Redefining Revival | A Call to Build Parallel Infrastructure

What it REALLY means to live in an Apostolic Age.

If you care about your faith and are working to change the trends, you need to reorient how you’re approaching it.

Here’s what Catholics mostly seem to think. Other faiths have their version of this too:

• We need to catechize harder!

• We need discipleship!

• We need better content!

• We need better marketing!

• We need better homilies!

All of this is true, but it misses something very fundamental.

People are leaving because the infrastructure their entire lives are built on hates us.

That may sound extreme to some, but only if you’re not looking around. I will not elaborate; either you’re awake at this point, or your head’s in the sand.

This is a very big deal for us because traditional faith is not a set of beliefs. Being Catholic, LDS, etc is not a hobby. The extent to which you are (insert your faith here) has a lot more to do with what your life is organized around than it is about what doctrines you asent to at any given time.

Given that, we’ll look at how ordinary people spend their time, and you’ll see what we’re truly up against. We’ll start with teens and move on to parents, then sum this thing up with the takeaways.

High School Students

Negative Inputs

• In school - 6 hours

• Sports - 5 hours on average, 20 if talented

• Social Media - Average 3 hours per day 

• Movies - Average amount of movies watched per day: 3 hours

Positive Inputs

• Average time with parents - 80 minutes

• Average time at Church? Lol

• Average time with peers intentionally talking about faith? Yeah…

• Average time with a wise values-aligned mentor? What’s a mentor?

• Average time spent praying? Don’t ask.

I don’t think any honest parent thinks public schools, extracurriculars, sports, ticktock, and movies teach kids how to be great, virtuous, healthy adults.  But what are they going to do, quit their job and homeschool? They can’t afford that.

Now let’s look at the parents who could go one way or another over the next few years.

“Mostly” Religious Parents

• The average amount of time at working: Both parents are working very hard

• That leaves probably 40 hours of housework and driving to do. 

• Average time with values-aligned friends? They going to sports games and work events.

• Average time doing spiritual direction? Who has time for that? Who’s HEARD of that?

• Average time in prayer? 10 minutes a day, now thanks to Hallow? 

I’ll tell you what they aren’t doing. Sleeping. 

And what’s the culture like at work?

Well, here’s Target’s “Live, Laugh Lesbian” shirt that they partnered with a satanist clothing brand on. Also, corporate spent 8 billion on DEI training in 2022.

At what point do parents just throw in the towel in the fight against mass culture too?

It’s hard right now

Families are drowning and doing whatever they can to get by.

The state says “We’ll keep your kids in school for 8 hours a day at LEAST, for FREE.”

Most parents are going to say, “Take them.”

The culture says “They have to be socialized and check these credential boxes to have a great career.” Most parents shrug their shoulders and say… “Sure. We’ll keep our eye on it…whatever gives them the best chance!”

And here we are saying: “Here are some educational resources on prayer; I’m sure you’ll love them.”

As a Catholic, I can say very firmly that we don’t have product market fit right now. We’re not even close. Other faiths may have different issues, but the data says we’re all in the same boat.

We won’t see this turned around until we have invested and scaled things like:

• Values-aligned schools

• Values-aligned businesses

• Values-aligned childcare

• Values-aligned gyms

• Values-aligned sports teams

• Values-aligned investment firms

• Values-aligned co-working spaces

ETC. 

Until we do this, no amount of better homilies, apologetics, discipleship, apps, or anything will dent the numbers.

I’m not saying we should NOT be building prayer apps and bible studies. We need those, too. But we’re kidding ourselves if we think these things will have a wide-ranging cultural impact on the numbers.

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If you resonate with this post and want to do the hard work, the root-cause work that will have a real impact, drop us a line. Sherwood Fellows would love to be your ally.