Monthly Archives: September 2010

Millennial Generation (that’s ‘Y’ to you)

Posted on by

Here is a pertinent paragraph from the Wikipedia entry for “Millennial Generation.”  This observation/assertion is that the Millennial’s generational thinking and attitude and ascetics that run quite counter to the whole counterculture and anti-establishment nature of the Baby Boomers. 

For the Church, this means that those who are still convinced that to save the Church is to get rid of everything that was (standard theology, doctrine, traditional architecture or music or language or liturgies and on and on) are now acting not for the future welfare of the Church, but for the perpetuation of their generational ideology.  My experience with younger people suggests that even things like “inclusive language” is passe – particularly among the women.   When we think about how to form or re-form the emphases or methodologies of the Church for future generations, we must do our best to truly understand emerging generations.  If not, we will once again “miss the boat.”  We’ve missed the boat so often… 

Here is the paragraph:

In some ways, the Millennials have become seen as the ultimate rejection
of the counterculture that began in the 1960s and
persisted in the subsequent decades through the 1990s.[62][63]
This is further documented in Strauss & Howe’s book titled Millennials
Rising: The Next Great Generation, which describes the Millennial
generation as “civic minded,” rejecting the attitudes of the Baby Boomers and Generation X.[64]
Kurt Andersen, the prize-winning contributor to Vanity Fair writes in his book Reset:
How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America that many
among the Millennial Generation view the 2008 election of Barack
Obama as uniquely theirs and describes this generational consensus
building as being more healthy and useful than the counterculture
protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s, going as far to say that if
Millennials can “keep their sense of entitlement in check, they might
just turn out to be the next Greatest Generation.”[65]
However, due to the global
financial crisis of 2008-2009, at least one journalist has
expressed fears of permanently losing a substantial amount of Generation
Y’s earning potential.[66]

The American Church

Posted on by

“We shouldn’t reconstruct the Christian faith into an advancement of the American way of life, which I feel is the great sin of the American church today.” –Gordon Fee (Professor Emeritus, Regent College, Vancouver) [source]

I remember listening to Gordon Fee during a Chi Alpha Fellowship retreat years ago when I was working in campus ministry.  Frankly, I don’t remember anything he said, but we all liked his book.

This quote is very timely.  I concur with Fee concerning the idea
that the American church of both the religious right and the religious
left has allowed itself (themselves) to be co-opted by American
socio-political systems and agendas. This has produced an institutional
church that to the general public, particularly among younger
generations, looks more like the crass American political system rather
than the “love your neighbor as yourself” ideal of Christianity – at
least as Jesus summed up in his two great commandments.  This has also
produced a deficient Christian experience in this country among too many
adherents.

We cease to be the imago Dei (the image of God) within our
surrounding society when we allow ourselves to be so diminished and
corrupted.  We experience a deficient form of the life in Christ when we
do so.  The question may well be:

When are we, individually and in the aggregate, going to reclaim the
relational experience promised by the texts of the Christian faith so
that we are re-formed in humility into to the imago Dei in order to be a
compelling witness of an alternative for the people we encounter
everyday?