I like Boomers
I am a boomer yet I’ve spent lots of time critiquing my own generation. Last week I published a column describing why I like emergents plus I gave them a few cautions. Now it is the boomer’s turn. Here’s what I admire and like about the boomers:
1. You’ve made the local church king. When you took over from the previous generation the pinnacle of “success” for a minister was to be elected a D.S. or a denominational official. You changed all that so that the “ladder of success” now leans on the wall of a local church. I like that emphasis and commend you for changing that value system, thanks! And thanks too for making big churches. When I ask my students what sort of church they’d like to serve in, many say, “I’d like to start off in a smaller church—you know, say 300-400.” They do not even know there were only a few such churches when you boomers took over. Today they are actually realistic in saying this—while most churches are small, most of the jobs for our graduating seniors are indeed in churches over 300. That’s because you boomers made the local church be “the place where the action is” and you made many big churches. I like that! Thanks!
2. You defeated legalism. The church you inherited had all kinds of legalistic expectations of its members—we weren’t supposed to buy on Sunday, go to movies, dance, and in some places we couldn’t even drink Coke out of bottles because we were to “abstain form the appearance of evil—bottled Beer.” Women weren’t supposed to wear jewelry or even “pants” and men couldn’t have long hair. Some districts wouldn’t ordain a young man with a beard (“not because of your beard but the attitude behind it,” they said). You boomers banished most of these rules and made the church a place of acceptance and grace and freedom. Emergents don’t realize the hard hits you took clearing this path so they could attend King Kong last week and still get ordained this summer. I hope you don’t get discouraged by the lack of appreciation for taking on this battle. I know these fights took a tremendous toll on you—and I admire you for it. Thanks!
3. You work hard. You boomers are simply driven. You work hard and long hours. I hope you don’t get discouraged thinking it wasn’t worth it—especially when newer generations dismiss you as a “workaholic” and blow off most of what you’ve done in life as inconsequential and “out of balance.” I admire your hard work and thank you for it—and admire you all the more that you are still able to keep this pace even in your 50’s. The church is going to spend lots of money replacing you boomers in the future—and in many cases they’ll have to hire two people to do your job. I admire your hard work and honor you for it.
4. You are committed to excellence. When Peters & Waterman published In Search of Excellence in 1978 you were already at work reinventing the church from a “down-home anybody-can-sing laughable karaoke service” to a first class experience. You did away with cheap, second-rate, tacky and brought the church’s worship and administration into modern times. I admire you for that. The high quality sound systems, buildings and colleges we now have are a credit to your values. Thank you boomers!
5. You’ve emphasized education. When you took over, the church was suspicious of education and actually warned young people, “Don’t get too much education or you’ll lose your faith.” The laity (and even some denominational leaders) enjoyed saying, “After college some go on to cemetery… whoops, I mean seminary.” They thought that was a wonderfully cute joke. You changed all that. Now we realize that a trade school grad just can’t manage the complex operation of a sprawling local church where the board includes people with all kinds of advanced degrees. You made education important and you supported it—especially anteing up the funds for your own kids to get a quality education even though most boomers paid their own way through college. I admire that and you are owed thanks from you own kids at least, and really the entire generation.
6. You’re great communicators. There were good preachers before you boomers got here, but I doubt there was a whole generation as good at communicating as boomers are as a group. You’ve seriously tried to communicate the gospel in every format to reach “this present age.” When you took over, many preachers were stuck behind huge oak pieces of furniture with gooseneck microphones screwed into them. You turned loose the preachers and let them communicate with the audience so that people could “get it.” I like that. Thanks!
7. You discovered leadership. Sure, there were leaders before you, but not of the type you have been. You made leadership a science—you studied leadership. As the world became more complex and board began to include strong-minded laity who managed million-dollar budgets in their business by day, you understood ministers can no longer lead a church by saying, “Gee, I prayed and I think this is what we need to do.” You still prayed, but you understood that leading a complex entity like the local church required a complex scientific approach to leadership. Leadership under you boomers became like brain surgery—not something you do on a whim, “because I think I know what to do” but a scientific occupation that has proper procedures. I hope you don’t get too discouraged with all the fun that gets poked at you and people like John Maxwell—as soon as the emerging generation faces a complex battle over the future of the youth center and they lose, they’ll return form the war more open to studying military strategy! Thanks to you boomers for making church leadership important and for providing the many strategies a church leader needs to get people to do what God wants them to do. Thanks boomers!
