BLOG 8/14/16. “THE SONS OF THIS WORLD ARE MORE SHREWD IN DEALING WITH THEIR OWN GENERATION THAN THE SONS OF LIGHT.”
Fact #1. A couple of years ago the local media made a huge deal out of the opening of the Ponce City Market in a humongous building that had stood empty for a few years, and had gone through a couple of failed ire-ncarnations since it was Sears-Roebuck’s southeastern distribution center in the early-middle part of the 20th century. When it was built it was on the edge of the city, and was contemptuously referred to by locals as: Sear’s folly. But in those early days Sears was the giant mail-order merchandizer of the time. The country was emerging out of it primarily rural culture where most shopping was done in small general stores. Sears provide almost anything one could want and almost every home looked forward to receiving a summer and a winter catalog, which became a mainstay in merchandising. It was the Amazon.com of its day. And to facilitate the efficient distribution of its orders, it had these huge regional distribution centers.
But the culture changed, as did its shopping habits. Mail-order firms such as Sears-Roebuck and Montgomery-Ward became history. The younger generational culture never even heard of them. So what do you do with a huge empty multi-storied distribution center?
Fact #2. Generational cultures are very real and very distinctly different cultures. This has been especially true as the 20th century unfolded, especially after World War II. The citizenry and generations were no longer isolated, or out of communication with the larger global scene. The whole plethora of influences globally, culturally, economically, socially, racially, and especially technologically were inescapable. Cultures were no longer formed only within families. That’s a whole study in itself. Sears-Roebuck was a victim of this transition, and they were shrewd enough to realize that their diminishing market was in its twilight. They were part of a generational culture that was passing.
That didn’t mean that the populace was not still in need of a wide range of commodities, but that they were procuring them in a different form. And the neighborhood in which the Sears building stood was in the middle of a rapidly developing, dynamic neighborhood made up of a generation of young urban professionals who loved food and entertainment, coffee shops, and specialty boutiques. It loved to live in the city and in the neighborhood. So some shrewd developers purchased the Sears building and created this exciting, colorful locus formed for a new and prosperous generational culture: Ponce City Market. Shops and condominiums, etc.
The ‘sons of light’, however, were not so shrewd. Right down the avenue from Sears there were those several magnificent church buildings, erected for an earlier generation for whom such church buildings were a status symbol for polite church folk. They came with steeples, dominant clergy, pipe-organs, elegant stained windows, and all of the accoutrements of the Christendom era so embraced by the older generations. But the generations changed and passed, and the church was not shrewd enough to recognize that such buildings did not necessarily meet the spiritual hungering of the distinctly different emerging generational cultures. They kept trying to attracted disinterested generations by more ‘churchy’ activities, but the emerging Generation X, Millennial Generation, and its present information age successor (Generation iY) had no interest in more ‘in house’ churchy activities.
The generational cultures still had that quest for meaning, for relationships, for hope in their lives … but not in maintaining tall steeple church buildings. So the population of those churches down the avenue diminished, some closed, some sold off part of their property for condominiums. The Boomer generation may vainly try to preserve them. But meeting the spiritual hungerings of Gen. X, the Millennials, and their successors by them is not likely so long as they are wedded to, and idolatrous of buildings that are relics of a past Christendom culture. Happily, new an indigenous and creative forms of church are emerging to meet this need, and in unexpected forms. Fact #3.
