A plea to other old guys like me
(Posted on the GeneralConference2004
site in May 2004 as older leaders began lining up to bash the younger folk who
had founded the www.generalconference2004.com
unofficial site to discuss general conference issues.
THE DIFFICULT THING ABOUT GETTING OLD
is adjusting to the changes in the world. When we boomers brought overhead
screens into church and projected choruses on them the old folk had a hard time
adjusting. When John Maxwell introduced the boomer “CEO type leadership” into
the church the oldies grumbled that we weren’t being spiritual enough. It is
hard to see the world change around you and most old folk can’t adapt easily to
these changes. Change is seldom fluid and almost always is accompanied by
upheaval. The early adopters in a
changing environment are often attacked and marginalized—as are the leaders of
this web site.
WE ARE NOW IN THE MIDST OF ANOTHER
MASSIVE CHANGE—we boomers are the “old guys” this time—rats! The boomers
now have all the power and positions in the church. Now, here comes this new generation with
different ideas about leadership, communication, and anonymity and we find
ourselves acting much like our parents did—frantically trying to fight off the
next wave of changes. While it is understandable, it won’t work. The Internet
age is here to stay, and the coming crowd of genXe’rs
and Millennials is about to get noticed.
FACE IT, THE
INTERNET HASN’T MADE MUCH DIFFERENCE TO THE CHURCH. We still print up lists
of pastors and send them by “snailmail” for each of
us to reference like a phone book. The next generation can’t understand why
they can’t just click somewhere online to get a pastor’s address or resume—so
sooner or later one will put such a list online—probably before we boomers
think of it. The same is true for General Conference memorials—we print them up
and send them only to delegates assuming it is none of the business of anyone
else. (For boomers who constantly have
mocked the importance of district and general conferences—this is true, but
younger folk actually are interested in the decisions of the church.) The next generations don’t buy the notion of
a printed book of memorials sent to a select few. They think information should
be democratized and shared with everyone. They expect to have total and instant
access to everything immediately and can’t understand why we boomers are still
so fond of horses and carriages when they can have cars and planes. So a site
like www.generalconference2004.com was inevitable, as are a host of other sites
that will surely come in the future—just watch.
BUT THERE’S MORE TO THIS SHIFT THAN
IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO ALL INFORMATION. This younger generation wants to
process everything publicly. It drives me crazy—but it is the way they are—they
want to ‘talk everything through in community.” For instance, if a prominent
pastor or professor gets overtaken in some sexual indiscretion they reject the
notion of a simple “press release” that we boomers have used. They expect a
public meeting where all the details are shared with everyone present and it is
“processed in community.” They want to express their anger, regret, sin, and
forgiveness in community and don’t like behind-the-scenes keep-it-quiet things
“managed by our leaders.” This
characteristic drives me nuts for I know of the past abuses of such public
services. But they think I am wrong and so far I cannot convince them
otherwise. If I fail to engage them and persuade them their plan will prevail
in the church sooner or later. (By the way, many of them also plan to quit
removing ministers who fall—but to forgive and restore them “in community”
without removal from their leadership job—I’m also trying to convince them this
is a really bad plan too—but the only way to convince the next generation is to
engage them, not to bash them down as disloyal.) Thus, when there is an opportunity to
“process in community” the memorials going to general conference they think
this is a wonderful thing and wonder why the leaders didn’t think it up first.
The notion of broadly discussing memorials in the entire church in a public
setting like this seems right to them.
So we have this site.
BUT THERE’S STILL MORE—THEY ARE QUITE
WILLING TO BE ANONYMOUS. We boomers are all about responsibility and
individuality—that is, a person should take responsibility for what he or she
says and take the lumps personally for any position—“it’s the manly thing to
do.” We all know that—it is obvious (to boomers). However, the next generations
don’t see things this way—and the Internet doesn’t work this way. For instance
you can go to Amazon.com and trash my books with a made-up name and it will
stand. Or I could get on there and make
up a name and praise them. Same with the
ratings at BizRate.com, Shopping.com and even eBay does not require real names
for evaluations, but uses the “account name.”
