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Partner at Tulchan Group. Priest in Church of England. Bad dancer

Tuesday 3 May 2011

Born in the Summer of His Twenty-Seventh Year.....

Ordinangst was fascinated by a statistic that his vicar used in a sermon this weekend.  Apparently, research shows that the large majority of Christians in the US make their first commitment to following Jesus Christ between the ages of 18 and 23.  Ordinangst thinks this is interesting for three reasons.  First, it doesn’t seem to tie in with any of the research that he can find on the web like this which seems to point to most people becoming Christians during their teens. (admittedly both these pieces of research are published by “youth” focused ministries, so it may well be self-serving).  Second, it is American research, and there is no reason to assume that patterns are the same in the UK.  And third, it doesn’t tie in with Ordinangst’s own experience – he was clearly a late starter (no surprises there).
So. Ordinangst thought it might be interesting  to conduct a piece of on-line research of UK Christians that simply asks them at what age they made their commitment.  Clearly knowing at what age the mission field is most fertile has to be a useful resource for planning purposes for everybody.  It may well turn into a useful essay subject down the line for Ordinangst too!
Voting is very simple – click on the age range in the table beneath this post, click submit and that’s it – totally anonymous, and you get to see the results of the poll as it is going along. And before you ask, you will see that Ordinangst has included an option for people to click that says they don’t recognise a specific “moment” of commitment - which is entirely valid.   
More interesting than AV perhaps, and definitely less complicated!  Happy voting…..

3 comments:

  1. Defining "commitment" is a toughie, too. I was baptised as a baby, confirmed before I was a teenager -- and after I left home spent several years investigating other religions and avoiding Christianity as much as possible. Even with the benefit of hindsight it seems surprising that I'm now quite involved in the C of E.

    Throughout all of this I remained strongly theist, and my searching was definitely seeking after God. But some of my experiences with church were alienating enough that the very idea of God in Christ was, for many years, inconceivable to me. Experience has transformed my understanding, but I'm not sure that my ongoing involvement can be seen as substantially different in nature to my prior wandering.

    At the renewal of baptismal vows, am I making a commitment that I had dropped, or am I declaring in very specific language what I have always tried to do but lacked the understanding to articulate?

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  2. What are you defining as 'commitment'? A public declaration by means of baptism, confirmation or similar?

    I've been doing some research into the 'missing generation' and asked within a survey whether people had been confirmed/received into membership and if so, at what age. The majority of people answering were Methodists (it's a Methodist piece of research) but the results were interesting.

    90% of the 220 respondents had been confirmed/received into membership. The average age of this taking place was 16.5. For the Methodist respondents the average age was 18, for Anglicans (the next largest group of respondents) the average was 13.

    Make of that what you will...

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  3. Can we get a definition of "commitment"? Surely it should be one's confirmation?

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