8. You got us into church growth. Again I hope you don’t get too discouraged at all the derision you hear down the hall about your love for numbers and growth. But you are to be admired for wanting to grow the church. You wanted to reach out to the world, become seeker-friendly, be “outreach oriented” become a “grace-based church” and these are good things. Sure there have been excesses and unintended consequences but your desire was good and godly—God wants His church to reach the lost. I admire you for turning the church around from being a friends-and-family program where a tight-knit group of best F*R*I*E*N*D*S worshipped together five times a week and had carry-in dinners and Sunday school picnics the rest of the time as the world went to hell. The church was untouched by the world and the world was untouched by the church. You changed this. You made the church into a seeking entity that searched and welcomed the unchurched and you were willing to be accountable by asking and answering the, “How many’d you have?” question. I like that value. Don’t be discouraged at the coming generation’s dismissing your crowd as “church people.” They just don’t know that a vast number of them were won to Christ right out of the world. I like that!
9. You invented youth ministries. Hardly any of today’s youth pastors recognize there was a time when there were no youth ministers at all. None. When you boomers took over, there was YFC and a few other youth ministries but most of the rest of youth ministry was run by a local “Sunday school teacher lady who liked kids.” When I graduated from seminary there was exactly one youth pastor in my entire denomination of 1700 churches. One. You boomers put youth ministry on the map—you invented youth ministry. The vast majority of graduates from my school—no matter what their major—will do youth ministry as their first job in the church. They should be thanking you boomers they even have such a job. If you hadn’t come along, their first job would be as solo pastor of a church of 30 where they’d try to pay off their $35,000 college debt on a $150 per week salary. We know—that’s what many boomers had to do. You boomers invented youth ministries as we know it. You ought to be thanked for that. I admire how you have valued youth ministries even when it didn’t “pay” – the youth tithe never pays for their ministry, and almost all of them grow up and move away from the local church where they got that ministry. Yet you supported youth work all these years—and I admire you for it and thank you!
10. You’ve been
masters at change. You
boomers have changed the church more than just about any generation before
you. You are masters at leading
change. You introduced a “church office”
and paid secretarial staff. You tossed
out mimeograph machines and introduced modern office equipment: fax machines,
photocopiers, computers and cell phones.
You popularized the idea of “office hours” for ministers. You adapted to a changing world where
“pastoral calling” was an “invasion of privacy” and figured out how to develop
relationships over lunches and through other organized activities. You changed midweek services, and Sunday
evening services. You replaced
“cantatas” with slam-bang
I only have two cautions…
While I admire the boomer generation and think God has used it, (as He does all generations) I do, however have two cautions. Most of you boomers are in your 50’s now and you’re not thinking much about your legacy, I’m afraid. After all, you still have all the power and many of you think, “I’m just now getting going.” But, with all the wonderful contributions you’ve made, in the coming decade or so I see two cautions for you to consider. While my cautions to emergents are theological, my cautions to the boomers are practical—that’s predictable isn’t it for this most pragmatic generation? Here they are:
1. I hope you don’t become too conservative as you get old. It happens all the time: young revolutionaries upset the fruit basket and get in charge, introduce their changes, then become old conservatives, protecting and defending the gains of their own revolution against the next generation’s attempt to change things. Boomers may be in danger of doing just this in the coming decade. I see it whenever I write on the characteristics of the emergent church. Boomers will write me tons of emails (they seldom post on line like emergents do—why is that?). Boomers complain in their emails, “Why talk about generations—I think what we’re doing now can appeal to all generations.” Yeah, sure, now that you’re in charge! Hear it? This is the boomer’s parent’s speech form 1980! What they really mean is, “We’ve introduced our own style of worship and like it—and now we think every new generation should like it too.” Last year I attended a circa 1985 style boomer worship which was boldly labeled “our contemporary worship service.” Phooey! It was contemporary in 1985—but not now! Boomers got the “auditorium” and the “stage” lighted brightly and established peppy upbeat choruses and a positive fast-paced minute-by-minute schedule. Now the emergents come along and want to turn out all these lights, dump the spotlights, put the stage in the back of the church, and light candles all over the place so their wax can spit all over our precious carpets while they sing mournful songs at a slow pace in a blues channel atmosphere. Boomers hate it! Our lights have become our parent’s organ! So boomers resist these inconsequential changes. The boomers—the great change agents—will be tempted to abandon their desire for change and they may get frozen in the ice of their own preferences. They could become just like the older generation who fought them when they wanted to dump “When we all get to heaven” and start singing “I’m so glad I’m a part of the Family of God.” But worship styles is only a tiny corner of this whole page: it also applies to how we win the lost, our relationship to the world, what a church member should be, social and political action, how people get saved, the nature of preaching, the definition of excellence, approaches to leadership, a work ethic and church rules. I hope boomers can be as receptive to the coming proposals as they wanted their own parent’s generation to be to theirs. Please boomers; be open and pliable to the next generation and don’t become old conservatives fighting every new change coming along.
