Quidditch anyone?: postmodernity and ministry with the Millennial Generation

Highlights

• A changing culture
• Positioning generations
• Millennials and worship
• Millennials and Ministry
• Postmodern ministry resources

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Each team has a keeper, to guard the goals, three chasers for scoring, two beaters to hit the bludgers, and one seeker to catch the golden snitch. Each player is to provide his or her own broomstick on which to ride, and have robes of the team color. One Referee, (also on a broomstick) should be present for each match… There are seven hundred different kinds of fouls in Quidditch… When a referee calls a foul, a penalty shot is awarded to the fouled team. A chaser, starting at a short distance from the goal, throws the quaffle towards the goal. The opposing team's keeper is the only player allowed to block the shot. The fouled team then gets possession of the quaffle. (Some of the rules of Quidditch, from the world of Harry Potter).

"Those of us intent on securing an adaptive strategy for the coming millennium need look no further than our own children for reassuring answers to the myriad of uncertainties associated with the collapse of the culture we have grown to know and love. Our kids may be younger than us, but they are also newer. They are the latest model of human being, and are equipped with a whole lot of new features. Looking at the world of children is not looking backwards at our own pasts—it's looking ahead. They are our evolutionary future." (From Douglas Rushkoff's Playing the Future: How Kids' Culture Can Teach Us to Thrive in an Age of Chaos)

A changing culture: modernity into postmodernity

Somewhere in the 1960's, a massive sea of change in our cultural landscape began to emerge. Management theorist Peter Drucker aptly recognized the shift. "Every few hundred years in Western history," he writes, "There occurs a sharp transformation… within a few short decades, society rearranges itself--its worldview; its basic values; its social and political structure; its arts; its key institutions… Fifty years later, there is a new world and the people born then cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born. We are currently living through just such a transformation." (Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society, New York, Harper's Business, 1993, pg 1).

The cultural shift, which gained momentum into the 90’s, is only now coming to full expression. Those born after 1940 experienced the first winds of the coming change. Those born after 1960 braved the waves of change and are presently building the first huts on the beach of the future, but it will be those born after 1980 who will be the first to move inland and construct a more lasting homestead in the new world.

The sea-changing shift from modernity into postmodernity (which has flipped the gyroscope of our culture) is characterized in a nutshell by:

• the loss of trust in science and progress
• the loss of meta-narrative (or belief in a “universal story”)
• the individuation of truth
• the rise of pluralism and globalization
• the domestication of technology
• the marginalization or transformation of mega-structures and institutions
• the democratization of knowledge and power
• the widening and layering of time

The different strategies used by each generation to navigate their particular phase of the cultural shift also mirror their varied approaches to life (and therefore faith and ministry) within the new world. In the new cultural landscape, ministry with various generations can be aided by acquiring a basic familiarity with the differing compasses used by each cohort to find its way.

Positioning the generations

The Boomers
Born between 1943 and 1960, the "boom" generation reacted to the smell of change in the air by headily rejecting many "former things," and "considering not” the things of old. 60's Boomer "counter-culture" with its mega concepts of  "universal peace" and "free love," also birthed deep suspicion of authority, appreciation for individual expression, love for experimentation, and preference for novelty. Past their cultural peak, and approaching the crest of their leadership arch, Boomers are navigating the new age with their native idealism in hand.

The Survivors
The winds of change that excited the Boomers became the tidal waves that smacked the Xers. Born postmodern between 1961 and 1981, Xers were shaped by the "post-revolution" fall-out of the 70's and early 80's. Seriously wounded by rampant divorce, child abuse, recession, crime and societal turmoil, Xers often experienced “latchkey” childhoods while parents or older siblings pursued social experiments or rising new careers. Independent, street-wise and pragmatic Xers, will continue their emergence as the first native leaders of the postmodern age.

The Millennials
Unlike Survivors who grew up in the wake of the Boomer revolution, Millennials (born 1982-2002) are being raised "post-revolution," and in a culture that once again is embracing and protective of childhood. The "No children allowed" 70's, gave way to the "Baby on Board" 80's. Although they will rely upon the Survivors to secure the beachhead of the new era, it will be the Millennials who will become the first true homesteaders of the new world.

"Back to the Future" Millennials and worship

Theologian Robert Webber writes that "what is happening in the religion of teenagers is nothing short of astounding. They are not interested in the Boomer approach. Instead, they want to return to a more stable time, a period of tradition. Not the tradition of the fifties, but of a much earlier time, the tradition of very old times." (Robert Webber, "How Will Millennials Worship," in Reformed Worship, Number 59, page 3)