The Translating God Research Project

Every generation needs to work out how to contextualise the Christian story in the culture and lives of young people. This task feels particularly urgent in light of evidence showing that the Church is rapidly ageing, and that it is young people who are most likely to describe themselves as having no religion. It is not necessarily the case that they have ‘left’ the church, but that they were never in church to start with.¹ With each generation becoming more secular in its outlook, the Church can no longer assume that young people have a framework for understanding the Christian faith, when it comes to communicating its stories and sharing its practice.²

The Translating God research project is part of our work here at Youthscape, to help those in the Church to see and understand the worlds teenagers inhabit and reflect on how to translate the good news to this generation.

The number of young people describing themselves as Christian may be falling, but beliefs, openness and practice are more complex. Half (51%) of 11–18-year-olds in a Youth for Christ survey in January 2020 said they believed in a form of supernatural being or power greater than themselves and just under a third (31%) said they prayed. Many of these young people struggled to believe in God because of the suffering, death and illness they saw in the world, and yet when asked which words might describe God’s character the top five were: powerful, kind, loving, caring and good. While 62% said they’d had contact with a church, only 8% viewed this contact positively.³ More recently, Barna’s ‘Open Generation’ research found that teenagers in the UK were more likely to hold positive beliefs about Jesus than negative ones, including that ‘He offers hope to people’ (34%) and ‘He cares about people’ (34%).

On the one hand, Christianity seems to be dying out among young people – with fewer and fewer calling themselves Christian or being part of a church. But on the other hand, many remain open and even warm to God, Jesus and prayer.

How do we bridge this gap?

The research project

Between 2020 and 2023, we collected a range of data, to understand young people’s worlds and worldviews, so that churches can more confidently help them encounter Jesus. The project had five phases, each building on the last, to become an interpreted conversation between culture, scripture, young people and youth workers. Each phase had a guiding question and a distinct methodology.

1. What key trends define young people’s experience?

We reviewed time-series data-sets published between 2010 and 2022, looking for key trends in relation to young people’s well-being, identities, worldview, behaviour, lifestyle, technology use, relationships, education and hopes for the future.

2. How do young people themselves see it?

We then ran 17 focus groups across different locations in the UK, with 104 young people aged 14-18.⁴ We asked them to tell us in their own words what life is like, for them and their friends, and captured their reactions to our findings from phase one. Six key themes were drawn from this phase: pressure, judgement, anxiety, fear of the future, labelling and persecution.

3. How does scripture speak to these experiences?

Thirty youth workers spent a week online, in one of six groups, doing some theological reflection with key quotes and themes from the young people’s focus groups. They identified a range of stories and scriptures that they felt would be ‘good news’ in response to young people’s experiences.

4. How do young people react to these stories?

Forty non-Christian young people aged 14-18 then looked at five stories from scripture.⁵ Three of these groups were in person (two in a school and one in a drop-in) and two were online over the course of a week. The young people read the stories and discussed their meaning together.

5. Which theological ideas resonate with young people?

Drawing on all the research conducted in phases 1-4, we partnered with Scripture Union to design an online survey which was completed by 1000 12-17 year olds, nationally representative by age, gender and ethnicity. We asked young people to react to five ‘good news’ statements about God, life, love, community and justice and analysed their responses. The survey report will be released in Spring 2024.

Working in partnership

The Translating God project has been funded by a grant from the Sir Halley Stewart Trust, and supported by our two main partners: Scripture Union and Bible Society. Scripture Union and Youthscape collaborated on phase five of the research to conduct a survey of 1000 teenagers which will be published in Spring 2024 and Bible Society have supported the production of the final report and the dissemination of all the project findings.

We are grateful for these partners whose support has made this project possible.

What’s coming next?

Phase 1 shares 50 charts that tell a story about how life has changed for young people since the arrival of the smartphone. Phase 2 shares the findings of our survey with 1000 young people, and Phase 3 will include a report that draws our major findings together, and the development of resources that help you put these insights to use.