2. I hope you hand off leadership to the next generation.
Boomers are an vigorous, healthy and activist bunch. They could keep running things right up until they are 75 or even later. They could hold on to all the senior pastor slots, all the DS and denominational jobs, all the teaching positions, and boomers could pretty much smother the emerging generation from taking over until they themselves are approaching their own retirements! I hope you don’t do that. I hope boomers will spy emerging leaders and coach them into becoming the wise leaders of the future church. There are women and men in their 30’s who are already more capable then we were when we took over—they ought to get a chance. Boomers are facing the final two stages of Erik Erikson’s eight stages of successful human development. Stage 7 –generally arriving in the 40’s and 50’ is: generativity vs. stagnation. The goal of successfully getting through this era is to invest in the next generation satisfactorily—to pass it on. If a person does not invest in the next generation the alternative is “stagnation.” This is precisely where most boomers live right now—they can start “collecting the benefits” and settle in and “clip their coupons” as they finish the race, or they can heavily invest in the next generation. I am afraid boomers might forget to invest in the coming generation. If boomers fail to pass the stage 7 test they are likely to also fail the final test—stage eight: Ego integrity vs. despair. This final test in life is coming to the end of life after retirement believing “my life was good and I am fulfilled, and I lived a worthy and good life.” Boomers who ignore regeneration in their 40’s and 50’s are likely to fail this final test too. Oldsters who do not find ego-integrity (i.e. MY life was worth it”) become old men and women who are depressed, critical, cynical and they pursue grumbling as their full-time vocation. Boomers who don’t reinvest in the emerging generation are headed toward making the lives of nursing home attendants miserable!
My hope is that boomers now in their 50’s will start investing major amounts of time in the emerging generation. Doing what? I’m tempted to say “mentoring them” because that is what the emergents will say. But I don’t want to use that term because of the way many boomers will take it. Boomers tend to think of “mentoring” as teaching, or telling, or (worse) “training.” Boomers see mentoring as something like pet training when they tell the next generation how to do things. So I don’t want to say “mentoring” here. What boomers need to do is invest time in the coming generation. Doing what? Drinking coffee, sitting on the porch, taking a walk, going camping, eating dinner together. And, what should boomers do during this time? Don’t teach. Don’t even “prepare a lesson” at al. Instead get the emergent talking first. Ask questions of the emergents. Listen to what they want the church to become. Reflect back to them what they are saying and make ties to history. Coach them from the side, don’t teach them from the front. Sure, they will need your wisdom from time to time—but what they really mean by “mentoring” is 90% “being with each other” and maybe 10% providing them wisdom. I’m afraid most boomers will consider this kind of “mentoring” a waste of time. But, not all. I hope that some boomers will invest heavily in the emerging generation to make them become great leaders of God’s church. I am confident some will—will you?
So what do you think?
What do you like about
boomers that I left out? What cautions
do you have?
Click here to respond or read other responses
Keith Drury 1/17/06