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The Foster Letter —

Religious Market Update

The FOSTER Letter is a bi-weekly e-mail religious market intelligence report targeted to Christian market channel and ministry leaders.  Each issue reports on news, trends, events and research that will directly or indirectly impact your audiences and businesses in a convenient summary format  Better informed leaders make better choices!

Researched, Edited & Published by Gary D. Foster

Excerpts from the

February 25, 2010 edition of

The FOSTER Letter—Religious Market Update

Millennial Faith Fewer young adults than older people belong to any particular faith. Young adults are less likely to be affiliated to a faith than their parents’ and grandparents' generations were when they were young. 26% of the Millennial generation (born after 1980) are unaffiliated with any particular faith, twice that of Baby Boomers as young adults (13% in the late ’70s). They also attend religious services less often than older Americans. And compared with their elders today, fewer young people say religion is very important in their lives. Yet they remain fairly traditional in their religious beliefs and practices. Pew Research Center surveys show that young adults’ beliefs about life after death and the existence of heaven, hell and miracles closely resemble those of older people today. Though they pray less often than their elders, the number who pray every day rivals the portion of young people who said the same in prior decades. And though belief in God is lower among young adults than among older adults, Millennials believe in God with absolute certainty at rates similar to those seen among Gen-Xers a decade ago. This suggests some of the religious differences between younger and older Americans today are not entirely generational but resulting in part from people’s tendency to place greater emphasis on religion as they age. (The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life 2/17/10) 

What Do Those Numbers Really Mean? Marketing numbers can be looked two ways: quantitatively and qualitatively. Quantitative numbers tell a story based on volume, while qualitative numbers tell one based on impact and effect (beyond sheer volume). These two vantage points together tell the whole story and can influence what steps you take in marketing. I can help you objectively understand and evaluate your numbers. Contact Gary@garydfoster.com, www.garydfoster.com or 419-238-4082. (Online Spin 2/10/10) 

Colorblind Church According to Michael Emerson, a Rice University specialist on race and faith, the proportion of American churches with 20% or more minority participation has languished at about 7.5% for the past 9 years. Yet among evangelical churches of 1,000 or more, the ratio spiked from 6% in ’98 to 25% in ’07. Some of America’s largest churches are setting the pace; Joel Osteen’s Houston Lakewood Community Church is split evenly among blacks, Hispanics and a category containing whites and Asians. Bill Hybels’ Willow Creek is at 20% minority. David Campbell, a political scientist at Notre Dame studying the trend, says “if tens of millions of Americans start sharing faith across racial boundaries, it could be one of the final steps transcending race as our great divider”—and it could help smooth America’s transition into a truly rainbow nation. (Time 1/11/10) 

Marital Stability Up After years of increase, the U.S. divorce rate fell in ’08, finds the ’09 State of Our Unions report.  Research suggests it may be the result of the recession. Divorce rates decreased from 17.5 in ’07 to 16.9 per 1,000 married women in ’08. Before the drop in the first year of the U.S. recession, the rate had consecutively risen from 16.4 in ’05. At the same time, credit card debt has declined by $90 billion this past year, possibly contributing to the lower divorce rate. (Christian Post 2/16/10) 

Pricey Data In ’04, the average American spent $770.95 annually on cable TV, Internet service and video games, says Census Bureau data. By the end of this year, this is expected to have grown to $997.07. Add another $1,000 or more for cell phone service, and the average family is spending as much on entertainment over devices as they are on dining out or buying gasoline. This excludes what is spent on movies, music and TV shows bought through iTunes or the data plans that are increasingly mandatory for sophisticated smartphones. For many, entertainment and communications subscriptions have become indispensable necessities of life, on par with electricity, water and groceries. And for every new device, there seems to be yet another fee. (NY Times 2/10/10) 

Social Media Mom Influencers According to a BSM Media survey of moms who are active in social media online blogging, tweeting or Facebooking, 65% feel they have as much influence offline as they do online. 52% admit to sharing product information with an offline friend regularly; another 32% regularly share info they find online with offline peers. These social media moms not only socialize online but offline, as well. 54% belong to at least 3 mom/women-related organization or groups in their physical community; over 35% belong to more than 5 such groups. Today’s mothers see few boundaries between the virtual playgroups she socializes in and the moms she chats with in the carpool lane. (Engage Moms 2/3/10) 

Churches Fall Behind restaurants, pubs and sports bars when it comes to favorite places to meet new friends. Only 16% of Americans named church as their favorite place. 11% chose “online” as their favorite place to make new friends, according to a Group Publishing survey. (Christian Post 2/4/10) 

Faith & Wealth The Heritage Foundation reports that surveys typically find those who practice Judeo-Christian faith traditions do better financially than non-religious people, all other things being equal. The General Social Survey found in ’04, the average “religious person”(someone who attends a house of worship at least once a week) had an income 8% higher than the average person who attends once a year at most. An MIT economist found the greater the proportion of population that shares an individual’s religion, the higher levels of income tend to be. Reasons for this include the social connections available in communities of faith; the higher education levels typically achieved by religious people; religion’s general encouragement of entrepreneurship, exercise of talent and stewardship of resources; and faith’s natural promotion of constructive behavior. (Deseret News 1/22/10) 

