Well, before we jump into today's episode, I'm here with our monthly State of the Church Trends Update with David Kinnaman, Barnas CEO, David. It's good to have you. Hey, Kerry, good to see you. Nice to be here. So we're talking about family. I was digging into some of the data that you did as you surveyed marriage and family. And it really blew my mind. It challenged some assumptions that I had. Yeah, well, we're so glad to hear that. That's what we're here for.

That's right. Blown up assumptions everywhere, right? As often as we can. What are you finding, David? Yeah, so the last two years, we've been working on a major study on family and marriage. And for those of who you might be watching, this is the cover of the new report called the state of today's family, how households are changing and how the church can support their

resilience. It's a major, major piece of research. We've been working on it for a while,

and we're actually just uncovering some incredible findings, but we're here to talk a little bit

about some of the key findings. And the first is that the structure

of family isn't changing as fast as we think, but the experience that we have of family is changing.

So, you know, we talk a lot about, well, families are different. They're so different. And they are,

but they're not actually that much different in the last 20 years than they were 20 years ago.

And I believe what has really

taken place is there are sort of three major trends. Number one, the digital environment has

reshaped parenting and relationships. So families are different because the tech world,

the digital context that we're in is changing how we get input and where we go to find relationships. So that's number one. Number two, we're more aware today than we're in is changing how we get input and where we go to find relationships. So that's number

one, number two. We're more aware today than we were 20 years ago of the diverse family

structures. So they were pretty diverse even 20 years ago, blended families, single parents,

you know, widows, widowers, all the rest. What has changed over the last 50 to 70 years is that we're

much less likely to be a married-only society. So, you know, 70 years ago, seven out of 10 Americans

were married. Now it's just less than half. But again, the family structures haven't been changing

as much as we think, but our experience of them has for digital diversity. And the third

is this idea of the language of mental health and therapeutic frameworks. Like everyone is a

therapist now. Everyone has a language for this for better and for worse. And so I think those are

three reasons why our experience of family is being redefined in our current context. So the

report delves into a lot of those layers and helps people really understand some of the current trends. Well, the thing that got me when I was digging into that ad, David, is I think often as a preacher, you have an assumption of who you're trying to reach. And when I looked at it, it's like, oh, this is very different than the picture my head, just, you know, suburbs, et cetera. So is that what you saw as well? What were some of the things? What were some of the things that struck you in? Oh, I just thought, you know, when you think about, we're trying to reach people who are married with kids. Isn't the majority of families not like that anymore, like the majority are not families with kids living at home in America. Yeah, right.

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