Anonymity is how the Internet works. (I think it will eventually
self-correct, but for now this is simply how it works.) So a site where people-with-invented-names
discussing denominational issues fits the emerging culture. It is their “praise choruses on screens”
innovation. We can fight it and condemn
it as wrong or unspiritual, but all we older folk will be doing is fighting the
wind—and the future. Why do they do this? Because they are more community oriented than
individually oriented like we are. They are quite happy to post or read
statements without knowing who said it and treat the statements without regard
or prejudice as to the source. They watch to see if statements fly or are
rejected by the community. Thus when they post they often
“running something up the flagpole” for the community
to examine and reject or adopt. Discussion boards all over the web are
full of unsigned comments—it is what a discussion board is! Like the old
Citizen’s band “handles” these younger people do not feel they are being
deceptive or hiding anything to use another “handle.” And, of course it probably never occurred to
us boomers that when we actually get the General Conference the votes will
mostly be anonymous. That is, if 25
people vote against a General Superintendent nobody will say, “Ok who voted
no? If you don’t have the integrity to
stand up and tell us who you are then you have a spiritual problem.” Face it, people will vote secretly at general
conference—it is only the total vote we’ll know. The younger generations have simply extended
this to discussion too.
I know I am making much of the “younger generations”
here. I work with them every day so
that’s how I see it. My wife, Sharon
disagrees with this approach. She says
of this article: “You are wrong—it isn’t the younger generations—it is culture
that is shifting.” She works with adults
in her deaning work—and she says what I call the
“younger generational shift” is actually a total shift of culture in the
information age.
We boomers just don’t get this shift and thus we respond
as if those who post on this sitey have our own
values—assuming they are chickens and afraid to post their names. We are too
much like our parents’ generation and the way they responded to "those
godless guitars" in worship—that generation honestly didn’t know that you
could use a guitar or drums for God’s glory—they only knew guitars were related
to the Devil’s music.
NOW FOR SOME EMBARRASSING EXAMPLES
THOSE OF US WHO TEACH YOUNG PEOPLE SEE
THIS SORT OF THING EVERY DAY—so we are less shocked by it. If you are a
boomer and reading this post let me give you an example form my own school (I
won’t mention the other schools). Here at IWU we have an official website of
course, just like the headquarters has— http://www.indwes.edu. Do the
students spend their time there?
Sorry--they consider it a “stale promotional site.” Guess where they go?
They go to http://www.indwes.com. A student put this together as an unofficial
site. There are currently more than 5000 posts on this unofficial site on
everything from dancing to chapel speakers—and none of them under the control
of President Barnes or any of the rest of us. We leaders at IWU can hope the
site will go away (or that nobody will ever out the link to it anywhere like I
just did ;-) but any person can buy any web domain they want and this next
generation does it themselves—they don’t have to hire ten thousand dollar web
designers to do it. What we older people must do is stay in tune with this
massive shift in the culture. We can either exclude or join this community—but there will be an Internet community of
Wesleyans among these younger generations. So look for more websites
uniting communities (and micro-communities) across the Wesleyan church—we are
just at the beginning of experiencing this revolution in communication and
community the next generations will lead.
BUT THERE IS MORE—THEY ARE WILLING TO
GET PERSONAL. These coming generations are willing to get very personal in
their evaluations. I don’t like this and always try to correct it with
occasional success. I try to help them see how WE see this, but I assure you
they see it differently. We boomers hate this trait because when it is combined
with their willingness to remain anonymous it creates a strong brew where they
can attack their professors or leaders without being accountable for it
personally. But understand where they come from. They believe the boomer
leaders and professors have all the power to “blackball” them so their tiny
power to post anonymous comments about us doesn’t even equalize the power
distribution. And knowing our power to block them from getting jobs in the
future they sometimes refuse to sign their name to things for fear of being
exterminated as “enemies of the church.” In a way they think they are balancing
the books—balancing our existing power with their anonymous power. We boomers
have a standard practice of discarding anonymous comments. I know I do.
