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Day 18 - Experiencing Life Together

Each one of you is part of the body of Christ, and you were chosen to live together in peace.
Colossians 3:15 (CEV)

How wonderful it is, how pleasant, for God’s people to live together in harmony!
Psalm 133:1 (TEV)

Rick Warren in this chapter gives us a list of the benefits of living in ‘real fellowship’. We’re able to experience authenticity, mutuality, sympathy, and mercy.

So why does Rick have to lay these out like he does? Because many of his readers, including me, have had too many tastes of pseudo community. Fake community where we’ve said ‘we share a common life’ but haven’t in fact lived it out. In many cases we haven’t even got close enough with each other to fall out. In others we’ve got so entangled with other members of the Christian community that it’s been hard to recognise our genuine selves. In too many cases our experience of Christian community has been dominated by the dysfunction of leaders or community members. And we’ve met up with people who lack the grace to show sympathy and mercy when we’ve suffered or fallen.

So Rick paints again the vision of what it could and should be like.

It’s interesting that Rick writes this chapter with the small group in mind. He’s not talking about the shallow fellowship experienced after celebratory worship services. He’s not talking about the comaradarie experienced in enduring committee meetings together. He’s talking about groups in which people are vulnerable with one another and are committed to one another.

When I think of the small group communities I’ve experienced positively, I think of cell groups at University. I was a member of a TSCF cell group at Knox College, Dunedin at a point in which I was experiencing the breakdown of my fundamentalism and the development of a fresh approach to Christian faith. My emergence with an ongoing faith is indebted to my fellow small group members who showed authenticity, mutuality, sympathy and mercy. I still need that kind of community around me.

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People Get Ready

Stay awake! Keep watch! Get Ready!

Back in 1990 I had these sayings painted on florescent cardboard placards so I could use them in a clown sketch for Advent. It was a response to the challenge from Jesus to be ready for the BIG DAY of his return, as outlined in Matthew 24. (See the previous post). The placards sat behind the piano for years afterwards. My 17 year old son told me this last weekend that he’s had those phrases in his head all that time because of the constant reminders peeking out from behind the piano!

Another reminder to be alert (the world needs more lerts!) comes from the song written by Curtis Mayfield in the mid sixties. Mayfield was inspired by the work and speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. In that famous Washington speech in 1963 people around the world were challenged to get ready for a world that would look differently. No longer would racism be the norm. Instead boys and girls would grow up no longer basing their friendships with each other on the colour of their skin.

And so… Curtis gives us the words of “People Get Ready”.

“People get ready, there’s a train a’coming
You don’t no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear those diesels humming
You don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord”

Curtis’ song goes on with the sense of a joining a coast-to-coast movement that will be marked by loving and not selfishness. There’s an excellent radio interview with Curtis on the NPR web site prepared for the 40th anniversary of the 1963 Washington March.

‘People Get Ready’. That’s the gospel I hear resounding in Jesus’ words. We don’t know when we’ll be called to action. We don’t know when we’ll encounter Jesus in the lives of prophets, poets, activists. We don’t know the hour or the day when we’ll be facing our ultimate crises of faith and action - turning points that change our world. So we need to prepare ourselves.

This summer I’m focusing on preparing my own kids for living by themselves or with others. They’re picking up some of the disciplines of cooking, keeping house and finding their way around with public transport. One day they’ll need to daily call on all the skills they’re developing now. That’s the kind of challenge Jesus gives us. The way of life we develop now will make a difference to the way we face our crises in the future. The decisions we make each day will nurture in us the character we’ll need as face the big day, whatever that might be.

What do I think about the possibility that Jesus will return in a big showdown style arrival on Earth? Will he come to wind the whole cosmos up? I’m not a betting person. And I’m with Jesus in not trying to predict the end every time I see some evidence of disaster or ‘one world government’. I remember reading a Christianity Today article in the 1980s outlining the dawning realisation among conservative evangelicals that we could be on earth another thousand years. That gave credence to the phrase, “Plan as though we’ll be here another thousand years, live as though we might be gone tomorrow”. That article named for me my own changing mindset. I’d gone through Hal Lindsay’s “Late Great Planet Earth” as an impressionable teenager. And now I was starting to put roots down in to the future of the planet.

