Generations in Conversation

Paleo Future

January 14, 2008 – 3:45 pm | by postkiwi

This time in 2007 Matt Novak started a blog, PaleoFuture, to examine the ways that those in the past envisioned the future. Over twelve months Matt has covered topics such as architecture, cars, cities of the future, flying cars, food, homes, ocean life, picturephones, space colonies, and the year 2000. His blog is littered with the imaginative pictures and descriptions of the future, sourced from the 1880s to the present.

In an article at Mung Being Matt notes that over the last ten years we’ve been reluctant to project very far into the future. There’s less job security for futurists these days. He wonders if it’s our sense of postmodern sense of irony and sarcasm that has led to more modest speculation.

I have a hunch that crossing the boundary between the 20th and 21st centuries has made us less dreamy eyed about the future. We’ve become used to rapid change, so much so that predictions about life in ten years time are bound to be out of whack with the advances made in that time. We do have picture phones that have us speaking in video imagery. No big deal now.

However we do seem to have lost our obsession with getting into outer space. The realities of attempting to send people into the solar system have made it clear that flying to the stars involves crossing unthinkable distances. While our world becomes smaller the universe has become larger.

We’ve used virtual reality to simulate the experiences of galactic travel. Microsoft’s Halo 3, for example, takes players to many worlds in an alternative fantasy version of our reality. I wonder if Halo players hold that version of the future as a possibility?

Tags: future studies, Generations

Willimon on Reaching Young Adults

November 26, 2007 – 10:21 pm | by postkiwi

William Willimon has recently posted on reaching what he calls The Abandoned Generation.

He begins by reflecting on the growth of binge drinking on university campuses, the increasing rate of violent crimes and suicide among young people. Despite these factors, however, Willimon observes that this generation is open to listening to the voices of older generations, in a way that would have been unthinkable in the 1960s.

I have found that today’s “Abandoned Generation” brings a new curiosity and openness to the gospel as well as a willingness to hear what their elders have to say, if we will speak directly to them. Therefore leaders of the church need to revise some of our conventional wisdom about the imperviousness of young adult hearts to the gospel.

Thomas G. Long is quoted:

“There is a growing recognition that it is not enough for the community of faith to wait around for the “boomers” to drift back. ….Conventional wisdom holds that there are three broad phases in religious commitment: There is childhood, a pliable and receptive age religious instruction can and should be given; there is mature adulthood, when people, given the right incentives, can be persuaded to take on the responsibilities of institutional church life. In between childhood and adulthood, there is the vast wasteland of adolescence and young adulthood, a time when most people wander, or run away from their religious roots. The most that a community of faith can do in this middle period is to wait patiently, to leave people alone in their season of rebellion, smiling with the knowledge that, by the time these rebels arrive at their thirties, they will probably be back in the pews and may well be heading up the Christian education committee. This conventional wisdom is wrong….”

Willimon asks if we can see the needs and problems of this generation of young adults as an invitation to proclaim the gospel with boldness, to beckon them toward a new world named the Kingdom of God? “If we can, we shall discover this generation as a marvelous opportunity for gospel proclamation.”

I agree that young adults are open to the voices of many people. However this is not the openness of naivety. There’s a sense of discernment and exploration of what it actually means to join the messenger in the development of a future with meaning. Younger generations will not listen long if it is obvious that the older generation is involved in one way communication. This generation has a marvelous opportunity to be proclaimers of the gospel.

Tags: Gen Y, William Willimon, young adults