Church Voices

There is a war between the rich and poor,
a war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the left and right,
a war between the black and white,
a war between the odd and the even.

Why don’t you come on back to the war, pick up your tiny burden,
why don’t you come on back to the war, let’s all get even,
why don’t you come on back to the war, can’t you hear me speaking?
- Leonard Cohen, There is a War

There is a war between Gen X and Baby Boomers. That may be a bit overly dramatic but there is quite a bit of resentment and disdain from Gen X towards Baby Boomers, and if you don’t realize that you’re probably a Baby Boomer. Most of the information I’ve culled for this article comes from a business management/marketing perspective. Sadly, most of the synthesis of generational traits comes from people who want to sell them stuff or get them to work harder. I’ve done my best to remove this perspective.

If you expect to be a multi-generational church, at least in areas where this generational break is acute, you’re going to need to be aware of the differences in perspective.

Competition
The thing about baby boomers is that there’s a lot of ‘em. From birth they’ve been competing with each other for attention, promotions, and every other area of life. Direct competition with one another where there are clear winners and losers and hierarchies are distinctly and formally recognized. If you expect to be able to put ministries, and staff into competition against each other as a way to motivate and inspire them to their best you can forget about Gen X being on board.

CEOs
Take a look at the ecclesiastical landscape and you’ll see CEO style senior ministers abounding. Saddleback, and Willow Creek foremost and you’ll find a huge baby boomer population being lead by a single guy at the helm. This, naturally, goes back to the neatly defined hierarchy of baby boomer preferences. And you might as well put out a sign asking potential Gen X staff members to run away as quickly as they can. Xers are not going to respond to a lead dog, authoritarian very well. While you won’t see the total team mentality of a Generation Y, you will see a far more egalitarian leadership structure where each member of the team takes on an area of ministry and meet and lead as equals.

Work is life, life is work
If you take a few minutes to listen to the music produced and consumed by Gen X you’ll see a strong theme of abandonment by parents (Nirvana, Eminem, Tupac). Much of Gen X experienced their formative years as latch key children, and children of divorce due to Baby Boomers’ intense need to compete professionally. They were sacrificed for professional advancement, and they’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen to their families. If you expect your Gen X staff members and volunteers to work 80 hours a week and ignore their families you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

On the other hand, if you create a staff environment that allows Xers to blend their professional and personal lives (something that will cost you almost nothing in a church environment) you’ll end up with a staff that is incredibly passionate and self-motivated to get things done. You’ll solve the problem of staff moving on after a few years, and leaving you to start from square one.

Authority and Derision
Let me be very clear here: most of the reason for the break between these two generations is a result of Boomers not giving a crap about Gen X. Their expectation was that Gen X would be the younger version of the Baby Boomers and when that didn’t happen they reacted badly. For example, the charge that Gen X was a bunch of whining slackers stemmed mostly from Gen X not being hyper-competitive professionally and abandoning their kids to work massive hours. However, due to the massive size of the Boomer generation they haven’t needed to acquiesce to Xers, they could just pound Xers into submission by forcing petty authoritarian rules into the work place. If you’re more Boomer than Gen X then you probably think it’s silly that Xers deeply resent things like dress codes, and using MP3 players while at work. Then again, your generation is the one that came up with those rules and inflicted them on others. Businesses are starting to get the clue that little things like that matter, and so they’re loosening up the rules around them. Churches that don’t foster an environment that matches this sort of thing can forget about staff or members from Gen X.