Where Have All The Boomers Gone?? (Pt 1)

We have given you quite a bit of information about the tsunami that is going to hit the church when the boomer wave reaches each of our areas. Anyone who has given any thought to it at all is convinced that it will be the biggest demographic shift in our history.

If we were in a part of the world where tsunamis occur, and we knew one was coming, what do you think each of us would be doing in the meantime?

I doubt that it would be business as usual. Instead, we would be doing everything possible to make sure we would be ready for it. This advance preparation would not only involve procedures for surviving the onslaught but also developing strategies to make the aftermath as smooth as possible.

As far as the church is concerned, there seems to be little, if any, advance preparation for this “boomer wave”. We have a population “Katrina” heading for us and we are waiting for them to come to us and sit at our “table” to be fed and nurtured.

As a result of my 30 years in various ministries, it is my conclusion that we are reacting like we have always done. We have said “Come to us!” and people have stayed away in droves. We generally act out the definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over again while hoping for a different result) using the age-old axiom “We have never done it that way before”.

There are several things we must do to correct this:

First of all, we must become aware of the opportunity that is coming our way. This can be done by taking the time to look at the population figures in each of our areas.

For example in the Cincinnati Metro area (5 counties in SW Ohio, 3 counties in Northern Kentucky and 1 county in SE Indiana), according to the U S Census Bureau, there are approximately 554,910 individuals in the 45 – 64 age group. This represents 22.4% of the total population compared to 25% of similar age group nationally.

Several sources (professional pollsters, denominational surveys, etc) put the percentage of the “unchurched” in this age group at about 67%. If this is true that means that there are some 373,880 “unchurched” boomers just in our area.

What is even more “alarming” is that, in the 25 – 44 age group, there are approximately 746,224 people moving toward “post-boomerism”. If the percentages remain the same, then that means there are about 499,970 more “unchurched” heading towards us.

To find out how many people are in your area you can go to the following website: http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFPopulation
Paste this URL in your browser and follow the easy directions to find the population of your City, county or surrounding counties.

Take the number of Boomers (45 – 64) and multiply that number by .67. This will give you the approximate number of “unchurched” boomers in your area.

Are they really “unchurched” or have they found “better” things to do??

(More about this later)

The Boomer Blogger