If you want to put the latest 2001 census data on Canada’s age and gender trends into perspective, you need to go to Japan. Specifically, you need to visit the virtual world of Japanese artist YAMAG.

YAMAG has created a "digital model" named Ryoko. Her come-hither smile and perfect bodily proportions are a cultural hit in the ?Land of the Rising Sun.? She’s appeared on countless books, magazines, videos and DVDs. And she’s coming to a store near you to sell cosmetics and fashions.

Ryoko and other "virtual people" are the result of a culture that worships youthful perfection. And given that Canada is ageing rapidly, surrendering to a virtual world of perfect bodies is tempting.

Wading through the mountain of information from Statistics Canada, a few stand out:

We’re getting older. The median age of Canada’s population (the point at which one half of the population is older than the other) reached an all-time high of 37.6, an increase of 2.3 years since 1996.

Baby boomers are booming. Over the next 20 years, the number of people who are at least 60 will more than double from 4.2 million to 8.6 million. Unfortunately, over the same period, about 7.8 million people age 19 and younger will start working, a shortfall of about 800,000 workers.

Women still outlive men on average. There are 96 men to every 100 women, although the gap is closing.

A few observations need to be made concerning these statistics as far as the church is concerned. The first involves the so-called Baby Boomer generation (born between 1946 and 1964). In a nutshell, this is a lost generation.

Look in most churches today and you’ll likely see an older generation clinging to the church’s past—Sunday school, Sunday evening services, the old hymns, etc.—and, if you’re lucky, a younger generation that’s into meaningful worship and service—overseas trips to help the poor and foot-stomping music at Saturday evening services/rock concerts.

Where are the parents? Either not there or too pooped with careers, housework, ageing parents or golf to contribute anything meaningful to the church.

This leads to a second observation. For many of the current older generation, church leadership isn’t being handed off to their children, but rather their grandchildren. While this isn’t necessary a bad thing, it can be traumatic—the spiky-haired pastor asking a bunch of 65-year-olds to ditch the old hymns and the old missions focus to the "heathens" overseas for Vineyard-inspired choruses and short-term missions trips to the inner cities is quite a mountain to climb.

Yet, the "new" older people in our churches in the years ahead will be the hippies of the ’60s, an un or under-churched group, the ?Me Generation,? who will demand to be treated as consumers or they will stay away. They will demand to have their physical and emotional as well as practical spiritual needs met by churches.

Finally, what is the church going to do with its women? Many mainline and evangelical seminaries are turning out more qualified women than men for ministry. Yet, most denominations and pulpits remain male bastions. Objections to women in the pulpit may have scriptural validity, but un-churched Baby Boomers looking for relevant spirituality and younger adults soaked in the gender equality of secular society aren’t going to put up with cloistral male chauvinism.

All this leads us back to Ryoko, our virtual model. It’s easy to give in to the temptation she offers—virtual sex, virtual adventure and virtual lives. But Ryoko is a fake. Churches need to say so and, more importantly, they need to counter her with Jesus Christ in all His shining glory.

An ageing population, an overworked, shrinking workforce and youth demanding hands-on spirituality won’t be interested in the two-dimensional Jesus of many churches, but rather the 3-D, eternal Messiah.

Joe Couto is a government and communications professional working on Bay Street in Toronto. A keen observer of the church in Canada, he formerly served as communications manager for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and is a frequent contributor to ChristianWeek and Faith Today. This is the second in nine-part series.