integrate several of Gortner's types in their ministry strategies. They can be accessed via their dynamic Web site, http://www.spiritgarage.org. Spirit Garage began in a garage and The Basement Church in a church basement; their building or "surrounding" provides a large part of the ambience which communicates safety and hospitality to this particular subculture of young adults. A similar ministry in Charlotte, North Carolina, meets in a warehouse from which it takes its name.

Christus Rex at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks is a cross-generational model of campus ministry. At Christus Rex at least two generations from the university and its community gather for worship and ministry. This multigenerational ministry focuses on the unique faith and live dynamics of young adult learners in transition.

At Christus Rex, hospitality, vocation, and spiritual gifts are key elements in its effectiveness. I was there to preach one Sunday, when a brilliant young man spoke to the congregation about his vocation and spiritual gift. He is an MRI tech who puts patients through a series of diagnostic procedures. He said: "Do you know what's going in patients when they come to see me? They are freaked out. They're scared. He went on: "My calling is to make certain this technology functions accurately, for it will read out a life or death sentence for them. So I receive each person as a gracious host. I tend them gently so they will feel respected and cared for in this huge medical system."

His story continued: "This last week Thelma came for a test. She was fragile. She asked for only two things--that I do the test accurately and that I pray for her. I did both. Together we finished her procedures and I sent her on her way. Four minutes later a 'Code Blue' signal called me to join the emergency medical team to respond to a death. I discovered that Thelma had died waiting for another procedure in an adjacent room. I realized I was the last one to tend her life." He finished: "This is my calling." It was powerful. I looked across that congregation and I saw all those really bright young women and men working Out the question: "So, what might God be up to through my gift?"

St. Mary's Basilica in Minneapolis is an example of a third model of effective young-adult ministry. In this integrated model of ministry, five generations of diverse people practice Christianity with excellence at life's boundaries. They sponsor one of the highly valued rock concerts in the Twin Cities every summer. To this huge block party they bring the message, "We are here...we know who you are...we care!" Throughout the large crowds members from the Basilica serve beverages and food, share conversations, develop relationships, show people around the Basilica, and invite this young generation from the neighborhood to join them in highly engaging worship, caring for the city, supporting each other, and tending the world.

The church's future with postmoderns will depend on such ministers who are moving outside their comfort zones in order to honestly engage young adults' consciousness and contexts. We can all learn from them. Many of us will be able to integrate aspects of their work in our own new and imaginative strategies of outreach and discipleship.

Conclusion: ten proposals

I close with ten modest proposals, primarily for my own church, the ELCA, although these could work in other churches as well.

1. We might commission a study that would lead to a guide for perplexed parents of postmodern young adults. Many parents between the ages of 50 and 70 are asking: "So, where did I go wrong?" These parents are wondering how they might be helpful.

2. We would do well to renew and expand our Lutheran Volunteer Corps and consider developing an expectation (much like Confirmation) of one year of service in the name of Christ in the world as a community "rite of passage" into adulthood.

3. We should study, renew, and greatly expand campus ministries in every college and university across the country. Local congregations could be partners in these studies, redesigns, and expansions.

4. We should employ a young-adult ombudsperson in every synod with the responsibilities of connecting existing young-adult ministries with each other and the lives of young adults as they make their transitions from high school and their childhood households into their adult worlds and lifestyles.

5. We should convene an all-ELCA summit on the crisis of young-adult ministries in our congregations.

6. We might initiate a substantive reconsideration of our present understandings and strategies of worship, preaching, and ministries of music.

7. We might launch an integrated Web site, radio station, and TV talk show on Christianity and culture led by Christian young adults.

8. We might pilot a "Theology on Tap" (music and talk with food and beverage) outpost cafe fashioned after existing Roman Catholic models.

9. The eight seminaries of the ELCA might design and sponsor a seminar on Postmodern Young Adult Ministry as a required workshop at all ELCA seminaries.

10. The ELCA in concert with the Youth Ministry Network Extravaganza might sponsor a yearly workshop on spawning new young-adult, outpost niche ministries. Every synod might be required to send at least one "new plant" congregation each year.