So, yes, Millennials do want to help out the environment, but mostly they are being brainwashed into helping out lost causes. A lot of Millennials do not care about keeping their family together, and some do. Classifying every single Millennial as caring and sophisticated is somewhat odd. Our generation has the highest female college attendance, but higher drop-out rates than previous generations.

In a nutshell what I see here is opportunity. The question before us (the Church, particularly us in the mainline, top-down, hierarchal lead church), is whether we’ll hold tight to the gospel instead of our structures. Will we allow the gospel to read us in our context, or will we read the gospel in ours?

I think this is the central point of the whole Scripture issue, the whole sex issue in the Church – will we really allow the Gospel, allow God, to read us, to speak to us, to cast out the demons we sleep with and the idols we carry in our back pockets – or will we, like many before, simply find new places to plant our flag in the Bible, places that are more comfortable for our context, places that we can use to bring about our own kingdoms on earth?

This next generation is beginning to call into question some of our structures, some of our idols and maybe, if we’re willing to listen, they can be the Jeremiahs, the Hoseas, the Isaiahs that help us. Hopefully we can show them that the story hasn’t necessarily been corrupted, the gospel is still true, and we’re willing to be chastened by it, and by them. And maybe they’ll see that by us living that out, that the whole story IS true, the whole gospel IS real and they too, in turn, will be formed and reformed by the love of God…

The technology question is an interesting one to contemplate. My grandmother (1906-1994) moved from MO to OK in a horse pulled wagon as a little girl but lived to see a man walk on the moon and into the earliest days of the internet. Some historians argue that the technological transformations in the nineteenth of the railroad and the telegraph were more radical than what we have experienced since (other change being mere expansions of the trends they set in motion.) Railroads meant that for the first time human beings could travel faster than a horse and cover more than about 20 miles in a day. This led to the creation of time zones, where previously each town had kept their own time, setting clocks to noon at the height of the sun. Telegraph radically shrank the world and put people long distances apart in synchronic existence. Both created radically different perceptions of time and distance. Most innovations since have been refinements of this.

I think the next big change is coming soon and is already underway: biotechnology. I think this has the potential radically alter the way we perceive life and being. That is what I expect your daughter’s generation is going to be caught up in.

Anyway, I love your post and talking about the generation stuff.

Good stuff. Thanks for the comments and thought. I’m learning a lot from you. I agree in that the “Emergent Church” is probably more retro in many ways…everyone keeps saying that it harkens back to the Jesus Movement in many ways.

So maybe there aren’t a lot of new questions being asked.

I’m technically a Gen X’er, but feel more akin to the Millenials. So maybe the X’ers just haven’t been asking new questions, but the previous generations were.

One of the things that I think the Millenials have is their affinity for technology….I think technology has really influenced many of their views in ways that previous generations have not had. Would you agree? I think the technology has really ushered in a new sense of collective collaboration….of bottoms up mentality.

I’m just thinking through many of these things myself.

It’s funny that I just picked up Ron Sider’s “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.” So maybe Claiborne is a return to people like him of an earlier generation.

I need to think more on some of the things you said.

Thanks for contributing to this discussion…you have given me a lot to think about. I have a baby daughter…I’m wondering what her generation will be about.

rhett

You wrote:

“The Millenials in many cases are asking new questions about economics, social justice and leadership that the Boomers weren’t asking.”

I’m a trailing edge Boomer. When I was in college in the late 70’s to early ‘80s, I was reading magazines like Jim Wallis’ Sojourners and Ron Sider’s The Other Side. Sider’s “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger” and John Howard Yoder’s “The Politics of Jesus” were big. Anti-consumerist environmentalism was all the rage. (E. F. Schumacker “Small is Beautiful.”) In the late 80’s I went to grad school at Eastern University and had Campolo and Sider for classes.

The present day Emergent fascination with these same leaders (and their latest disciples) and their teachings strikes me as anything but emerging. I was at an ESA event two weeks ago and Dr. Sider commented that he was too old to be an idealist anymore but he was pleasantly surprised to see younger Evangelicals coming around to the positions ESA has been advocating for more than thirty years.

