EXPLORING WHY EMERGING ADULTS ARE CHOOSING TO BELONG TO EMERGING CHURCHES:
Date
2024-12
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Publisher
Stellenbosch University
Abstract
This study explored why emerging adults in South Africa choose to belong to emerging churches. Emerging adulthood, encompassing the ages between 18 and 25, is a time marked by considering all available options before making choices that have long-lasting effects on the rest of a person’s life. Emerging adults are also making choices about where they attend church. During emerging adulthood, youth fall away from the church completely in the international phenomenon known as “the missing generation”. In South Africa, this is not the case. Emerging adults here walk away from the churches they grew up in to experiment with different kinds of churches. A local expression of the emerging church is fast-growing in South Africa, but it has not been researched thoroughly across academic spheres, indicating the value of this study. A Venn diagram approach highlights six points of overlap between emerging adults and these emerging churches, namely: spiritual, international, intergenerational, missional, hospitable, and multicultural. Both emerging adults and emerging churches are leading the way to a new way of doing and being church because they operate as agents of change wherever they are. This study gathered qualitative data through semi-structured interviews that were conducted with 21 emerging adult members of 4 emerging churches in Stellenbosch, to understand their experiences and expectations of church. The data obtained suggests that this generation of young believers is passionately committed to their churches and their faith and confirmed that the six points of overlap that the literature review identified are relevant. In their own way, they are figuring out how to live as faithfully as they can in their personal relationship with Jesus, which also propels them to desire a missional impact. The phenomenon that motivated this study is that emerging adults are often missing from mainline churches and experimenting with emerging churches instead. This study initiated a storytelling conversation with emerging adult members of emerging churches that offered valuable insights for how to be church for a future generation.