… or, some other equally hyped title. This is well worth reading:
Why Boomers resist the “Emergent fad.”
An honest answer, without much theological jargon.
Latest Comments
RSS- Giant Steps 17
PortcullisChain, michael lee, zack, PortcullisChain, michael lee, michael lee, zack, sharolyn, June, michael lee [...] - Would you like some fries with your cheezy gratitude? 9
Chad, June, michael lee, June, michael lee, June, michael lee, sharolyn, June - DangerMouseBeck 1
aly hawkins - A Short Survey of Interesting Topics 35
raga, sharolyn, Justin Clavell, Eric, sharolyn, sharolyn, Justin Clavell, Justin Clavell, Eric, michael lee [...] - Michael Lee Eats Nails for Breakfast 6
michael lee, harmonicminer, Grammy, Zack, sharolyn, sharolyn - commercial break 3
June, JC, michael lee
An very interesting tidbit to chew on. It never occurred to me that it was the Boomers who changed church so thoroughly in the 80s and 90s, but it makes perfect sense. And the guy has a point - I don’t consider the changes they wrought to be much of an improvement (of course I don’t - I’m a gen-x-er) - why on earth would I think they’d embrace the changes MY generation wished to implement? Well, I mean, the members of my generation who are actually on board…BACK, NEOCONS! BACK, I SAY!
Oooohhh this really makes me mad. There is no going back boomers, for better or worse you made this bad and you’re gonna lie in it. You can’t have your revolution and deny us ours, we will simply sweep you aside as you swept gramma and gramps aside.
Ok… whew. Seriously though!!!???! Doesn’t it bum people out that the revolutionaries are so stuck in the mud?
It makes me sad, not angry…and kinda nervous to grow up. Looking back at the 60s and 70s, I can’t believe the hippies, draft-dodgers, and bra-burners are now confirmed yuppies. And looking back to the 80s and 90s, when those yuppies who were churchgoers channelled their protest experience into mega-church madness…well, it makes me wonder what nonsense I’ll get up to in 10 to 15 years.
.
I pray our generation will somehow let go of the idea that we have finally got it right, and damn anything that came before. The focus on style over substance will always end with the next generaton reviling the previous. I’d like to think we can break that cycle…
Aly, that thought made me nervous, too, until I realized that I think it’s inevitable that every generation has stupid stuff they get up to and every generation will inevitably age into the curmudgeons that cling to the status quo. I think it’s human nature for the generations to piss on each other ideologically.
.
However, remember that there are always exceptions to the average generational lemming (the author of that article, for a start), and that’s the comfort I take from growing older - the chance to embody the best attributes of my generation, while always, always resisting the pull of comfort and complacency. There are plenty of boomers who have turned their back on the worst their generation embodies, just as we hopefully will when we reach late middle age. But I’m saddened that this chance is by and large passed up by the majority of people from generation to generation. Maybe Gen-X will have the fewest number of grouchy old idiots in history and we’ll be remembered accordingly.
Ok, I’ll try and sound more grace filled and emotionally balanced here. The thing about it is what you ladies have touched on in the last two posts. The boomers had the opportunity to take what they did, and continue to grow in middle and old age. I think, as a generation, they’re revealing their true lack of depth.
Will we do the same? Perhaps. Hopefully there will be, like B-Mac and a few others in the previous generation, those of us who enter middle age still envigorated by a fresh movement of the Holy Spirit, still searching for something more true, and more radically Christ driven. That will be the true marker for whether or not we have embraced and integrated ideas or if we’re all just getting a little huffy.
I just don’t want to be 55 and telling my kids to shut up, burn some incense, and sing Make a Joyful Noise again, because that’s how we do it, dammit.
That’s what I’m saying. Hear, hear. Except about the incense…that IS how we do it, dammit.
It’s actually helpful to read about y’all’s opinions about this topic. I decided early on that what I now know as the boomer church template did not work for me at all (and neither did the value system, or whatever value system an angry teenager could discern, anyway), so I joined the Episcopalian church, specifically a church that keeps to the old(er)ways. We sing hymns, use mostly older classical music (nothing much later than the early 20th century) for the ceremony and follow the more traditional Anglican eucharist very closely from Sunday to Sunday. No choruses. No Power Point. No drum set. I’m a lot more comfortable in a setting designed by people that came before the boomers (and I acknowledge that I’m setting myself up to sound like the biggest toffie-nose of all, but I’m not trying to run the boomer church tradition down. I just don’t dig it myself). I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t find the Emergent-type service to be distasteful at all, but I’d still prefer, I think, my every-Sunday-morning experience to more closely resemble the liturgical atmosphere I’m most comfortable in. And most ‘piscos I know chose liturgy in the same way and have no desire to mess with it. So the generational struggle, while interesting to me, doesn’t actually seem to have much bearing on my own worship experience. Though I still intend to visit one of the emergent churches in the city and see wassup.
This is why, as a 25 year old, I am very encouraged about what the likes of my pastor “b-mac” and other emerging church leaders are doing. They are not falling into the cosmetic shift and adjustments of the boomers and seeker-sensitive movement, but rather digging deeper and calling for a foundational, philosophical paradigm shift beyond the modern (philosophical, not technological) version of Christianity.
.
Thanks for the link and the comments folks!
.
be His,
jeremy