Now, I’m happy to keep the ‘return of Christ’ in my vocabulary and in my consciousness. But more immediately I’m aware of the 21st century crises I’m encountering that give me the chance to help ‘write history’ with other people in the Christian movement. I’m happy to be part of the gospel movement, on board Jesus’ global and cosmic gospel train.

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No one knows the day or time

No one knows the day or hour. The angels in heaven don’t know, and the Son himself doesn’t know. Only the Father knows. When the Son of Man appears, things will be just as they were when Noah lived. People were eating, drinking, and getting married right up to the day that the flood came and Noah went into the big boat. They didn’t know anything was happening until the flood came and swept them all away. That is how it will be when the Son of Man appears.

Two men will be in the same field, but only one will be taken. The other will be left. Two women will be together grinding grain, but only one will be taken. The other will be left. So be on your guard! You don’t know when your Lord will come. Homeowners never know when a thief is coming, and they are always on guard to keep one from breaking in. Always be ready! You don’t know when the Son of Man will come.

Matthew 24:36-44 Contemporary English Version

That’s the reading set down for the 1st Sunday in Advent, used in traditional churches around the world on November 30, 2004. Another version of the same teaching appears in Mark 13:32-37 and Luke 17:26-30, 34-36.

Where’s the good news here?

As a youth worker in 1984 I hired a Christian film to show at a youth sleepover. “A Thief in the Night”, made by Mark IV Pictures in 1972, tells the story of Patty, a young woman who puts off making a decision to follow Christ. Her boyfriend does become a Christian after nearly dying from a snake bite. They get married and move to the suburbs. But without warning he and other Christians are whisked up into the sky, beamed up by God, so to speak. The rapture has come. Patty is left behind to face the tribulation in which a “one-world government” forces people to take the mark of the Beast. New Christians are hunted down. The soundtrack, if I remember right, includes Larry Norman’s song, “Left Behind”. The movie was not well made and was clearly dated with early 1970s culture. But it was one of the ’safe’ movies that our church would allow me to show.

So what was the result? I vividly remember the expression of panic by a 14 year old member of the youth group. She was so scared she might end up in the same situation as Patty. But did it motivate her to do anything? No. If anything, she was paralysed by fear.

I don’t think ‘panic attack’ was what Jesus intended to achieve in his words about the ‘end times’. If anything, I believe he’s trying to get people to stop fixating on the future and start focusing on the present in a way that will prepare people for any contingency. It has always seemed strange to me that people read this passage and proceed to lead seminars and publish books telling people that the second coming of Jesus is imminent.

So what’s the gospel here? What’s the good news? Is there a challenge for me? Was there good news for the 14 year old girl in 1984, now 34 years old?

I think there’s a reality check from Jesus, to start with. He challenges us to get real about our ability to predict the future. Even he isn’t able to tell us about everything that will happen. This was good news for me as I tried to deal with the sales pitches of prophets of doom in the 1980s. There may have been indications that nuclear war would wipe us all out. There may have been signs of environmental disaster. Species becoming extinct could eventually include the human race. But it’s not as clear cut as these prophets make out. The future is up for grabs.

Secondly, Jesus gives us the opportunity to do something about our future. Get ready. We don’t know what the future will bring. But we can prepare ourselves to face the unknown.

A couple of weeks ago we had a freak storm on the Gold Coast. A flash flood swept through our house. Normally we might have coped with this. We have a good drainage system which I had only improved a few weeks beforehand. But one of the drains had a large leaf swept onto it and within minutes the water had built up so that one end of the house had water against the floor-to-ceiling windows. The seals didn’t cope and we ended up with one flooded bedroom. An event that was out of my control. Fortunately I was home that morning to unblock the drain and prevent worse damage. We were able to salvage the carpet with help from the insurance company. They’re replacing all furniture made of particle board with new solid furniture.

