What will your kids choose to be when they grow up? That speculation may not get much outward airing over dinner with friends, but in the quiet moments when parents project their family into the future, it’s no small speculation. Here’s one layer of that prognostication: Will your kids grow up to be nuns?

This is one of the challenges when turning a blog (written snippets) into a podcast (an audio blast). I’m not talking about your daughter becoming a dedicant to a religious movement; instead, I’m raising the gnarly issue of “nones.” That’s a growing category – more populated by Millennials and Gen-Zs than their parents’ generations – that is increasingly capturing the attention of cultural pollsters.

“Nones” are now 30% of the American humanscape. “Spiritual but not religious” is one dimension of that unstructured crowd. Atheists, agnostics and “nothing in particular” would be boxes checked by some of the outliers. A troubling knot in that human cord are the youngers who feel like they’ve left the shrinking islands commanded by the elders (pun intended). “Organized religion” is assumed to be an institution worthy of abandonment; life without defined theology or orthodoxy fits the new tastes of the Sunday morning coffee-instead-of-communion crowd. Is that a problem?

How do you construct a durable community? What are the foundational elements of an enduring culture? Are there components that are not up for reinvention with every new generation?

If the Bible is one’s source for reliable truth – is there a proven alternative? – the answers to those queries become clear without contest. Four cornerstones support any healthy nation: 1) a trusted government; 2) an ethical marketplace; 3) nurturing families; and, 4) healthy churches.

If you read me regularly on Mondays, you know that I’m neither an optimist nor pessimist; my lean toward realist occasionally puts me in the company of both camps, depending on the moment. As I look to the future and wonder about our durability going forward, my sense of structural instability is growing. Look at those four critical components that are necessary to sustain a viable nation: how would you rate each of the four, on the classic 1-10 scale?

Our shared calamity through the recent pandemic period has created aftermath effects that have massive implications. Over the last two decades, “regular attendance” at church had eroded from being 3x/month to 2x/month; that’s a 35% drop in active participation. After the covid shift to “virtual” services, the move away from being together for worship has poured rocket fuel on the bonfire of the growing “Nones” inferno. 

God has always likened the local church to the nuclear family. Paul’s mobile mission around the Roman Empire could be viewed as simply a church planting effort, but – in practice – he was establishing faith families everywhere he spent time. To the church in Corinth he embraced them in words:

“I am not writing these things to shame you, but to warn you as my beloved children. For even if you had ten thousand others to teach you about Christ, you have only one spiritual father. For I became your father in Christ Jesus when I preached the Good News to you. So I urge you to imitate me” (1 Corinthians 4:14-16).

Ask today’s youngers about their church involvement. Here’s a frequent response: “I listen to  __(famous teacher’s)__  podcast.” Paul’s response: even if you listened to 10,000 podcasts, you still need a local church, and a “live” faith family!

Where do you find a spiritual father? Likely, that’s another title for “pastor” at your local church, designed by God the Father to be a family-like community of Jesus followers who take their orders from the Word of God and the Spirit of God, on our way to the Father and Son in Heaven.

Don’t be a None! Listen to your Heavenly Father, and connect with an Elder in the faith whom you can imitate…

Bob Shank