Echo #13 – Feb 25, 2012

female, born approx 1988, limited United Church background
a seeker

“My religious identity is curious, confused, and undecided.”

I was baptised at birth and raised with Christian ethics. My family went to a United Church, but only for Easter and Christmas. My brother and I were given the freedom to discover our own religious identity. My mother is bitter towards the Catholic Church, and has instilled in me a spiritual independence. I was raised by her to be a free thinker, and to be wary of the Church.

Download the full document:
Echo-13.doc

Echoes #1 to 12 are posted at

http://campuschaplaincy.ca/category/listening-to-the-echo/

You might also be interested in the new “Learning from Listening” series posted at

http://campuschaplaincy.ca/category/learning-from-listening/

If you would like to receive new Echoes via email, you can address me at

tomsherwood@campuschaplaincy.ca

Learning from Listening #2 – Columbus Daze

“It appeared to me that they have no religion.”

When people think of Christopher Columbus making a mistake,
they typically remember that he miscalculated the circumference of the earth
and thought that he had got all the way round to India.

He made another mistake.

Download the full document:
Learning-from-Listening-2-Columbus-Daze.doc

You might also be interested in the “Listening to The Echo” series posted at

http://campuschaplaincy.ca/category/listening-to-the-echo/

If you would like to receive “Learning from Listening” or “Listening to The Echo” updates via email, you can address me at

tomsherwood@campuschaplaincy.ca

Echo #12 – Feb 18, 2012

male, born approx 1988
secular, SBNR (“Spiritual But Not Religious”)
raised in a family with a nominal United Church affiliation

Despite being raised to identify as United Church, I would be very hesitant to say I was raised with any religion at all. I was not baptized since my mother disagreed with that tradition. I was not taken to church; however my grandmother used to read from a children’s bible to put me to sleep at night. I always enjoyed the stories but can remember being as young as eight years old when I first became skeptical of religion and “God”. I now identify as secular. For me, the term “religion” conjures up images of the Judeo-Christian Church and its roots in tradition. It has been historically linked to many types of oppression related to gender, sexuality and race. The many negative connotations that I personally associate with such an institution makes it impossible for me to support organized religion and I feel that it is really unfortunate that both society and individuals take something and use it to create, or at least support, systems such as heterosexism, white supremacy, and misogyny to a point that these issues have become imbedded in our society.

Download the full document:
Echo-12.doc

Echoes #1 to 11 are posted at

http://campuschaplaincy.ca/category/listening-to-the-echo/

You might also be interested in the new “Learning from Listening” series posted at

http://campuschaplaincy.ca/category/learning-from-listening/

If you would like to receive new Echoes via email, you can address me at

tomsherwood@campuschaplaincy.ca

Learning from Listening #1 – The Maasai Mistake

There is a story from the mission church
among the Maasai people of southern Kenya, nomadic herdsmen,
who initially responded with enthusiasm to the missionaries’ presentation of the gospel.
They loved the stories of Jesus, and they loved the worship and the hymns.
They wanted to be baptized,
and would gather for singing, prayer, the sacraments and worship.
The missionaries were encouraged by the Maasai acceptance of Christianity
so they built a permanent church, and the Maasai people came to the church.
They filled it.
And they filled it with joy and celebration and song…
… until one morning the missionaries woke up, looked out and the Maasai were gone. Disappeared.
The beautiful church building stood empty, abandoned.
The days of filling it with worship and hymns and families and children were over.
Just memories.

What had happened?
The Maasai were a nomad tribe who raised and tended herds of cattle and goats.
In that hot and dry part of East Africa,
without irrigation, no patch of land could sustain the herds for very long.
The Maasai moved with the seasons.
They had to move on, they always moved on.

They had taken their herds and left.

The missionaries learned a little from this experience, but not much and not enough.
Neither has the church.
Neither have we.

The missionaries understood that the Maasai had moved on.
And dedicated as they were, the missionaries followed them and found them,
and re-established the mission with them…
And built another church…
In some tellings of this story
they keep trying to build permanent homes for nomadic people and never learn.
Not only that, they regularly arrive at a sad and discouraging feeling of failure.
Each time they feel they are failing as they abandon one church building after another.
They are slow to understand that they are using the wrong model of ministry
for the context they are in and the people they are with.