We were prepared for disaster. We had an insurance policy. We had an idea of how to act quickly in emergency. It sounds a bit like the Boy Scouts (now just Scout Association) I belonged to in the 1970s. Baden Powell’s motto passed on - “Be Prepared”.

I believe that staying in relationship with the Creator of the universe is the ultimate way to prepare for whatever the future may hold. But I’m talking about a relationship that leads to making history. Not a relationship based around a contract to keep us out of hell or protect us from the ‘tribulation’.

Enough for today. I’ve got something to write on the rapture. And something on the song, “People Get Ready”. And on the return of Jesus. Later…

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Why Gospel Notes?

I’ve been spurred into writing about Christian faith by questions from friends, in and out of the Church. This week I watched a video on sharing faith in which people gave their understanding of what it means to become a Christian. “These are the basic steps needed to become a Christian”. Hmmm. They’re not where I’m at. Maybe I’ve been there. But I wonder if it is possible to explore with clarity the diversity of ways in which people experience following Jesus.

So, where do I begin? By studying what other people have written? I’ve done that with the Driving With Purpose blog. I’m at a point where I want to start with the stories of Jesus in the New Testament and go from there.

Duncan

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Aging Baby Boomers In Australia

In yesterday’s Australian newspapers we were treated to headlines on the impact of an aging Baby Boom generation.

The Australian gave us the headline,
“Golden Outlook for Boomers“.

The Courier Mail, (Brisbane) “Greying Nation Facing Huge Bill“.

The Age (Melbourne) gave us “Cost of Aging 40 Years Hence: $2.2 Trillion”

The Sydney Morning Herald gave us “Growing fears over booming aged numbers“.

It’s the media response to yesterday’s release of a draft research report, “Economic Implications of an Ageing Australia” from the Australian Government Productivity Commission. The report presents the initial findings of the commissioned study, Economic Implications of an Ageing Australia, which is examining the productivity, labour supply and fiscal implications of likely demographic trends over the next 40 years.

All this links in closely with the analsyis provided by Jackson Carroll and Wade Clark Roof in their book, “Bridging Divided Worlds”. In their concluding chapter the authors draw on the work of Ken Dytchtwald of Agewave, a firm created to guide Fortune 500 companies and government groups in product/service development for boomers and mature adults. In his book, “Age Power” Ken points his readers to the increased longevity of the Baby Boomers. The Baby Boomers, sometimes referred to as the narcissistic generation, will be hoping to have the best deal they can get. With a larger proportion of elders we will need new ground rules for intergenerational relations in finances, medical services and care giving. He says that we are being given an opportunity for extended sharing, mentoring, mentoring across age & generational lines. If we don’t grasp that opportunity we must face the alternative: Age Wars.

“Our social institutions and policymakers must learn a new and complex skill: how to manage a multigenerational melting pot”.

That’s another confirmation that we need to be training our leaders to work on inter-generational relationships. This is not just a marketing exercise. What we’re looking at here is the health of our communities.

More on the final chapter of “Bridging Divided Worlds” tomorrow.

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Generations in Inherited Blended and Post-Traditional Congregations

Congregations are the central focus of Jackson Carroll and Wade Roof Clark in their book, Bridging Divided Worlds

As they studied twenty congregations and two campus ministries in California and North Carolina. The samples included Jewish, Catholic, mainline Protestant and evangelical Protestant congregations and included predominantly African American, Caucasian, Korean and Latino congregations. In their book they profile nine congregations.

Carroll and Roof divide their nine congregations into three models:

1. Three congregations focusing on an inherited model - valuing tradition over contemporary engagement.
2. Three congregations genuinely attempting a blended approach to generational diversity.
3. Three post-traditional congregations focusing on a specific generation.

