BLOG 5/27/15. GENERATIONAL CULTURES, AND THE CHURCH’S NEED OF PROPHETS
Monday was Memorial Day and the reminiscing reminded me that in my lifetime there have been at least four unique and quite different generational cultures, each hardly understood by the others. This came home to me most unmistakably a few years ago while I was attending the 60th reunion of my class at Davidson College. I was sitting on the patio in front of the college union, wearing my alumni name-tag, when an attractive and friendly young lady (all Davidson students are friendly—it’s the campus culture) sat down in the chair next to mine, introduced herself, . . . then she asked me innocently if anything had changed since I was in school there. My response was: “Everything!” As we talked, and I reminisced, it all seemed so incomprehensible to her.
The Reason? There are four rather distinct generational cultures between my day at Davidson and hers. I arrived at Davidson with the generation that were formed by the Great Depression and World War II, and to a college that had itself barely survived a century through which it endured three wars, Reconstruction, and the Great Depression. Davidson had a wonderful academic reputation but not much else. The campus was sparse and showed its age, what with condemned buildings, and minimal facilities. What it did have was a small and dedicated faculty, and a student body with above average I.Q.s.
My generation produced the Boomer Generation, then came Generation X, followed by the Millennials (my conversation partner there was probably a Millennial), but now there is emerging the iY Generation, those born after 1995. Each of these has it own formative cultures. The Boomers were the post-war achievers, who produced the Gen X generation, which generation wanted for nothing but tended to be a bit cynical. Then came the Millennials (born after 1985), who became the innovative, “let’s fix it,” much more optimistic set. Now we have the first generation that seems to be totally defined by the digital age. Each of these generations is its own culture, and has difficulty identifying with the previous ones, or those who follow.
In the Old Testament there is a reference to the sons of Issachar, who understood the times to know what Israel ought to do. The prophetic gift emerges all along the way in the history of Israel, as God provides understanding and correctives and promises. It emerges again in the early church where the prophetic gift appears to be a part of every believer’s equipping for mission. What is it all about? Well, it is very pragmatic. Nothing ever stays the same. No context or culture is identical with any other. God provides those who know how to exegete the culture in which a colony of God’s people are his incarnation, so that they are sensitive to the persons, and the trends, and those factors that are ever changing. . . . and how to re-invent themselves!
The corporate and commercial Silicon Valley-types have been much more expressive of this necessity than has the church. They have seen a different market and a different consumer desire, and also have seen the potential of things that were inconceivable a short time ago—so you get Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergei Brin and Larry Page, who open up whole new realities that focus on the customer, and refuse to become ossified in any one original form. The church has probably been very slow to call forth the prophetic gift, to know how and in what new forms and paradigms it can fulfill Christ’s calling to be the agents of his in-breaking kingdom. The church easily falls prey to ancestor worship, to captivity to patterns and paradigms of a former age, and apparently incapable of creating alternative narratives that speak to the very real spiritual needs and desires of each new generation for meaning, justice, relationships, . . . some center for life, and some creative source. My conversation partner on the patio of the college union triggered my interest in attempting to provoke a prophetic and alternative narrative for each new generation, rather than worshiping the patterns and paradigms of our ancestors. Sound OK?