This story is a powerful metaphor
for the traditional church’s attempt to carry out its ministry with the Echo Generation,
the new nomads of modern society.

And it speaks to all of us who grieve as we remember large Sunday schools of the past and see aging congregations today and consider amalgamations and closings in the future.

My research and our experience suggest
that the local congregation is not as successful a model of ministry
as it was in earlier generations.
The cohort of young adults that we call the Echo Generation,
the children of Baby Boomers, the Echo from the Boom…
this cohort that the church might call the Missing Generation…
is a mobile nomadic tribe,
connecting to each other and forming communities on their mobiles, on line, by social media… FaceBook etc.

This is a postmodern time, a post religious era, a post-institutional population.

People are still people.
They seek a sense of meaning.
They seek a sense of belonging.
They are spiritual.
The live in relationships and community.
They care about others.
They are ethical.
But the local neighbourhood congregation doesn’t contain them for long.
They wander off, and live their ethical, spiritual lives elsewhere.
They find new communities in which to live,
they create new “tribes” and “villages” around themselves
not based on family-of-origin or community-of-origin as was traditional.

Can the modern followers of Jesus
find ways to follow them and connect with them?

Can the modern followers of Jesus
find new ways to share and celebrate and live the gospel?

Download the document:
Learning-from-Listening-1-The-Maasai-Mistake.doc

You might also be interested in the “Listening to The Echo” series posted at

http://campuschaplaincy.ca/category/listening-to-the-echo/

If you would like to receive “Learning from Listening” or “Listening to The Echo” updates via email, you can address me at

tomsherwood@campuschaplaincy.ca

Echo #11 – Feb 12, 2012: from an active, church-attending family

female, born in the early 1980s
strong United Church background
religious grandparents, agnostic parent
a seeker

“I truly respect both my mother’s freedom to be skeptical and my grandparents’ faith.”

Download the full document:
Echo-11.doc

Echoes #1 to 10 are posted at

http://campuschaplaincy.ca/category/listening-to-the-echo/

You might also be interested in the new “Learning from Listening” series posted at

http://campuschaplaincy.ca/category/learning-from-listening/

If you would like to receive new Echoes via email, you can address me at

tomsherwood@campuschaplaincy.ca

Echo #10 – June 2, 2011

A countdown of Echo numbers.
collated from a variety of sources.
This is all American material,
so the Echo Generation is identified as “Millennials” –

55% of Americans ages 25-29 who had never been married in 2011, compared to 15% in 1960 (U.S. Census Bureau)
50 median number of text messages teenagers send every day (Pew Research 2010)
50% of Millennials say they travel for leisure with friends – nearly 20% higher than older generations (PGAV Destinations Study 2011)
48% of Millennials who say word-of-mouth influences their product purchases more than TV ads. Only 17% said a TV ad prompted them to buy (Intrepid Study 2010)
46% of Millennials say they’ve had vigorous exercise in the past 24 hours
44% of Millennials say that marriage is becoming obsolete, compared to 35% of Boomers who feel the same way (Pew Study 2010)
43% of 18-24 year-olds say that texting is just as meaningful as an actual conversation with someone over the phone (eMarketer 2010)
42% of teens say the primary reason they have a cell phone is for texting. Safety was second at 35% (Nielsen Study 2010)
41% of Millennials have made a purchase using their smartphone
40% of Millennials think that blogging about workplace issues is acceptable. Compared to 28% of Boomers (Iconoculture 2011)
39% of Millennials have a tattoo (Pew Study 2010)
35% of employed Millennials have started their own business on the side to supplement their income (Iconoculture 2011)
34% of women now have bachelor’s degrees, compared to 27% of men (U.S. Census Bureau 2011)
32% of Millennials say they don’t like advertising in general, compared to 37% of the general population (Experian Simmons Study)
30% of those 18-29 say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in life, and 52% say being a good parent is one of the most important things in life (Pew Study 2010)
29.5 years old: the average age of a fast food worker in 2011. In 2000, the average age was 20 (U.S. Census Bureau)
29% of Millennial workers think work meetings to decide on a course of action are very efficient. Compared to 45% of Boomers (Iconoculture 2011)
27% report a decline in email usage among those aged 12-34 over the past year (ComScore Study 2010)
26% of Millennials say they are not affiliated with any religion (Pew Study 2010)
24% of Millennials say that ‘Technology use’ is what most makes their generation unique, the #1 answer (Pew Research 2010)
21% of Millennials say helping people in need is one of the most important things in life (Pew Study 2010)
11% of Millennials have boomeranged back to their parents house after graduating from college (Pew Study 2010)
7 the average number of jobs a person will have by age 26 (Intrepid Study 2010)
6 the number of text message sent by those ages 13-18 every waking hour (Nielsen Study 2010)
4 the average number of times that Millennials eat out per week, more than any other generation
3% of Millennials say they get their news from Facebook and Twitter (Brookings Institution Study, March 2011)