This typology is based to some extent on the analysis of E. Brooks Holifield in the book, “American Congregations Vol. 2“. Carroll and Roof add a category to his description of four phases in the historic development of the American congregation as an institution:

1. Comprehensive (one congregation per town)
2. Devotional (a variety of congregational styles with competition between them)
3. Social (end of 19th century, programs providing a life centre)
4. Participatory (a wide range of programs for the seven day a week church)
5. Carroll and Roof add the fifth category:
   Post-traditional/New Paradigm (building on the particpatory model but valuing contemporary relevance rather than traditional faithfulness.

What I find most helpful in “Bridging Divided Worlds” is not so much the description of each of the three models. I recognise the dynamics well enough. I find more helpful the SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) for each model.

Inherited Model Congregations - We’ve Always Done It This Way
These congregations focus on maintaining the tradition they stand in. Newcomers are expected to appreciate and invest in the forms of worship, buildings or institutions that are valued by these congregations. Attempts to cater for emerging generations, if they are attempted, tend to be stalled in the planning process or are only partially implemented.

We’re given a reality check for people in the inherited tradition congregations. Yes there’s a stability and security. Key gate keepers attempt to pass the baton on to members of emerging generations who are interested in running the race in similar ways. Smaller and smaller proportions of emerging generations find it possible to belong in this kind of situation.

A Uniting Church in Australia example of this approach near where I live would be Burleigh Uniting Church, Gold Coast.

Blended Congregations: Seeking the Best of Three Worlds

This approach values inherited traditions of faith but seriously engages with contemporary culture. As the authors write, ‘the result is a negotiated and often fragile normative order’. A wide variety of people are able to engage with the gospel, learning from one another and enriching each other’s experience and expression of faith. However this model is marked by continuous tensions and inevitable conflict.

Factors for success
a A substantial percentage of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers in the membership.
b. Focused commitment by congregation to generational diversity, even at the cost of losing traditionalists
c. Backing from the denomination
d. Young in congregational age - ‘recently planted’
e. Large size. Multiple programs can be implemented while leaving intact the programs preferred by pre-boomer members.

A Uniting Church in Australia example of this approach near where I live would be Robina Surfers Paradise Uniting Church, Gold Coast.

Generation-Specific Congregations - Beyond Tradition

This approach begins with the concept of ‘target audience’ - designing programs and practices around the cultural characteristics and needs of a particular generation.

The authors address the question, “Isn’t the inherited church designed for the needs of a specific generation, the Pre-Boomers?” They point out that the traditional church is not developed by its leaders with the needs of pre-boomer generations in mind. Instead, these older single generation churches work on the assumption that they’re doing things the way they’ve always been done.

The Generation-Specific congregation tends to provide a model of church that is fresh, uninecumbered by traditional approaches to music, architecture, dress styles and expressiveness in worship. They’re willing to ‘dance with the culture’. There’s a high level of innovation. There’s a strong attempt to engage with a sensory culture - with a variety of multi-sensory approaches to learning and worship.

The generationally specific church may appear to be less fragile (in terms of intergenerational conflict) but it has its challenges. One frustration is the high level of curious onlookers - people coming to experience the novel version of church without any commitment to staying or leading.

Then there’s the challenge that comes as people age or move into a different life stage. Do they continue to hold the reins or are they able to seed the development of a new form of ‘contemporary church’? I’m reminded of a cartoon that appeared in Leadership Magazine in which a bunch of octegenarians gather around their leader who proclaims that their church was formed for the needs of baby boomers - and it will continue to major on baby boomers, even if it is 2025.

There’s a risk in this setting that younger members of the congregation will miss interaction with pre-boomer members. My experience is that a generationally-specific congregation will still attract older members who have an interest in innovation.

A Uniting Church in Australia example of this approach near where I live would be Pacific Parks Uniting, Gold Coast.

