Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Introduction

PART 1 – MAKING THE GAP: YOUTH CULTURE AND CONSUMPTION
1. In the beginning: Empire ideals and adolescence
2. The cost of cool: the impact of consumerism
3. Swapping loyalties: the rise of peer influence and youth management

PART 2 – MIND THE GAP: GENERATIONAL TENSIONS AND THE CHURCH
4. Technology and the transfer of power
5. ‘Mummy, what’s an adult?’
6. Family life and discipling young people
7. Church and the generation gap: a growing conflict and challenges to discipleship

PART 3 – MEND THE GAP: BEING GOD’S KINGDOM COMMUNITY
8. Generational tensions: can the gap be bridged?
9. A family affair
10. Mend the gap

INTRODUCTION

I would that there were no age between sixteen and three and twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.
(Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale)

We were all young once. We all have our tales of playful – or serious – rebellion against the restraints placed upon us by our elders. We all reminisce over the pop music loves of our era, insisting that ‘those were the days when music was music – not like today’. In turn Elvis, Bowie, Bono, Cobain or Eminem usurped the throne as ‘King of Pop’ and, in turn, became the thorn in the side of parents’ sensibilities.

In many ways the conflict between young and old seems to be a repetitive cycle: generations of parents will visit upon their offspring the battles they fought with their own parents – over the hemline of a skirt, front door lockdown time, favourable or unfavourable peer affiliations, TV, film and now internet censorship. As any parent knows, the list is endless.

But is it fair to envisage the gap between youth and adult cultures as a battle? And if so, is it true that such a fight has always existed, or has it only escalated into a full-scale ‘war’ within the space of the last century?

Many believe the latter. Yes, youth has always had a voice distinct from that of its elders, but events of the twentieth century led to that voice growing in presence, volume and stark contrast to the opinions expressed by the mainstream ‘norm’.

In our lifetime, we’ve witnessed the birth of a new phenomenon in terms of world history – the emergence of youth culture.

It’s a collective story whose narrative is defined by its very opposition to adult culture.

The rise and rise of youth culture through the latter half of the twentieth century led to an inevitable distancing between generations – the proverbial generation gap. It has led to splits in families. It has often divided whole nations in opposing political stances and differing definitions of what constitutes the moral consensus – as the ‘radical’ 1960s demonstrated.

The gap between generations is nowhere better illustrated than within the church. This is mainly because the church as a family is dedicated to keeping that family whole: our mission statement is to unite people across divisions of race, opinion, sex and age.

This is, to an extent, at variance with the current climate. A consumer-based society is content to let people create their own self-serving communities that allow individuals as much freedom as possible – the ‘atomization’ of society. It has little objection to social groupings that are based around peers or interest groups rather than families – a trend that’s currently growing and one that, at least in part, was spawned by the birth of youth culture.

The church, however, has a commitment to ‘family values’ and to keeping a sense of unity amongst its diverse members. So it feels keenly the departure of so many young people from its midst. Recent figures show that around 1,000 young people currently leave the church every week.

Such a ‘divorce’ only serves to highlight the generational differences between sectors of the church. There have been a number of church splits, or perhaps a better expression is church evolutions, in response to the issue. Splits have often traditionally occurred over disputes about doctrine. These latest divides, however, have occurred as a result of churches no longer addressing the needs of burgeoning generations.

We’ve witnessed the development of alternative worship communities, emerging churches, youth churches and youth congregations, all relatively new forms of church that appeal to distinct generations.

Most churches are genuinely concerned about protecting the diversity of God’s family and that means including all ages at all costs. But the endless adverts for youth workers in Christian publications indicate that the church is extremely concerned with securing a future for itself – as well it should be. At the moment the church at large suffers from having an alarming deficit of young people. Over the course of the 1990s, some 500,000 children stopped going to church.

It may come as no surprise, then, that the church employs more youth workers than any other institution including the government. It’s also no surprise that because of the high expectations placed upon the role, many youth workers become disillusioned or the victims of burnout. The need to reach young people is so great that many youth leaders are often expected to be sowers, reapers and keepers.

We have to realize that the problems highlighted by generational differences are really evidence of teething troubles. The difficulties faced within church and society are the direct result of an acceleration in cultural change that no one in the church could have predicted or been prepared for.

