Naomi Schaefer Riley read near the plummeting numbers of young adults involved in religious life and decided to find out, not what religious institutions were doing wrong, but rather what they were doing right.

got religion?She investigated the enquiry on the topic and visited religious institutions that take adopted successful strategies for attracting the under-30 oversupply.

In her volume "Got Faith? How Churches, Mosques and Synagogues Can Bring Young People Dorsum," Riley examines seven models of immature developed outreach in Christian, Muslim and Jewish faith communities and offers a look at how they might be adjusted from one context to another.

Riley spoke to Organized religion & Leadership about her findings, and offered some practice's and don'ts for religious leaders. The following is an edited transcript.

Q: What would you proper name as the primary take-aways of your book for leaders in the institutional church?

Naomi Schaefer RileyI spent a lot of time talking to different demographers and bookish researchers, sociologists and religious leaders nigh this tendency toward the unaffiliated, trying to figure out whether these people will come back to the church building eventually.

I think that there will exist some render, but I call back the ascension historic period of marriage is unprecedented. The average age of first marriage for women in America is 27. For men, it's 29, and for college-educated young people, information technology's even higher than that. So information technology really is a long period of time that we are waiting.

There are 10, 12, 15 years between the fourth dimension that they go out their parents' homes and the fourth dimension that they themselves may go married and settle downwardly, and of course fewer people are getting married at all.

I looked at a lot of different efforts that have been fabricated to effort to bring this generation in. A lot of money has been spent, every bit I'm sure you know. Some of it has unfortunately been rather fruitless. There are some slick marketing campaigns out there. There is a swell endeavor to master the technology in lodge to get young people back.

One of the things I saw was that technology actually was not a huge cistron. Immature people expected their religious institutions to accept some basic information on a website and a trivial bit of a presence on Facebook and peradventure Twitter, merely actually, that was not a major gene in getting them in the door, and certainly non in keeping them at that place.

Q: There'southward an assumption that digital presence appeals to young people.

People look at this generation and they think, "It's unlike" -- and the easiest decision is that information technology's different because they grew upwardly with iPhones and it's different because they're masters of social media. But I don't call up that'south necessarily the defining feature of their difference.

I of the things that I recollect people misunderstand about the use of technology is that oftentimes the technology that young adults use is actually in the service of getting contiguous contact. A lot of it is, "Here I am -- where are you?"

Young people are longing in many ways for the kind of spontaneity and customs that their grandparents' generation had. The idea that you can walk through a neighborhood and run into people that you know at the java shop or the bar or the church is really something that appeals to them greatly.

So yous really have to consider that the technology, as I said, is being used in the service of this face-to-confront contact. It's not an end in and of itself.

Q: If technology isn't the solution, what is?

One of the things is this community-based arroyo, and it is a little bit of a rejection of the megachurch model.

I went to Redeemer Presbyterian Church building in New Orleans, and the whole footing of the church is "We are committed to this neighborhood." People sometimes come try to join the church from other neighborhoods, and the pastor will actually say, "Are y'all sure in that location'southward not a church closer to y'all that you'd prefer?" Which is, I think, a little bit strange. Many people might be put off. He's very polite almost it, but I think that emphasis is of import.

The 2nd enormous gene here is that we treat this generation like children. I hateful, they're 25-year-olds, 26-year-olds. Perhaps they haven't gotten married. Maybe they're notwithstanding living in their parents' basement, and maybe they haven't completed their education or they're even so looking for a job. Simply they're perfectly capable of taking on a lot of the important responsibilities in a religious establishment.

One pastor I talked to at a blackness church in New Jersey [Get-go Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens] told me the story almost how he fired his wife. His wife had been in charge of the women's ministry at the church for many years. And he said, "You know, I retrieve it would exist useful to accept the immature adults who come in here take on these leadership roles and feel as if they're needed every week."

Because you could get the sense, if you're a 25-year-old walking through the door of many churches, that y'all could come or get and no ane would really miss you. Not only are these capable immature people, merely often they may have more time and flexibility than the xxx- or 40-somethings who are juggling careers and children.

Q: You have said that it'due south of import for people to be producers of religion as opposed to consumers of it. Is that a difference with this generation?

