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Commentary
GEN-X RISING: Get ready, Church: Here come Gen X'ers Andrew C. Thompson, Jan 7, 2005
By Andrew C. Thompson Special Contributor
Editor's note: This week we welcome the Rev. Andrew C. Thompson of Searcy, Ark., whose column on a Generation X view of the church will appear monthly.
Generation X is generally considered to be the generation born between 1965 and 1981. That means the oldest Gen X'ers are turning 40 this year. They are entering middle age. For those most senior X'ers—the ones who butt up against the youngest of the Baby Boomers—hitting the big 4-0 might be a cause for depression. I disagree. I think it is a cause for celebration.
Generation X'ers of the world, unite! All you have to lose are your chains!
Hitting the 40-year milestone might be greeted by a few more gray hairs and achy joints, but it also brings a great benefit, which only age can offer: respect. The oldest of the boomers are nearing retirement, but the oldest of the X'ers are just hitting their stride. Middle age for a professional athlete means the end of his career. For the rest of us, it means the prime of life.
Since we were kids, Gen X'ers have been told that we are slackers: The Lost Generation. We grew up on MTV and VH1, and nothing good can come of that: The Throw-Away Generation. We have no direction, no goals and no sense of responsibility: The "Me First" Generation. We are bound to reap the fruits of our parents' mistakes: The Hopeless Generation.
Well, I say: Bring. It. On.
When I look around at my fellow Gen X'ers, I see an up-and-coming group of people who are ready to take the reins of leadership in our church. And as people of faith, we fully believe that the church is where the true hope of the world lies.
Bishop William Willimon, in an essay titled "Launching a New Generation of Leaders," in Streams of Renewal: Welcoming New Life Into United Methodism, described the Greatest Generation as a generation that loves authority and institutional structures. He suggests that his own generation (Baby Boomers) is suspicious of authority.
And Generation X? Well, what exactly is authority? It's not that Gen X'ers dislike authority, or even that they distrust authority. It's just that we Gen X'ers have grown up in a postmodern world where authority does not mean the same thing as it did to our parents and grandparents. Our world has been fundamentally changed by all the economic, political and technological earthquakes that have occurred during our lifetime.
For years, the Chicken Little of the Church have been telling us that the sky is falling because our membership is nowhere near the level is was in the halcyon days of the 1950s. They wring their hands and conjure up church growth strategies. They build church buildings bigger and bigger, thinking that size is what matters.
And all the while, Generation X looks on confused. This is not our church. Square footage, warm bodies in pews and a mind-boggling number of church programs? What is that? The church to which my generation feels called is a church that is about action, not authority. We feel called to be in fellowship with other Christians in real, intimate small groups, not 'fronting about holy rolling and outward appearances, but true support and accountability.
We feel called to reach out to the lost. We want to push ourselves (and each other) through missions. We want to get to know people who didn't grow up in the same cushy, middle-class environment that we did.
We feel called to worship—not constrained by any particular rigid tradition, but worship that involves our hearts, our souls and our minds. That might be so-called traditional worship, and it might be so-called contemporary worship. But our God is not in a box, and we don't think our worship should be, either.
Give us action, not authority. Give us initiative, not inertia. And give us purpose, not paralysis. Generation X has been waiting in the wings for just about 40 years.
