Missing Generation remnant

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 24 September 2012 10:21:07

Last night the evening service at Cornerstone was led by a remnant of the missing generation - it was jointly being led by Karl and Rob (who is our Venture FX  bod locally). It was a service I'd seen develop over the couple of weeks before as they emailed between each other and Karl toddled off to into the other room to fiddle about searching for inspiration and resources. As I sat there worshipping in the worship experience they'd created there were a couple of things about them and their service which struck me. Some of these thoughts  were about the two of them but most of it related to wider stuff I'd come across lately.

The first thing that struck me was the fact that these two are both training to be Methodist Local Preachers but the service they created certainly didn't emerge from the pages of Faith and Worship and what they'd learnt within it. These could both be described as young leaders (Rob is already one and it what the other seems to be showing the signs of possibly emerging into within the local/ professional context) have both learnt their craft in other spheres. For Karl I know an awful lot was learnt from hanging around St. Johns (the vicar factory college in Durham) and going along to Tuesday evening communion, watching and absorbing good practice being put into practice.

It wasn't an alternative service - as Rob's wife commented at the end it had been quick to set up and put away - yet it did had the hallmarks of youth and was discernibly different to what I am used to experiencing within a service which isn't given some label to indicate/ warn that it is going to be different to the norm. It was multi-media, creative and had a magpie feel to it in terms of having bits taken from here there and everywhere.

At 40 I am now officially old and am moving out of the "missing generation",  (although having reached their 40's my contemporaries haven't mysteriously returned). I actually think we're now reaching a time of talking about our "missing generations" rather than the"missing generation" and I am within the first wave of that whilst these youngsters are within the second. Last night I think showed that making that distinction that was made between Generation x and Generation Y - before the language was thankfully consigned to the graveyard of history - is important. This was a service put together by two people who had grown up in the digital age and for whom mixing media from different sources was their default mode.

The other thing that hit me was that these two people encapsulated the type of leaders which both denominations and wider networks are seeking to grow at the moment at local, regional and national level. This is in readiness for both the handover of power which is going to become necessary over the next few years as the babyboomers retire and the shift in church which is bound to occur as the current financial issues in most of the denominations and many local churches really hit the fan. They were the sort of people who I have been reading about recently in a range of areas as the semi-regular discussion on this issue seems to have become current again. Baptists have recently got a website for this group which has been nominated within the Christian New Media Awards (CNMA). Sojourners recently introduced the Emerging Voices Network  in the States to introduce these bright young things. The Methodists had a report into it all last year although I don't know how this is being taken forward.

What I think it will be really interesting to watch over the next few years will be the way this group interacts with the "boomers" who will have retired from "professional" roles but are still really active and will be for many years to come yet. This latter group are already beginning to redefine what it means to age and so will be exciting to watch what happens.