Blue-Collar is Central to the Culture: Blue-Collar Christians are the Majority
Blue-Collar Christians are the Majority
You may have asked yourself at some point, "How can I get more men and young people to come to church?" Reaching out to blue-collar people will accomplish this. Learning how to reach blue-collar hearts is the key to motivating a congregation, bringing more men into a church, and attracting congregants that are ready to serve. For me to provide a convincing argument for this, I'm going to need to use a lot of numbers. I’ll try to make it engaging, but there’s only so much I can do. It is math, after all.
This is an excerpt from, The Blue-Collar Blindspot
It is natural that the culture of a church will be a mix of all compatible cultures represented by those attending the church. Whichever culture has a majority in the congregation will naturally have a great impact on the culture of that church. The most reasonable way to influence a church would be to appeal to the majority culture. You’ve probably already guessed that, and I have numbers to prove that the majority of unreached Christians are blue-collar.
Before we continue, we must agree that we must never be man-pleasers. We shouldn't yield even one inch of biblical truth. What we must do is make room for the Spirit of God to move us. It is the Lord that adds to the Church, and it should be the Holy Spirit that guides our ministries.
A farmer plows the ground, then waits until the right time to sow the seeds. He waits still longer until the plants are ready for harvest and reaps at the right time. He builds and repairs fences to secure his crop. Just like a farmer, we know God must provide our spiritual growth. We should remain mindful of the Lord's provision and support. But we also shouldn't let idleness replace work and still expect to reap a harvest. We must bring forth effort to improve our methods of spiritual cultivation.
With this in mind, there are best practices when addressing a congregation, and foremost is, “Speak the language the majority of the congregation speaks.”
I’ve already pointed out how blue-collar Christians are being unintentionally ignored. One of the many reasons this is a tragedy is that blue-collar Christians are the majority of most congregations. My data to prove this comes mostly from Pew Research’s Religious Landscape Study1. This study was performed in 2014 and surveyed more than 35,000 Americans across all fifty states. The surveyors conducted phone interviews asking about religion, religious service attendance, and spiritual beliefs.
Defining 'blue-collar' is difficult, but for purposes of this Pew Research study, blue-collar can be defined as making less than 50,000 dollars a year with little or no college education. While some blue-collar career paths make more than this, they are the exception and not the rule. This includes many different kinds of low-income workers, but there is no way to separate for occupation in Pew’s data set. The best approximation is to use income and education as a guidepost. Most blue-collar work does not require a degree, even though colleges offer licensing courses. As far as income goes, only experienced and specialized tradesmen make more than 60,000 dollars a year, far from the majority.
According to Pew, 35 percent of American Evangelicals make less than 30,000 dollars a year. Another 22 percent make more than 30,000, but still less than 50,000 dollars a year. That’s a total of 57 percent of American Evangelicals that make less than fifty grand in a year. For perspective, the average Construction worker makes around 35 grand in a year.2
Looking at another dimension of this, we have education. 43 percent of American Evangelicals have only completed high school or less, while another 35 percent have some college, but no degree. Combining those, we have 78 percent of an average congregation that is without a college degree. That’s more than three-quarters of a congregation who haven’t finished a degree.
So if 78 percent haven’t finished college, and 57 percent make less than fifty grand a year, it is likely that around half fall into both categories. Some of that 57 percent making less have college degrees, like students just out of college, or Moms who stay home to take care of their children. Likewise, the upper end of that 78 percent without a college degree are making more than fifty grand a year. These would be the exceptional blue-collar earners: intrepid small business owners, sales professionals, and others sorts of specialized careers.
That’s a solid half of the congregation that falls into what I have established is an unreached people group.
Additional data supports this. One of the questions from the Pew survey was, “How often do you attend church?” For people who attend church at least once a week, the spread was almost exactly the same: 55 percent for income and 78 percent for education. The data suggests that around half of the people who are in a church building every week are again blue-collar.
But do they take their faith home? What percentage of people pray daily, and how many of them are blue-collar? The answer remains consistent, 57 percent for income and 77 percent for education.
What about attendance at prayer groups and Bible studies? Of the people who said they attend those at least once a week, the numbers are 57 percent for income, and 76 percent for education. So far the first question plus this question means that half of the people in a church building twice a week are blue-collar.
If blue-collar parishioners pray every day and show up to church at least twice a week, do they believe the Bible is inspired and to be taken literally? The numbers hold. A whopping sixty percent of those who hold this view make less than fifty grand a year, and a colossal 82 percent have no degree. Of those that hold most dearly to God’s word, that’s much closer to sixty percent that are blue-collar. That’s a significant majority.
Even absolute belief in God matches the same numbers, with 56 percent and 79 percent respectively. What’s surprising is how consistent these percentages are across every metric. They are exactly the same or very similar no matter which aspect of faith you examine.
No matter how you look at it, blue-collar workers are at least half of the average Evangelical congregation in America. At least half of the Evangelicals praying right now are blue-collar. Any given Evangelical congregation, any time the doors are open to the church building, at least half are blue-collar Christians.
Politicians fight over trying to sway the votes of between five and ten percent of the population. They work tirelessly to target their rhetoric so they can sway as many people as possible while offending as few as possible. Pastors have a chance to tailor their illustrations and vocabulary to target at least a full half of their congregations. That’s a huge opportunity. The blue-collar blindspot is causing the modern Evangelical movement to accidentally alienate half of their congregations.
This is an excerpt from, The Blue-Collar Blindspot
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1Pew Research Center. “Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics.” Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, 19 Sept. 2018, www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/.
2$35,800 average yearly salary. “How Much Can a Construction Worker Expect to Get Paid?” U.S. News & World Report, 2018, money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/construction-worker/salary.