Ttttalkin bout the Generations How Your Congregation Can Love and Entice People of All Ages New Cast

1
T-t-t-talkin bout the GenerationsHow Your
Congregation Can Love and Entice People of All
Ages New Castle Presbytery, January 18-19, 2008

• Session 1 Generations Theory
• to become acquainted with Generations Theory
• to consider our personal place in history
• to learn something about each living generation,
  its instincts and its gifts
• to look at the church as an amalgam of
  generations
• to gather resources for further learning

The Rev. Karl Travis Pastor, First Presbyterian
Church, Fort Worth, TX
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Getting to Know You

• What shaped your generation?
• 1901-1924 1925-1942
• 1943-1960 1961-1981
• 1982 - 2002

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A Generational Tale
A forty something speaks of the coming generation
. The rising generation cannot spell... its
English is slipshod and commonplace.... Veteran
teachers are saying that never in their
experience were young people so thirstily avid of
pleasure as now... so selfish, and so hard! ...
Of your chosen pleasures, some are obviously
corroding to the taste to be frank, they are
vulgarizing.... the bulk of the programme is
almost inevitably drivel, common, stupid, or
inane.
The Atlantic Monthly, December 1992, pp 67-89.
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A Generational Tale
A twenty-something responds We have retained
from childhood the propensity to see through
things, and to tell the truth with startling
frankness.... It is true that we do not fuss and
fume about our souls, or tend our characters like
a hot-house plant.... We cannot be blamed for
acquiring a suspicion of ideals.... We are more
than half confident that the elder generation
does not itself really believe all the
conventional ideals which it seeks to force upon
us.... You have been trying so long to reform the
world by making men "good," and with such little
success, that we may be pardoned if we turn our
attention to the machinery of society, and give
up for a time the attempt to make the operators
of that machinery strictly moral. We are
disgusted with sentimentality.
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Generations Theory

• 4 types of generations
• Civic a generation of cooperative leaders, team
  players, and institution builders. Work hard at
  developing collective unity and purpose.
• Adaptive a generation of cooperative followers.
  Team players, but not leaders by nature. They
  maintain and support the institutions their
  parents have built.
• Idealist generation begins as cooperative, but
  later rebels, seeking to change institutions.
• Reactive an uncooperative generation which
  values individuality over collective unity.
  Institutions built by, or rebelled against, by
  prior generations, are unimportant to them. They
  do not join or interact with these institutions.

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Generations Theory

• 4 types of generations
• Civic
• Adaptive
• Idealist
• Reactive
• These types of generations have repeated in the
  same order, with one exception, through U.S.
  history.
• We develop natural ease with those who experience
  the same formative events at similar
  developmental stages.
• In understanding the past, we anticipate the
  future.
• Biblically, history is a line, and a circle -- a
  spiral.

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The Living Generations

• Generation Birth Years Generation Type
• GI Generation 1901-1924 Civic
• Silent Generation 1925-1942 Adaptive
• Boomer Generation 1943-1960 Idealist
• Thirteener (Xer) Generation 1961-1981 Reactive
• Millennial Generation 1982-2002 Civic

Neil Howe and Bill Strauss, Generations The
History of Americas Future, 1584 to 2069.
Quill New York, 1991.
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A Review of the Living Generations(see handouts)