I can't say that it started exactly with this generation, but certainly I think it's reached a kind of apex. If you look at what the higher religious feel is right now, in many ways faith on campus is thriving. The students are more than religious than the faculty or the administration in near cases -- everything from Hillel to Campus Crusade to the Cardinal Newman Society can be very popular.

Organized religion on campus is extremely convenient. Information technology'due south right there. You don't take to pay extra. You don't have to deal with people who are not in your immediate peer group. The messages are all tailored to you equally a immature person. The celebrations are fun and exciting. The music is neat.

One of the issues with all this is that when students graduate, it's not clear that they're going to be able to replicate this -- or even that it would be desirable for them to be able to do so.

Multigenerational churches are complicated things. They're non all near celebration. Information technology's not all xx-year-olds without a care in the world. The "gourmet liturgy" and the exciting music can frequently exist difficult to notice in a traditional church. Just this gets to the question of the fact that we've trained them to exist spiritual consumers in that sense, and traditional churches and multigenerational churches need spiritual producers.

They need people who volition come in and say, "I'm not merely looking to exist entertained; I desire to actually requite something." Many of the young people that I interviewed did desire to give something dorsum. This is a generation that has been raised on the ethic of service. They've been doing volunteer piece of work since high school or earlier.

Simply whether yous tin can get them to get over that hump of "This may seem like a boring establishment to you, only we would similar yous to make it really more than lively if you could" -- I call back it'south a hard mountain to climb.

Q: What organizations did you find that were successful in bridging that gap from college vibe to mean solar day-to-day, day-in, day-out, multigenerational, on-the-ground religious institutions?

One thing that was really interesting was this young developed Muslim group that I visited in California. Information technology'due south chosen Muslims Establishing Communities in America (MECA), and what they're trying to do is create a pipeline of immature leadership. So they have actually fun activities, a lot of social gatherings.

They do all sorts of different kinds of activities for immature people that feel like they're a niggling bit like they're in higher, simply they are very serious, and they're doing studies of the Quran and too trying to teach these young people how to clarify texts. Many of them have been taught to memorize the texts simply not to interpret them fully.

So that was a really interesting way to bridge this gap. It tried to have them from where they were and bring them into these immature leadership positions.

Q: Did organizations that were successful with young adults have leadership development, either formally or informally?

One interesting model was [Showtime Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens], in which the immature adults grouping is called Fusion. The reason that it was chosen that was because it wasn't but a split entity. Every person in Fusion was training to exist part of another ministry building in the church.

It wasn't just, "OK, we're going to have the immature adults group." They asked, "Which of these ministries would y'all really like to be getting involved in as a leader, and we'll train yous to practice that?"

Another example is the Alliance for Catholic Didactics, which is kind of the Catholic version of Teach For America. They send out immature people to impoverished communities to teach in Catholic schools in that location, only while they're doing that, they alive in community.

It's most like a lay order, and they're training these immature people not only to teach in these schools only to exist a kind of spiritual representative in a customs. In those starting time couple of years out of college, one of the things that these kids larn is to really own the faith.

Q: Leaders in the church may think, "Shouldn't the institutions exist forming the young people, as opposed to the institutions trying to conform to what they call back these immature adults want?"

Ideally, I think, yes. But one of the issues is that we have allow this post-xviii-year-old, mail-college generation kind of flounder. If this were a continuous process, it would be a little fleck different, just for many of the people who are saying they're unaffiliated or "nones" now, it'due south been several years since they've been in a religious institution at all.

Many parents run across their responsibleness when information technology comes to religious life rather early, and that'due south not really the fourth dimension to exercise it. I was talking to the rabbi at my own synagogue about this. You accept all these Jewish parents who say, "I'll ship my kid to Hebrew school and they'll get a bar mitzvah, and and so everything volition be fine."

Those kids are not getting married for another peradventure 20 years, and and then information technology'due south a piffling odd to call back they'll be set for life equally a consequence of what happens to them when they're 13. Those childhood religious experiences, every bit much as they're quite symbolic, are not, I remember, what volition deport people through in terms of how they practice faith as an adult.

I practise not think that the religious institutions should be changing themselves theologically. The suggestions that I make in my book are really structural changes and ideas almost our attitudes toward this generation.

Q: You also make the indicate that during this extended period before marriage, young people get "formed by others." What kind of formation can go on during this period of life?