Echoes #1 to 9 are posted at

http://campuschaplaincy.ca/category/listening-to-the-echo/

If you would like to receive new Echoes via email, you can address me at

tomsherwood@campuschaplaincy.ca

I’ll be sending out more Echoes in the next few weeks.

Echo #9 – May 17, 2011

“What does this research have to say to the Ordinands of 2011?”
– addressing their hopes, their fears… and their careers

I had the opportunity to meet with two groups of graduating ministry students recently:
five ordinands at the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax on March 10,
and several more on March 21 in Montreal,
students graduating from United Theological School,
Presbyterian College, and Diocesan College.
They will all be ordained in the next few weeks.

In Halifax, the meeting was arranged by Martha Martin (the UCC campus minister at Dalhousie who is also part of the ministry team at St. Andrew’s) and Rob Fennell (AST professor of Historical and Systematic Theology). In Montreal, the event was organized by Angelika Piché (UTC, Director of Continuing and Lay Education).
Thank you!

The two groups were different in several interesting respects;
but I was struck by three themes that were common to the two conversations.

Download the full document:
Echo-9.doc

Echoes #1 to 8 are posted at

http://campuschaplaincy.ca/category/listening-to-the-echo/

If you would like to receive new Echoes via email, you can address me at

tomsherwood@campuschaplaincy.ca

Echo #8 – April 26, 2011

“Help us to grow as a listening, discerning, learning people.”
That is from a prayer in the “Call to Purpose” document, adopted by the United Church General Council in 2007.

The Listening to The Echo project is an ethnographic study, and I’ll be speaking about the methodology in terms of cultural anthropology at the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion meeting in Fredericton at the end of May. But I insist that it also rests on a biblical theology of respectful sensitivity to others, a sensitivity that has not always been a feature of church history.

The Church emphasizes proclamation.
Church history is a narrative of powerful proclamation, often to less powerful societies.

Download the full document:
Echo-8-April-26-2011.doc

Echoes #1 to 7 are posted at

http://campuschaplaincy.ca/category/listening-to-the-echo/

If you would like to receive new Echoes via email, you can address me at

tomsherwood@campuschaplaincy.ca

I’ll be sending out weekly Echoes for the next two months.

Echo #7 – April 19, 2011: I’ve Been Listening to the Echo

I’ve been Listening to The Echo.

So the sounds of Holy Week echo

    in my ear
    this year:

    * the loud
        and the crowd,
      the Hosannas of Sunday past.
    * the hymns of the Passover supper.
    * the words of prayer.
    * the shouts of a malevolent mob.
    * the sound of a whip tearing flesh
    * the sound of a hammer driving nails.

Download the full document:
Echo-7-Holy-Week-2011.doc

Echoes #1 to 6 are posted at

http://campuschaplaincy.ca/category/listening-to-the-echo/

If you would like to receive new Echoes via email, you can address me at

tomsherwood@campuschaplaincy.ca

I’ll be sending out several more Echoes in the next six weeks.