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Pluralism Individualism and Post Traditionalism

In chapter two of their book, “Bridging Divided Worlds“, Jackson Carroll and Wade Clark Roof explore changes in spirituality that have happened in response to unsettled times.

Drawing heavily on work by Robert Wuthnow in his book, “After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s“, the authors suggest that we have moved from a preference for stability to a preference for exploration.

Spirituality in stable times (read before World War II) was cultivated through habitual practice within the familiar world of one’s particular tradition. In unstable times (read since World War II) seekers explore new vistas and negotiate among alternative systems of belief & practice.

Carroll and Roof unpack what this might mean in the religious scapes of the USA. They describe the end of the hegemony of white Anglo-Saxon male protestant assumptions. Judaism, Catholicism, Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism have taken their place alongside ‘mainstream’ Protestantism. I’ve seen this time and time again in Australia and New Zealand. What once was ‘mainline’ is now ’sideline’ as independent or more recent Pentecostal movements draw the bulk of emerging generations.

The authors go on, though, to examine the impact of liberalised immigration on pluralism in the USA. The arrival of people from the East (and I’m not talking about East Coast!) has led to a greater awareness of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and many other religious movements. Individuals now have the capacity to mix and match - drawing from the wisdom of each movement as they see fit.

More and more, emerging generations are valuing dialogue, respect of the ‘other’, while retaining the capacity to positively assert one’s own point of view. As Carroll and Roof point out, this is more prevalent among people with higher education.

At this point the authors call on the wisdom of Peter Berger, a writer on religious psychology and sociology. Berger points out that the rise of pluralism is associated with the privatisation of religion in which the centre of focus moves to the inner world. Carroll and Roof describe individualistic & humanistic orientations clashing with theistic interpretations of life.

The third section of this chapter focuses on the process of detraditionalization. This is a topic covered in more detail in Jackson Carroll’s book, “Mainline to the Future: Congregations for the 21st Century“. The authors point out that tradition has not been discarded. It is merely treated in a different way. In the search for meaning, emerging generations are more likely to sift through a number of traditions, holding them up for scrutiny in the light of science, contemporary thinking and popular culture. I would add here scrutiny of individual and shared experience.

A common thread coming through in the authors’ research is the tension faced in the development of ‘contemporary worship styles’. What is developed today may become old hat within ten years. The authors use the word ‘arbitrary’ to describe the unpredictable way in which Biblical texts are favoured or ignored, and the voices of tradition are respected or shunned. That’s a valid point. At times leaders can lurch from trend to trend without any sense of theological reflection or consistency. But it could also be the reflection of outsiders trying to understand the rhythms of a strange movement.

Finally, we come back to the paradigm of ‘dwellers and seekers’. Ann Sidler worked with Robert Bellah and others on “The Good Society“, 1992, and “Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life“, 1996. Here we’re able to benefit from her article in American Sociological Review outlining the concept of culture as a tool kit of symbols, stories, rituals & worldviews which people may use in varying configurations to solve different kinds of problems.

In settled times, the predominant culture is drawn on by people for constructing broad well-established strategies of action that become traditions that anchor their lives. Inconsistencies are tolerated.

In unsettled times, however, it becomes obvious that the inconsistencies reveal the inadequacy of previously accepted strategies of action. Entrepreneurial leaders draw again from the cultural toolkit to develop new meaning systems, cultural styles and strategies of action.

Which brings us the nub of “Bridging Divided Worlds”. The development of new cultural forms in unsettled times is emotionally charged. Conflict is inevitable as those who seek to create cultural forms clash with those who have no desire to leave behind the certainties of the previously accepted paradigm.

The Chambers Online Dictionary defines “hybrid” as

noun
1 an animal or plant produced by crossing two different species, varieties, races or breeds; a mongrel.
2 linguistics a word whose elements are taken from different languages, eg bicycle.
3 anything produced by combining elements from different sources.

adj
being produced by combining elements from different sources; mongrel. hybridism or hybridity noun .ETYMOLOGY: 17c: from Latin hibrida the offspring of a tame sow and wild boar.

