The Great Unmooring: How Cultural Upheaval Is Creating a Gospel Opportunity
By Ed Stetzer
In Chicago, a favorite tourist activity is to take an architectural boat tour on the Chicago River. Passengers board a boat and wind their way through the highlights of the city’s skyline while listening to the narration of the boat’s expert guide. At the end of the tour, the boat returns to the dock, and is secured through a process called mooring.
While mooring, boats are attached to fittings on the shore called “cleats,” and fastened with ropes known as “lines.” The lines of large ships are secured to large cylinders on land called “bollards.” When the next group of sight-seers boards, the ropes are cast off, and the boat is no longer moored to the pier. When a boat or ship is unmoored (or “underway”) it is disconnected from the stability of land.
Unmooring is also an accurate description of the complexities and confusion of our moment. People—even whole communities—are becoming disconnected from the realities that held previous generations together.
While this “Great Unmooring” is certainly true of American society, it can also be felt throughout the world. Its impacts are multifaceted, creating turbulent times, division and uncertainty. But it also presents tremendous opportunity for the gospel.
The Great Unmooring of Young People
The Great Unmooring has hit young people with significant force. Young men and women today (mostly young millennials and Gen Z) have moved away from many of the ideal “pathways to success” in life that were common at the same age among older generations. My father was a union iron worker and lather in New York City. This solid-paying union job gave him a stable path toward a stable life. But for many millennials and Gen Z-ers (men and women alike) such a story sounds almost fictional. The job landscape no longer looks like climbing a single ladder throughout one’s career. Instead, young people’s careers often look more like playing Chutes and Ladders, bouncing from one vocational ladder to another as they hit opportunity, and occasionally falling down a “chute” of recession, corporate downsizing or automation.
Once steady manufacturing jobs are far less available for those seeking blue-collar careers like my father (even if an increased demand for trade workers does provide some respite). While the career landscape heavily favors knowledge work, the cost of seeking a college degree has risen almost 200% since 2000, while wages have only risen 8%-14% in the same time period for jobs that require a bachelor’s degree or higher.
The old mooring of purchasing a home and starting a family at a young age is made much more difficult by a 111% increase in housing costs and a 150% increase in the cost of childcare. The average millennial or Gen Z person also delays getting married until later in adulthood than previous generations (though, once married, they divorce at much lower rates than Boomers and Gen Xers did in the same time of life).