This may all be new to Millennial Evangelicals but these questions have been asked before. In fact, I experience the Emergent conversation as (disappointingly) retro. I share the distaste for the consumerist religion you have mentioned. Yet this all feels like one more uncreative pendulum swing when it comes to politics and social justice. Millennial Evangelicals may be asking new questions but their answers feel monotonously familiar.

Just be clear, I want to be sure that I understood as not being for or against any of the items at the end of the post based on what Millennials think about them.

As the final G.I. Generation cohort members were being born (the same archetype as the Millennials) John D. Rockefeller, Jr., joined with Henry Emerson Fosdick to found the Riverside Church in NYC, a multipurpose megachurch with expansive facilities and programs. From the 1930s into the 1950s, this was the “Willow Creek” for the Mainline denominations. Everyone wanted to be Riverside. Rockefeller made massive donations to seminaries and churches across the nation with the caveat that they run their institutions like his corporations, with a CEO and board of directors. Especially after WWII there was an expansion of these megachurches all funded and built by the ambitious “bigger is better” G.I. generation. Unlike the generations before them, they saw how resources could mobilize into these ecclesiastical corporations for building the Kingdom God.

Boomers came along and decided that these institutions were to formulaic, cold, and regimented. So they created their own megachurch versions that emphasized enthusiasm, expression, and embrace of all the latest business techniques. Unlike the generations before them they could see that the need for people to emotionally engaged in worship and the need for a plethora of self-help therapeutic programs for the community.

Now the Millennials come along, and they see things no generation before has seen and so now we are going to … Getting my picture? All I’m saying is proceed with extreme caution when trying to go from cultural context to mission.

That said, I should disclose that I’ve served on the GAC (the mission arm at the national level) for the last four years. I’ve been a leading advocate of decentralized collaborative mission with the denominational structures existing in support of Presbyterians and their congregations. There is a major shift underway toward less top down “flat world” functioning (not there yet). It remains to be see what happens elsewhere in the denominational hierarchy but I’m hopeful.

Similar to what Neal and Rhett said- it comes down to individual interpretation. Most importantly, the freedom to look objectively at Scripture. And the freedom to form individual beliefs from by studying scripture. The spiritual hunger is satisfied in the process rather than the conclusion. Because, understanding will inevitably change throughout one’s life. The church would do well to encourage this journey.

Wow! I didn’t even see your post. But we are on the same page. I just rambled longer than you, and you got to the point.

The question of validity is so important. What does that mean? Because I think the Bible is infallible, but not innerant. So does that mean I don’t take the Bible as being valid. I would think not.

So great question. Where people talk about validity, I think of it as interpretation.

We all interpret…we all have a hermeneutical lens through which we interpret. We like to think we approach the text purely and on it’s own terms…but that is just not true.

rhett

You ask, “What does each group think about the validity of Scripture as a guide to action, thinking, relationships and world view.”

I think these groups think the Bible is valid…if that’s what you are asking.

Whether they are Boomer, Millenial, GenX’er, etc….

I don’t think the question is so much validity, as much as it is a question of interpretation.

We all have to remember that we approach Scripture with a biased lens….none of us approach it in a pure, unadulterated way.

I often hear people say…”Just give me the Bible.” Or “I just read the Bible.” As if others aren’t reading it.

The question is interpretation. Someone from a different generation or cultural mileu may have different interpretations of a text than someone else.

So a Boomer in this case may approach a text differently than a Millenial because of the environment in which they were raised. it’s the same text, but we all have a lens that shapes our interpretation. The Millenials in many cases are asking new questions about economics, social justice and leadership that the Boomers weren’t asking.

So I think, just because we talk about cultural/generational trends, doesn’t mean these people discount the Bible…sure some do. But all of us approach the text through a lens…and that’s the most important thing I want us to keep in mind.

One thing I try to remind us, is that most of us American Christians have approached the text through a White, Protestant Work Ethic, Consumerist, Capitalist, Republican lens….we are just so ingrained we don’t know it. So if people start asking questions about the text, we think they are being too cultural, without realizing all along just how culturally embedded we are.

And obviously, different seminaries, different churches, have different views of Scritpure. Fuller Seminary says the Bible is infallible, but not innerant. Which is the view I hold. So if someone says the Bible is innerant and infallible, they will automatically think the other doesn’t take the Bible seriously….which is unfortunate, because that is not true.

Anyways…just some thoughts.

rhett