So that’s what we’re seeing here with the development of pluralism, individualism and posttraditionalism. Each person developing within themselves, and with others, their own assortment of resources from the cultural tool kit.

Robert Wuthnow - After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s, 2000
Jackson Carroll - Mainline to the Future: Congregations for the 21st Century, 2000
Ann Sidler - Talk of Love: How Culture Matters, 2003

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Sociologists of Religion Describe Generations as Cultural Waves

Wade Clark Roof and Jackson Carroll, in their book, “Bridging Divided Worlds”, bring us into the world of generational change with the image of ocean waves battering the shore. The image is one of both subtlety - where do you draw the line between waves - and clarity - one can see the effects of each wave.

The authors run with the idea that major events in society during an individual’s adoslescent and early adult years shape his or her outlook. Consciousness is formed in individuals and in groups.

The first chapter goes on to list the effects of major social events on the pre-Boomers (GI Generation and Silent Generation), Boomers, and Generation Xers. The authors appear to draw heavily on the categorisation provided by Strauss and Howe.

Roof and Carroll go on to explore the impact of generational change on the social meaning of age. A classic example is the development of the ‘youth’ phase in the second half of the twentieth century. This adolescent ‘liminal phase’ was seen as a time of freedom and expressiveness rather than conformity. Add to this the more recent trends of prolonged economic dependence and birth control pills which have made it possible to postpone committed relationships and marriage.

I found the section on religion and education fascinating. The authors reflect on the increased value of higher education in emerging generations - valued largely for economic reasons. Students in the post-World War II era have been exposed to a pluralism that challenges narrow understandings of the world. Carroll and Roof believe that religion has been more and more polarised between those with a higher education and those without: people who tend to make decisions about meaning and morality with the benefit of psychology and personal experience, and people who prefer to stick to recognised sources of revelation and authority. People who value the immanent and people who value the transcendent.

I believe that organised religion in the USA is more polarised than in Australia or New Zealand. But I’m still seeing the same tension being played out in email conversations over morality and Christian faith here down under. One colleague commented on the fact that the Uniting Church in Australia tends to attract a high proportion of people who value broad education. But what’s interesting in this book is that we are seeing a higher proportion of people who have engaged in tertiary study and are reluctant to subscribe to beliefs merely on the basis of authoritative tradition or writings. I personally think it is tragic to have to choose between the immanent and the transcendent.

Jackson and Carroll go on to unpack the impact of generational change on religion and family. They say that the move away from the traditional family structures have meant that religious values are not being consistently handed down. We have moved toward a much more individualist society in which children do not necessarily adopt the values of their parents. The values of their peers are more likely to be of influence.

One comment was telling. The level of religious participation is relatively low for singles, divorced and separated, and so-called nonfamily households. It doesn’t surprise me. So many of the activities and even beliefs of the church are based around the assumption that people belong to traditional family structures. I get the impression that some churches are relieved to let people go in their early adult years - thinking they’ll fit in much more nicely when they’re married and have kids. Singles who are working out their relationships, or are in defacto relationships, who are not interested in relationships, are generally a puzzle or headache for many of our leaders. But, as the authors point out, the trend is moving further and further in this direction.

The first chapter ends with an analysis of changes brought about by the emerging generations’ ease with communication technology. It is no longer adequate to sit and listen to a sermon delivered as rhetorical logic. We’re now expecting to enter into the logic of consciousness - featuring the visual and engaging the wider experience of the participant. The authors write briefly about multigenerational congregations that attempt to hold together experience and proclaimed truth.

All this is to show that emerging generations, like waves, bring change to the whole of society. As much as some people would like to live in a generational ghetto, we’re all affected in some way by the broad sweeping movements that are emerging in our society.

