This posting is the first of three to four posts that I will make related to some concepts that I am working with related to some social and theological shifts that are happening in western society. I would welcome any input or further thoughts that you may have.
Although the popularity of short-term missions from the U.S. has come into focus in primarily the past ten to fifteen years, the social and global shifts which foster an environment conducive to such a pervasive phenomenon have been in formation for much longer. Robert Wuthnow gives a sociological interpretation out of extensive research related to spiritual journeys and spiritual practices in his book After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s. (1998). Wuthnow’s finding is that since the 1950s, Americans have shifted in their expression of spirituality from a focus on dwelling to a focus on seeking. According to Wuthnow, in the past, people primarily identified their faith by membership in a church that had a specific location. Because of social economic shifts, however, this general perception has changed somewhat. An example of this shift is that people produce less durable goods, and to a larger degree they produce a network of communication or serve as brokers of goods or information. This shift from a focus on dwelling to a focus on seeking can also be seen in how people perceive institutions. The older pattern, according to Wuthnow (8) was tightly bounded and hierarchical. Institutions were literally the building blocks of society. The newer pattern, however, emphasizes looser connections, diversity, and negotiation; practical activity takes precedence over organizational positions. Sociologist Robert Putnam makes a similar observation in his seminal book Bowling Alone (2000). Putnam describes the social shift in the United States away from membership in social organizations and away from what he describes as physical capital.
This shift has produced confusion in measuring progress of success of institutions such as a local church. There have been several notable studies conducted which wrestle with the complexity of measuring church vitality in the U.S. and how that is measured. Many of the popular studies have focused primarily on measuring Spiritual vitality in relation to church attendance. A prominent example of this is the Barna Group. Although Barna recognizes that measuring church vitality is changing, they primarily use measures of location (to use Wuthnow’s term). The following is an example from an article of the Barna Group:
With Americans pursuing a growing number of "church" options, some of the traditional measures of church health are being redefined. According to a new study released by The Barna Group, which has been studying church participation patterns since 1984, popular measures such as the percentage of people who are "unchurched" - based on attendance at a conventional church service - are out of date. Various new forms of faith community and experience, such as house churches, marketplace ministries and cyberchurches, must be figured into the mix - and make calculating the percentage of Americans who can be counted as "unchurched" more complicated. The fact that millions of people are now involved in multiple faith communities - for instance, attending a conventional church one week, a house church the next, and interacting with an online faith community in-between - has rendered the standard measures of "churched" and "unchurched" much less precise.
Although this article recognizes the same phenomenon of people moving away from spiritual identity based on location, studies like these which measure the decline in church membership and a lack of consistent attendance to events in the church building conclude that spirituality is declining in the United States. Putnam, however, indicates that the younger generation is not less engaged than their predecessors, but engaged in new ways (2000,26). Similar to the proposal of Wuthnow, Putnam acknowledges the move away from dwelling or physical capital and toward seeking or social capital. A similar argument is made by Wuthnow in his more recent book, Boundless Faith (2009) in which he disputes arguments of Jenkins (2007) and other common assumptions which assert Christianity is flourishing in many parts of the world beyond the United States, and therefore, Christian churches in the U.S. are drawing inward, and are withdrawing involvement from global activity. Wuthnow also disputes the assumption that local churches in the United States focus inwardly with little or no interest in their communities or the global context. Wuthnow’s primary thesis in Boundless Faith is concomitant with the thesis of Putnam that instead of a move away from spirituality, there is a younger generation that is seeking new and different ways to express their faith. This new and different expression flows directly from the theories of spirituality moving from identification with location to an expression of seeking which can be seen in the phenomenon of short-term missions as well as increase in niche tourism which focuses on a type of spiritual pilgrimage.
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