Churches can help Americans achieve goals that surpass the typical New Year's resolutions, which are self-centered and often doomed to fail, according to the Barna Group's president, David Kinnaman, reports Baptist Press. In a study released Jan. 3, the Barna Group reported that Americans overwhelmingly focus on themselves when making resolutions at the start of a new year, and many are discouraged by their past lack of success in reaching similar goals. The top pledges for 2011, Barna found, relate to weight, diet and health (30 percent); money, debt and finances (15 percent); personal improvement (13 percent); addiction (12 percent); job and career (5 percent); spiritual or church-related (5 percent); and educational (4 percent). Barna also found that younger adults are more likely than older adults to make resolutions, perhaps because they are less affected by past failed resolutions, and disengaged adults do not bother with resolutions. Such adults include those who are non-voters, unchurched adults, atheists and agnostics and those never married, Barna said. Most people who make New Year's resolutions don't plan on having accountability or a support system in place to help them keep their commitments. "While people concentrate on themselves when making priorities for the New Year, it is telling that so few Americans say they want to improve relationships with others," the Barna study stated. "There were virtually no mentions of volunteering or serving others; only a handful of comments about marriage or parenting; almost no responses focusing on being a better friend; and only a small fraction of people mentioned improving their connection with God." Kinnaman, Barna's president, noted that only nine out of 1,000 survey respondents listed as one of their goals getting closer to God in 2011. In the rare instances when people mentioned spiritual goals, he said, usually the goals pertained to activity undertaken for God rather than a personal pursuit of God. "Americans maintain a love-hate relationship with New Year's resolutions: millions of people make them, but they rarely report success as a result," Kinnaman said. "This research underscores that most humans want to experience some sort of personal change in their lives, but achieving such objectives is both difficult and uncommon. "Maybe most problematic, Americans hinge their efforts at personal change by focusing almost exclusively on themselves, rather than realizing that lasting change often comes by serving and sacrificing for others," Kinnaman said. "Churches and faith communities have a significant opportunity to help people identify what makes for transformational change and how best to achieve those objectives -- especially by relying on goals and resources beyond their individualism."
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