Connecting Another Generation
My brand of Christian witness, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is living through an identity crisis that I call our third reformation. This struggle to find an identity has permeated every manifestation of our denomination: local, regional, and general. This reformation time is sapping our ability to collaborate, to learn from our history, to rekindle the spirit of our founders, and fund connections. As budgets have dwindled we have ceased to invest in children and youth and as such are handing GenX and Millennials congregational life and an institution void of a spirit of stewardship and collaboration. Our powerless hierarchy is doing its best to survive and offer a word of hope, but similar to congregations it is doing its best to transform rather than reform. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) are stronger and a relevant voice of gospel when we work together in programmatic mission and education. When we understand evangelism through the lens of education and mission then our denomination creates educated, grounded leaders for our society as well as our congregations. I advocate for children, youth, and the adults that work and serve this constituency.
I saw this essay, “Gen X, Gadgets, and God”, on Religion Dispatches. It provides a way of thinking about how we are being Church and how we might connect to the next generations. It has lessons for every manifestation of our denomination and all of Christendom. Here is the last paragraph of the essay. Click the title to read more.
Gen X, Gadgets, and God
by Elizabeth Drescher | October 8, 2010Here we return to Schwadel’s research on the durability of religious affiliation among Gen-Xers and the Pew findings on the religious interests of Millennials. Americans, it seems, are not losing religion, but rebuilding it. For those who still anchor the meeting of their spiritual needs to clergy, this perhaps results in a frustrating demand for “concierge ministers,” as G. Jeffrey MacDonald recently complained in an op-ed on clergy burnout. But I suspect that at least some clergy burnout today stems from efforts to retain a kind of spiritual authority in the daily lives of believers that many believers have themselves claimed through spiritual entrepreneurialism in collaboration with others across globally distributed communities of affiliation. Given this, the quest for institutional religious relevance seems to lie in developing ways—technologically-based and otherwise—of participating with believers and seekers in the redistribution of spiritual authority and associated reinstitutionalizing of religious practice rather than in integrating digital gimmicks into lingering religious structures. In the end, it may be that the only way to save the religious traditions many people still hold dear is to actively participate in giving them away.