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Wade Clark Roof and Jackson Carroll Bridging Divided Worlds

Wade Clark Roof (on the right) is a sociologist of religion, teaching religion and society in the religious studies department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He’s known for his work on the spirituality of Baby Boomers, published in 1993 and 1999.

Jackson Carroll (on the left) is another sociologist of religion. He carried a similar position at Duke University Divinity School before taking up a position there as director of Pulpit and Pew, a research project on pastoral leadership. He’s well known for his book on the future of main line congregations, published in 2000.

These two authors, together with David Roozen, edited “The Post-War Generation & Establishment Religion: Cross-Cultural Perspectives“, in 1995. The book was based on a collaborative effort across ten Western countries: England, Australia, USA, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Italy and Greece.

About the same time Carroll and Clark Roof were researching the impact of generational change on congregations. At last, in 2002, the research has been made available in their book, “Bridging Divided Generations: Generational Cultures in Congregations“.

I’ll put a post per chapter for this book. It’s certainly worth it. And then maybe back to the one on the Post-War Generation.

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Defining Moments Used in Marketing To Generations

Considering that the financial backing for generational research has come from the marketing sector, it makes sense that there’d be some decent research published in this field. The best I’ve seen so far is produced by Geoffrey Meredith and Charles Schewe with Janice Karlovich in their book, “Defining Markets, Defining Moments“, published by Hungry Minds, New York, 2o02 (now part of Wiley)

Geoff and Charles provide a useful introduction to the move from mass marketing through sector marketing to one-to-one marketing. They take issue with what they regard as simplistic generalisations about people based merely on the year they were born. They go right back to the origins of generational theory, examining the work of Karl Mannheim on generations and cohorts. Cohorts, they explain, are formed as people experience life-changing events together in their formative years (age 17 - 25).

Their analysis of American generational cohorts leads them to describe:
Depression Cohort coming of age 1930 - 1939
World War II Cohort coming of age 1940 - 1945
Postwar Cohort coming of age 1946 - 1962
Leading Edge Baby Boom Cohort coming of age 1963 - 1972
Trailing Edge Baby Boom Cohort coming of age 1973 - 1983
Generation X Cohort coming of age 1984 - 1994
N Generation Cohort (Millennials, Y) coming of age 1995 - ?

This makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve tested out some of their time lines with colleagues who resonate with the findings. In particular I found the work on the ‘Post war’ generation revealing. Among these people are the ones who actually sponsored the revolutions that happened during the 1960s. The early Baby Boomers provided a lot of the energy but their leaders were a cohort earlier. They place me in the Trailing Edge Baby Boom along with Douglas Coupland.

<br>Charles and Geoff outline the “Lifestage Analytic Matrix” - five crucial factors influencing people’s attitudes, behaviour and buying patterns as they age:
1. Cohorts (defining moments shared)
2. Lifestages (a wide range of 25 different points in life)
3. Physiographics (the effects of aging)
4. Emotions and affinities (longings etc.)
5. Socioeconomics (spending power, education, career, marital state etc.)

These five factors allow marketers to focus on specific people groups rather than broad generations.

Geoff and Charles lay down five new rules of multi-dimensional marketing:
1. Demographics don’t do the job anymore.
2. Generational cohorts reinterpret lifestages.
3. New cohorts mean new behaviors.
4. Values define generational cohorts, and core values don’t change.
5. Younger generational cohorts are converging globally.

The book ends with a reflection on the application of these marketing principles in non-USA settings. Charles and Geoff conclude that the development of cohort values is more likely in developed countries in which mass communication allows a whole nation to quickly experience pivotal events and reflect on them. They explore the impact of pivotal events in Russia, West Germany and Brazil.

The same two authors paired up again in 2002 to write their book, Managing by Defining Moments: America’s 7 Generational Cohorts, Their Workplace Values, and Why Managers Should Care.

Geoff Meredith and Charles Schewe work together as associates of Lifestage Matrix Marketing. Geoff is based in California, Charles in Massachusetts.

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