A New Context for Faith Formation

  1. Congregations today face significant adaptive challenges as they seek to be faith forming communities for people today. Among these are four, interconnected and significant adaptive challenges that will an enduring impact on congregations and faith formation: 
  2. the increasing diversity throughout American society in the length of the life-span, in generational identities, in family structures and marriage patterns, and in the ethnic makeup of America
  3. the rise of new digital technologies that are reshaping society and the emergence of a connected, networked society
  4. the dramatic changes and increasing diversity in the religious beliefs, practices, and affiliation of Americans
  5. the decline in religious transmission from generation to generation  
How congregations respond to these four challenges will, in large part, determine the future shape of church life in America. Responding to these four adaptive challenges will launch leaders on a journey of learning, discovery, innovation, and experimentation—all directed toward twenty-first century faith formation that helps all people develop a vibrant and life-transforming relationship with Jesus Christ.
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  • To learn more about the four challenges go to Chapter One, "Interpreting the Challenges," in Reimagining Faith Formation.

Diversity in Society

The Next America. Paul Taylor. (Public Affairs, 2014)
The America of the near future will look nothing like the America of the recent past. America is in the throes of a demographic overhaul. Huge generation gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious affiliation, and our technology use. Drawing on Pew Research Center’s extensive archive of public opinion surveys and demographic data, The Next America is a rich portrait of where we are as a nation and where we’re headed—toward a future marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a century.

Digital Society

Teens, Social Media & Technology 2015
Pew Research Center
Americas Internet Access 2000-2015
Pew Research Center 
Social Media Update 2014
Pew Research Center
The Web at 25 in the U.S.
Pew Research Center

Religious Changes
America's Changing Religious Landscape
Pew Research Center 2015
American Religion: Contemporary Trends. Mark Chavez (Princeton University Press, 2011)
American Religion presents the best and most up-to-date information about religious trends in the United States, in a succinct and accessible manner. This sourcebook provides essential information about key developments in American religion since 1972. Mark Chaves looks at trends in diversity, belief, involvement, congregational life, leadership, liberal Protestant decline, and polarization. Chaves finds that American religious life has seen much continuity in recent decades, but also much change.
Changing American Congregations
Mark Chaves, 2015

Religious Transmission

Families and Faith: How Religion is Passed Down Across Generations. Vern L. Bengston with Norella M. Putney and Susan Harris (Oxford, 2013)
How does religion get passed down from one generation to the next? How do some families succeed in passing on their faith while others do not? Families and Faith: How Religion is Passed Down across Generations seeks to answer these questions and many more. For almost four decades, Vern Bengtson and his colleagues have been conducting the largest-ever study of religion and family across generations - to find out how religion is, or is not, passed down from one generation to the next. Families and Faith offers a fascinating exploration of what allows a family to pass on its most deeply-held tradition - its faith.

Presentation
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