However, the world’s a-changing! In the future we are
going to have to adapt to this change just like our parents finally had to
adapt to our style of leadership and worship. For instance what would you think
of a student site where students could go and anonymously evaluate their
professors for the entire world to see? Welcome to my world! When IWU students
want to check out a professor to see if they are easy or hard, interesting or
boring, effective or a loser they can do so. If they wonder what other students
say about Bud Bence, or Jim Lo or Charlie Alcock, or any other professor they
simply go to http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/SelectTeacher.jsp?sid=447 and read the posts. We professors of course hate this web site
and ask “what can we do about it.” The answer: we can do nothing. (Other than
actually encouraging students to post their evaluations there to make sure it
is balanced and honest.) This is the world I live in—and it is the future world
for the church—for my boomer buddies-getting-older-by-the-minute. Evaluation of leaders will happen like the
evaluation of professors above. You tell
me: why wouldn’t students used to evaluating their professors like this when
they are in college just assume they should evaluate their denominational
leaders too when they get out? Times
have changed. OK, can you imagine a website where all the general officers or DSs are listed and everyone could go post anonymous
statements about their effectiveness after they’d had them for a meeting or
conference? HA! Can you imagine a web site where the laity go post anonymous comments on the pastor’s message and
leadership like my students do on me? Welcome to the next generation’s way of
sharing information—about doctors, professors, and eventually pastors.
A sidetrack here just for fun: while typing this I thought
I’d prove it. I went to www.namesarecheap.com
and bought the domain www.ratemypastor.com
for $14—if I wanted to I could do a rateyourpastor
web site like they have one for professors. How complicated was it? It took me a total of 7 minutes—my students
buy domain names like we boomers bought Big Macs. (UPDATE April 2005: I was willing to pay
$14 to make this point a year ago—however I did not renew this site a year later..so it is no longer up) The Internet monster is already
loose in our world. (Anybody want to buy
RateMyPastor.com—go see the site and you’ll get your answer).
Ok can you now imagine how somebody could easily do a RateMyPastor…or RateMyGeneralSuperintendent
web site? We boomers better get used to it—this is the future—the collective
ratings of individuals on the Internet will have more power than the official
web site. When we boomers consider
“communication” we think of it as one way—releasing information, or “spinning”
or “casting the vision” to the peons.
The coming culture expects to participate in it. Gasp! So hold your hats boomers—the world we
changed is changing beneath our firmly implanted feet. (later
addition: at General Conference I discovered that a 14 year old boy actually
did much of the actual sire design for www.generalconference2004--anyone
now have any doubt that the younger people can do this sort of thing easier
than we boomers could?)
SO WHAT ABOUT THE NEGATIVE COMMENTS?
If you actually went to either www.indwes.com or www.RateMyProfessors.com
you were probably startled at the frankness, openness and bluntness with which
these younger folk talk about professors or the administration of “their
beloved University.” We boomers have
banished negativity and call it stinkin’ thinking.’
But the next generations treat all this differently than we do. Why? Because they read all the comments as a whole seeking consensus agreement. That is, they make
up their minds about issues, memorials, (and people/leaders) after they’ve read
all of the comments. We boomers read each comment to decide if each one is true
or false. And we read posts to make up our own mind—not to get the “sense of
the community.” Not so of many younger ones—they read it to see what the group as a whole is thinking. So,
like the Olympic scoring they automatically toss out the high and low
scores—they simply blow off minority opinions and fringe opinions and seek the
“opinion of consensus” in the group.
WHICH IS WHY IT IS IMPORTANT FOR BOOMERS
TO ENGAGE THESE GENERATIONS on their web boards or wherever else they go on
the Internet. They are happy to consider all views—even conservative
leave-things-as-they-are-because-we-just-got-it-right boomer views—but we have
to get in there and lay out our views too. For most of us boomers the Internet
has merely meant is a newfangled way to send letters electronically (and post
second-rate advertisements for our churches and schools). I recall in 1995 when
I hatched the notion of posting and emailing the denominational devotionals
from Light from the Word I got called
on the carpet by the GSs for sabotaging publishing
house profits and of course had to disassemble the plan. In that confrontation one GS summed up his
approach by saying, “The Internet is a passing fancy and won’t even be around
in five years.” Well, we know better
now—as does that GS. The Internet is the place where people collect and discuss
things. The entire headquarters now has
email and a web site. They’ve come a long way so far. Now they will have to go some more—from “dissemination
to participation.” That
,means they will have to move from posting information to allowing
participatory discussion in issues and responses to the information. If they
don’t, sites like this will arise.
SO, MY PLEA TO OTHER OLD FOLK LIKE
ME IS THIS: We
need to stay in tune with how these next generations (and perhaps the culture
at large is
--Keith Drury