Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
In response to surveys showing a lack of conversational skills stemming from an over-reliance on video games, text messaging and TiVo, a number of American mainline churches have begun to offer classes in fellowship and social conversation with Generation Y’ers.
“We feel this is meeting a real need in our congregations,” said Jerod P.Ainsworth, youth director at Loma Linda Presbyterian Church (LLPC), a leader in what some observers have called the “small-talk education movement.”
“This is causing a real rift in congregations that is breaking fellowship between the generations,” Ainsworth said.
The classes offered at LLPC include “Me and My Friends Alone: Clique Talk in the Foyer,” “Endless Conversations about One’s Children,” “Endless Conversations About One’s Grandchildren,” and “Biblical-Seeming Gossip.”
“These young people seem so immersed in their own world, they just cannot seem to share in this centuries-old tradition,” said Forbes McGintley, head of a commission designated by mainline churches to study the problem.
Suggestions offered by the authors break the problem into four distinct areas of instruction for the parents of Gen Y’ers:
1. How to talk about one’s children and family (and others’ families exactly like it) to the exclusion of all other topics.
2. How to network and bring up one’s job and/or profession in subtle yet profitable ways.
3. Exclusive vacation spots, including activities like skiing, para-sailing,kayaking, bicycling, and (of course) golf.
4. Talk about God-given possessions like cars, jet skis, pools and spas and “most importantly, improvements on the house.”
Howard Bowman, Wittenburg Door, January 30, 2008
Read the full article, How to De-Program a Gen Yer, at Wittenburg Door.
[SATIRE WARNING]
Tags: Gen Y
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, November 26th, 2007
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
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