Encouragement According to Hallmark, 90% of consumers want more choices in encouragement cards that will allow them to share support in unique ways for real-life situations. Do you have an encouragement strategy for your communities (board, team, clients, customers or donors)? It won’t happen if you don’t plan it. I can help you craft one. Contact me at 419-238-4082, Gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com. (CMA e-Newsletter 4/2/07) 

Temptation Real Pew Research Center senior research specialist Amanda Lenhart reports, “We found that 4% of teens 12 to 17 who had a cell phone said they had sent sexting images of themselves to somebody else. We also found 15% of teens in the same age range said they had received these images of somebody they knew.” Though those figures were not surprising, the fact there’s no gender difference between boys and girls in the sending or receiving of sexting images was. The practice can be dangerous and is growing, the study shows, and for a generation of teens that uses cell phones daily, the temptation is real. (OneNewsNow 1/24/10) 

Clouds on the Horizon By 2012, 20% of businesses will have no ownership of IT assets. Fueled by technological developments in ’09 such as virtualization and cloud computing, there's a movement toward decreased IT hardware assets and more ownership of hardware by third parties. (Center for Media Research Brief 2/5/10) 

Recalibrating Donations Many Americans appear to be significantly cutting back on charitable giving in order to adjust to the downturn, according to Barna Group research. 48% of U.S. adults have reduced their giving to non-profit organizations (excluding churches and houses of worship) in the last 3 months. Churches were slightly less likely to be affected but were certainly not immune to cutbacks: 29% of Americans have dropped their level of support to churches and congregations in recent months. When compared to a similar Barna study conducted at the start of the economy meltdown in late ’08, there has been a 58% increase in the percentage of Americans who have curtailed giving to non-profits and a 45% increase in the proportion that have reduced their church donations. The segment of donors who have dramatically decreased their contributions to churches has more than doubled in the last 14 months. 75% of Americans believe the economy will take 2 or more years to recover, and 42% expect it to take more than 3. (Barna.org 2/8/10) 

Michael Hyatt responded to the recent media attention given to e-book pricing in a recent blog. “Surveys show many people will pay more than $9.99 for eBooks. The fact is many people are already paying more than $9.99. Some of those surveyed by The NY Times say they will wait for prices to go down, just as they do now while waiting for a hard-cover book to be released in paperback. However, I have argued for years that people don’t buy a price point; they buy a solution (non-fiction) or entertainment (fiction). As long as the price is within a range of reason, it is a non-issue. Those in the industry make more of this than is warranted.” (Some thoughts on eBook Pricing, Michael Hyatt 2/15/10) 

Never Assume You’ve Arrived When companies achieve success, they usually quit innovating and become guardians of the status quo. But yesterday’s perfect processes are obsolete tomorrow. Vinyl records were replaced by 8-track tapes. 8-tracks were replaced by cassettes. Cassettes were replaced by CDs. And now CD’s are being replaced by MP3 players. The same is happening with business practices. Lesson: Success, like failure, is a temporary condition. Don’t get leapfrogged by the competition! Let me be your innovation advisor. Contact me at 419-238-4082, Gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com. (Monday Morning Memo 12/8/08) 

Catholic Millennials Nearly 2 in 3 Catholic Millennials (ages 18-29) see themselves as at least somewhat more “spiritual” than “religious,” while 55% of practicing Catholics see themselves as more “religious.” 61% of Catholic Millennials believe it is all right for a Catholic to practice more than one religion, while 57% of practicing Catholics disagree. 82% of Catholic Millennials see morals as “relative” while 54% of practicing Catholics disagree. Despite whatever differences they may have with the Church, 65% are very or somewhat interested in learning more about their faith. (Church Report 2/12/10)
 

Changes in Attitudes A recent Harris Interactive survey conducted for the Girl Scouts of America finds many more teens and preteens are accepting of homosexual relationships and far fewer find them unacceptable than did so in ’89. 59% of teens and preteens now feel “gay or lesbian relations are OK if that is the person’s choice.” In ’89, only 31% agreed with this view. Only 30% of 7^th-12^th graders now believe homosexual relationships are never acceptable because it is unnatural, compared to 56% twenty years ago. 23% of teens and preteens believe “abortion is all right if having the baby will change your life plans in a way that you will find hard to live with,” compared to 33% in ’89. Click here for the complete report. (Pastor’s Weekly Briefing 2/19/10) 

The Number of New Books being published in the U.S. has exploded. Bowker reports that 560,626 new books were published in the U.S. in ’08, more than double the number published in ’03. These figures include print-on-demand and short-run books, which is where most of the growth has occurred. In addition, 120,947 new books were published in the U.K. in ’08 per Nielson Book. Add tens of thousands more in other English-speaking countries. (The Change Revolution 2/10)

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