I really do call back that ultimately families have to take some responsibility here. It can't all be on the shoulders of religious leaders. I would add one other thing. Not to harp on this point, only it's not true -- only true -- that parents when their kids are teenagers decide that they are not going to force them to go to church anymore. Information technology'due south also that the parents drop off, as well.

I've interviewed a bunch of kids who, when they go off to college, find that the parents have stopped attention religious services. It'southward as if the parents take gotten across the message that religion is for kids, and now that our kids are out of the house, we're washed.

It's almost building that kind of community to get them in the habit of coming. I know the logic sounds circular, but the likelihood that you will exhibit some religious practice next calendar week has a lot to do with whether y'all did information technology this week.

We, certainly equally Jews, place a lot of emphasis on the High Holidays, simply what about what happens in between? Information technology's not only virtually having social events. It'due south besides about religious ritual, which I retrieve provides the solidity and the regularity that is lacking from these immature adult lives in many cases.

Q: Is there a tension betwixt more bourgeois theology and perhaps more than progressive attitudes of the younger generation?

This is a hard one, and manifestly I surveyed a number of different religious groups, and I'm not telling anyone to remake their theology. It's certainly true that this generation is much more tolerant of homosexuality, for instance, and supportive of gay marriage.

When I talked to the Muslim young adult group, that was 1 of the barriers for them to going to mosque. Not necessarily the fact that they wanted the mosque to modify Muslim theology on this issue, but they didn't like the kind of hatred that they felt was coming from the pulpit when information technology came to these kinds of ideas. It didn't jibe with their sense of what it meant to be tolerant.

In terms of other theological issues, I think there is a concern amid a lot of young people about hypocrisy. They worry about their own behavior and that they don't vest in church unless they have behaved perfectly.

So I think to the extent that church leaders are comfortable with talking about this, it has to be a message that, "We don't wait you to accept everything down before you lot walk in the door."

But that is something that is very intimidating for immature people. They don't feel similar they should be there unless they're behaving completely in concert with everything that the church building believes.

Q: Nosotros did a story about Charlotte/I recently, and then I was interested to run into that you profile that organization in your book. Could you lot talk a little bit about the accept-aways from that system?

Charlotte/I is a grouping of churches, mainline and evangelical, in the greater Charlotte area. The leaders of these churches had gotten together a few years ago, and they were deeply frustrated with their feel of trying to get young adults in the door. They had spent oodles of coin on this, on peachy programs and exciting music, and after a few weeks, inevitably the attendance dropped off over again, back to where it was before.

So these leaders got together and they said, "Look, what if nosotros pooled our money and had one event during the week each week in downtown Charlotte so people who are coming out of piece of work can just become straight over?"

The idea was, "We'll grab them correct when they're getting out of work rather than trying to worry about where they are on Sundays correct now." They would go several hundred people to these events, and they'd accept these tables outside the church building where it'due south beingness held, and the tables would prove on a map where you are in the Charlotte surface area and what churches are near you.

Charlotte/Ane set out very early on to not replace church. They said, "We're non going to have services Sundays. We're not going to perform baptisms or marriages. We want people to use this as a vehicle for getting back to church on the weekends." They accept an almost 100 percent turnover charge per unit every three years. So it's not a long-term institution in that sense, and I think it is -- it's serving as some other kind of span between college life and the multigenerational religious institution, and information technology seems to be quite successful.

Read more on this topic: Dos and Don'ts of attracting young people to church

Naomi Schaefer Riley researched congregations and organizations that accept been successful in engaging the "nones" and distilled some lessons for faith leaders.

Do …

Care for young adults as young adults . Requite them responsibility.

Go local. Focus on a neighborhood and getting people who are nearby to become involved.

Include singles. With the rising historic period of matrimony, we tin can't have all of our messages in church just for people who are married or who are about to go married.

Be American. This came out of my interviews with Muslim young adults. Many religious institutions in the U.South. have an old-globe feel culturally.

Get new people to come at the same fourth dimension. Information technology's a little less intimidating than coming to a new place alone.

Don't …

Go overboard with technology. I'm not sure that the payoff is really there for the money.

Invest in slick marketing campaigns. These young people are very savvy.

Segregate this generation. Eventually, we have to come up to terms with the fact that nosotros want them integrated into a multigenerational institution.

Underestimate them. Just considering these young people are living in their parents' basements, it doesn't mean that they're children.