Thursday, May 26th, 2005
How to Herd Cats - Leading Generation X
In the third chapter of PostMission: World mission by a postmodern generation, Peter Stephenson picks up the learnings from the PostMission gathering at Holy Island in 2001. Peter cut his teeth in cross-cultural mission in Spain, and now is living in Exeter running a web site design service.
I wonder if there’s a reference here to Warren Bennis’ 1997 book, “Managing people is like herding cats: Warren Bennis on Leadership“. Or to the EDS television commercial, “Cat Herders“, 2000.
Stephenson explains that members of his generation do not have an automatic respect for their ‘elders and betters’. Foolish leaders become known as untrustworthy. Abusive leaders are regarded as ‘manipulative control freaks’. Leaders who use Scriptures to justify wrongful attitudes are seen as religious hypocrites. Agencies that expect young missionaries to submit unconditionally to such leaders are tarred with the same brushes.
Stephenson invites mission leaders to consider new ways of motivating Xers. They respond to influence rather than control, and become disillusioned when treated as idiots that have nothing to teach. Xers, Stephenson says, are fed up with being rubbished, sidelined and misunderstood, and as a result are leaving the mission field in droves.
The values and principles of effective leadership, as identified by the Holy Island Roundtable, are friendship (warmth and time commitment), respect shown in two-way learning, integrity, openness and vulnerability, team leadership (decisions made and followed through by team), boldness and faith.
What I find helpful here is Stephenson’s call for leadership with a learning posture. Emerging generations have experiences and perspectives that older generations can only read about. I’ve heard Leonard Sweet say, “If you are born before 1962, you are an immigrant. If you are born after 1962, you are a native.” Sweet explains that it is not necessarily linked to age. Postmodern natives can be 70 years old while ‘immigrants’ can be starting to explore postmodern perspectives at 20 years of age. However, it is obvious that our assumptions are shaped by the environment we have grown up in, particularly our education system.
Those trained in adult education know they need to start with the acknowledgment that participants have prior experience and quick access to information. What is needed is two-way, three-way, or four-way conversation in which wisdom is developed by teams rather than passed on by individuals.
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Wednesday, May 25th, 2005
The second contribution to PostMission starts with the U2 song title, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”. Peter Stephenson WEC Spain UK, Joanne Goode Africa Inland Mission UK and Carolyn Cole, YWAM UK, write on why Generation X struggle to find a place in mission agencies.
A point to note here - the mission agencies referred to in Postmission are Evangelical organisations with an emphasis on global mission. The concerns outlined here could be applied to other parachurch organisations as well as denominational agencies, whether Evangelical or not.
Another point - “Generation X” and “Postmodern” are used interchangeably throughout the book. It would be fair to say that the authors would now have moved on from that point to include ‘millennials’ in the mix, and to acknowledge that not all Gen Xers buy into postmodernist values.
Clue 1: Attitude to Authority
The Holy Island Roundtable remind us that ‘postmodern Christians’ do not have a natural respect for leaders, nor a willingness to turn a blind eye to faults. They are less likely to respond to those they see as ‘strong, confident, aloof’ hero/parent figures. They are more likely to focus on the ‘fellow traveller’. and are prepared to learn from even the most junior co-worker. Xers are not impressed with leaders who are preoccupied with looking the part and holding their own. They would rather link with authentic leaders who are honest about their own failings and open to accountability.
Clue 2: Morality
The authors ask the hard questions:
Are the moral values of your church/mission determined by scripture or by evangelical subculture?”
To what extent can morality be contextualized or enculturated?
With an increased number of potential postmodern recruits with a ‘blotted’ moral history and outlook, how will we assimilate them without marginalization?
They examine the modernist Evangelical focus on individual morality, with its preoccupation with sexual sin. Holiness, they say, has been reduced to personal individual sins linked with sexual behaviour, dress codes, divorce, alcohol taboos, tithing, abortion, swearing, and dirty jokes. Postmoderns are more concerned with moral issues such as weapons of mass destruction, environmental destruction, womens’ rights, Third World debt, racism, exploitation of child labour.
Clue 3: Spirituality
Postmodern spirituality can appear threatening or lax to modernist Christians. Traditional evangelicalism is focused on a ‘personal walk with the Lord’, expressed in a daily quiet time (ideally in the morning), self discipline, church attendance, and learning from teaching. Postmoderns seek to involve God in every aspect and moment of life – at least in principle. They express a longing for an intimate experience of God, privately and in gatherings of the church. They express a distrust of ability of selves and others to faultlessly interpret Scripture.
Clue 4: Truth and Honesty
The Roundtable authors once again pose challenges to mission organisations:
Do we put at risk the integrity of our agency’s ministries by not telling the whole story?
To what extent are agencies driven by the need to appear successful in order to please their donors?
The authors express their concern for integrity in Evangelical mission organisations. Mission agencies, they say, often exaggerate the results of their work. Does this reveal an idol of success? Some agencies have been changing their image without changing the reality.
Clue 5: Reducing Struggle – Unity in Diversity
Is there room for people working from a postmodernist perspective in mission organisations? Could Galatians 3:26-28 be expanded to say that in Christ there is neither modern or postmodern? The authors say that we face a situation similar to the Galatian context. A Jewish majority was imposing their cultural norms on the nascent Gentile churches. In Rome the situation was in the reverse, with Jews returning to Rome being required to fit in with a Gentile church with little respect for Jewish customs. Just like the New Testament church, we need to listen to one another, respecting one another. At times, however, postmoderns and moderns will need to challenge one another about syncretism with the dominant culture.
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