Not What I Thought
I had been to Rome twice before and it was a lot of fun. But like many tourist areas in the world, rarely do you get to actually experience the in's and out's of daily life. Living in an apartment, grocery shopping, attempting to speak Italian, and hangout with Italians daily has opened my eyes to a whole new view of Italian culture.
While it has taken a little bit to adjust to no air conditioning, no ice, hang drying laundry, and walking 10+ miles a day on cobblestone, the hardest adjustment that I didn't see coming has been learning about the spiritual emptiness and hopelessness of Italians.
When people think of Italy, they often think of pizza, gelato, fashion, and Catholicism. While all of those are still true I was surprised to see that the last one is becoming a thing of the past. Many large Italian cities are a mixture of students who are city-dwelling "atheists", Catholics who have been hurt by the church, Catholics who have really met God in their church, apathetic students, and people with a whole other pile of belief systems. Many Italians have had some sort of religious views flashed in their faces at an early age, but have literally never heard the gospel. They see religion as a thing of the past, pointless, full of rules, and irrelevant to their life. Below are some facts I've learned through my first 10 days here:
400,000 college students in Rome alone. Less than 2% are Christian.
La Sapienza University (the university we are working at) has 120,000 students alone.
According to students they would say 80% of their piers are either agnostic or atheists and 20% would be religious or Catholic.
There is a 40% unemployment rate for young people in Italy. This is why so many students spend 6-8 years going to university. There's no rush to finish because there's no jobs.
The average Italian family has 1.2 kids.
Most people live at home till they are 35 and by 2020 it is expected to go up to 50!!! Imagine living at home until your 50!
Most students will move out of the country to find jobs when they graduate.
Joel and Andrea, both live here in Rome and work for Cru.
They have been training and sharing with us about doing
ministry in Italy.