My new friend Steve Lutz has done some good work on articulating the relative breakdowns of students at Penn State on their “spiritual openness continuum”. I’d suspect it looks fairly similar on most state university campuses (±5%):
+2 Actively looking, open people (churched, professing Christian, or on the verge). 3% of the student population
+1 Have spiritual questions in the back of their mind; but open-minded, not closed. Willing to give it a shot. Nominal Christians, friendly non-Christians. 10%
0 Apathetic. Couldn’t care less, either way. Find both extremes to be shrill, obnoxious, and irrelevant. If you bring up Jesus, they shrug their shoulders and say “Meh.” 62%
-1 Suspicious, somewhat hostile, but might be willing to give you an audience. 20%
-2 Active, angry, antagonistic. For example, militant atheist. 5%
via The “Spiritual Openness Continuum” on Campus, and What to Do About It « the SENTinel.
I’d highly recommend reading his whole post, especially the implications for ministry structure and design (This is one of the several reasons we have moved toward a missional community structure in our ministry).
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