Are You Down With It?

According to Eileen Lindner, editor of the yearbook for the National Council of Churches and an unapologetic number-cruncher, one of the primary reasons the mainline has struggled so much over the past few decades is as simple as national demographics. For example, the regions of the country where the mainline has traditionally thrived (north, midwest, east) have been the hardest hit economically, leading to a population drain. Also, the builder and boomer generations, who filled mainline churches in the middle of the last century, are getting older. Eileen says, if it seems like mainline churches are dying, it's at least partly because...well...our members are dying (from a presentation delivered at the Lutheran Theological School in Philadelphia, spring 2007). OK, I'll buy it. But the mainline church is not the only institution ever to face a crisis caused by changing demographics. According to an article in The Washington Post today, colleges and universities across the U.S. are a few years away from a demographic crisis of their own:

Colleges and universities are anxiously taking steps to address a projected drop in the number of high school graduates in much of the nation starting next year and a dramatic change in the racial and ethnic makeup of the student population, a phenomenon expected to transform the country's higher education landscape, educators and analysts said.

After years of being overwhelmed with applicants, higher education institutions will over the next decade recruit from a pool of public high school graduates that will experience:

- A projected national decline of roughly 10 percent or more in non-Hispanic white students, the population that traditionally is most likely to attend four-year colleges.

- A double-digit rise in the proportion of minority students -- especially Hispanics -- who traditionally are less likely to attend college and to obtain loans to fund education.

Sound familiar?? Mainline congregations across the U.S. - from rural to urban areas - have found themselves in the middle of an enormous cultural shift, which has included "dramatic change in the racial and ethnic makeup" of their neighborhoods over the past several decades. Most haven't figured out what to do about this. Some are only beginning to acknowledge the reality of their new context. And a few, as the bank accounts near empty, are finally facing the crisis they have on their hands.

Well, it looks like college and university leaders aren't sticking their head in the sand. They're planning to address the situation head on. They are being proactive. And they are, at least at this point, promising to do things differently to recruit and educate a whole new type of student.

It'll be easier, of course, for institutions with larger endowments and/or popular locations. But even smaller, more remote schools are getting ready for the changes that are coming:

That is why the 700-student Northland College in Wisconsin uses its location on Lake Superior to promote it as "the environmental liberal arts college."

"To use the obvious ecological metaphor, we must specialize in our niche, because we can't compete with dramatically better-resourced generalists," Provost Rich Fairbanks said.

Having spent a little time in the hallowed halls of academia, I know first hand how slow and painful change can be in an institution of higher learning...even in one that says it wants to change. Tenured faculty can be impossible to motivate or move. Accreditation rules can be an institutional straitjacket. And administrators too often come from within academic ranks, unprepared for the challenges of casting a compelling vision, leading change, or managing the conflict that inevitably comes with it. (All this probably sounds familiar to mainline Christians, too.) And it remains to be seen, over the next few decades, whether American colleges and universities will be able to successfully navigate through these uncharted waters or whether they, too, will sink under the waves of "but we've never done it that way before!!" It will take way more than just recruiting a new kind of student, although serious and enthusiastic new recruitment efforts will be necessary. Educators are already talking about the need to more deeply understand the people they're trying to reach, the need to use new technology, and the need to collaborate. But it will go beyond even these kinds of changes. Colleges & universities that survive in the new landscape will be so clear about their educational purpose and that they will be free to sound, act, look, and really be different in fundamental ways.

At least some educators sound ready for the challenge:

"This is all going to be huge for schools in a planning and financial sense," said Hansen, the Bates president. "But we also have to look upon it as an opportunity."

Yes, and it'll be way more fun if you actually believe that.

For a picture of what it might look like to belong to a crew (or a school or a church) that both reflects and embraces the diversity that will characterize this new world of ours - and that illustrates some of the challenges & heartache involved in trying to figure it all out - plunk down $7 this week to go see the hip hop movie, Step Up 2 The Streets.

Here's a trailer:

Are you down with that?

Comments

[Tom in Ontario]

I can't take the colleges and universities comparison very far. Okay, they're going to have to compete for a dwindling number of students. But they're offering an education that people are willing to pay for to prepare themselves to get a job.

Who sees the church in any kind of similar way? Who is thinking, "Which church am I going to choose to go to, fork over a pile of dough to, so that I can...What?" Instead they're thinking, "What do I need a church for? Why do I need religion? I'm doing just fine without it. I can keep my money and do what I want with it. I can sleep in on Sunday mornings, or go play golf, or go to the beach, or eat a late breakfast and enjoy the morning paper. Why would I want to join a church, get on some committee to do extra work that I'm not getting paid for, that nobody appreciates?"

I know church can be, and is, more than that. And the people who are already in the church know that it's more than that. But I can't see any comparison between a church and a university.

KELLY'S RESPONSE:

Tom, it seems like what you've actually done is point out how much BIGGER the challenge is for churches.

[Tom in Ontario]

Yeah. Exactly. That's why I don't think we can take our cues from, or compare ourselves to, universities and colleges and the challenges they're facing. We've got an entirely different set of challenges.