The cultural landscape of Britain has obviously changed drastically over the last hundred years. Technological advance and the growth in affluence in the West have been the main drivers of this transformation – factors that we’ll explore later.

Some have dealt with these changes. Some have sought to ignore them. Those born into them have become used to the ground
moving beneath their feet and so simply adapt to each new phase in culture.

This is, of course, old news. But the church still has to grasp that it is seeking to marry together social groupings with widely diverse views and that to a large extent its attempts are failing.

BBC Radio 4 recently provided an excellent example of just how much society has changed. The programme focused on the culture
clashes experienced by individuals who had only recently taken up residency in the UK. A Ghanaian father of four remarked on the reluctance of Britons to bring up other people’s children. He was referring to the lack of a communal sense of parenting and cited an instance when he chided a group of young boys who were throwing stones at a building. Their response to his attempts at discipline was a barrage of insults.

This would not have happened in Ghana, he said. This would not have happened in Britain – forty or fifty years ago. The boys would have grown up honouring the requests of elders inside and outside the home, even if those requests were made by strangers. Old age alone would have commanded respect. Times have changed. The world of Western Europeans and the world of those within developing countries seem worlds apart, although, as globalization accelerates, those worlds are growing ever closer.

It’s a point that church historian Meic Pearse made in a lecture series at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC) entitled ‘Why the Rest Hates the West’. One of the reasons why non-Western countries take issue with the West is the changing attitudes to the family. For non-Western societies, strong family units are seen as perhaps the essential ingredient of a ‘civilized’ country. Conversely, the breakdown of the family within the Western hemisphere is seen as the cost of becoming ‘civilized’. This perhaps says more about our adherence to capitalism and consumerism than it does about our understanding of what it means to be truly ‘civil’ to one another.

And you don’t need to have arrived in Britain from another country to experience culture shock. For many adults it occurs when they accidentally switch on to MTV or visit the church youth group.

If we’re going to seek to answer the question, ‘Can the schism between young and old ever be bridged?’ we will first have to examine more thoroughly the relevant cultural revolutions of the twentieth century. In the chapters ahead we’ll see what part they’ve played in creating the gap, whilst also looking at the implications for the church, before moving on to how the church should be and is responding. But first, one key to understanding the generation gap is to see just how radical the cultural changes of the twentieth century have been.

Stark change creates static
In the twelfth century the wise old sage Peter the Hermit remarked, ‘Youth has no regard for old age and the wisdom of the centuries is looked down upon both as stupid and foolishness.’ That verdict has echoed ad nauseam throughout the centuries.

It appears that the old have often looked down on the culture of young people with a certain amount of trepidation, if not outright disdain.

The problem is, though, that it’s not simply differences in generational cultures that can cause apoplexy: it’s the rate at which cultural change now takes place. It’s like a 1920s Model T Ford being outstripped by a Ferrari at the traffic lights – the Ford driver hasn’t the ability or desire to catch up with the Ferrari and is probably slightly outraged at any suggestion that he should want to travel at such a blistering pace.

There is resistance to change precisely because cultural shift has accelerated, creating too much of a distance between generations for the older generation to catch up. If we could have spread the technological advances of the latter twentieth century over a millennium, things might have been different. People generally find it easier to adapt to more gradual change.

Society moved so fast, however, and the difference between generations seemed so marked, that the older generation found the
change hard to comprehend or approve of. They were therefore reluctant to move with the times.

Stark change has created static – something unmoving and passive. Often, when we’re trying to implement change in the church, we come up against seemingly immovable forces that create ‘generational tension’.

It’s easy to understand why this became the case. Imagine having grown up in a Britain united in solidarity through the war, only to face the cultural upheaval of the late 1950s and 60s: the increasing immigration of ethnic minorities into the UK; the impact of TV, radio and film on family life; the subsequent creation of the film and rock’n’roll superstar thanks to global TV; the rapid growth in drug culture thanks to Swiss scientist Albert Hoffman’s accidental discovery of LSD; the end of national service in 1960 which ushered in a new sense of freedom for young men, who no longer had to fear a stint in the military; the initiation of the sexual revolution and the advance of feminism, largely thanks to the creation of the Pill.

These changes effectively placed a jemmy between the generations, prising them apart and creating distinct cultural identities. The difference between young people in the late 1950s and early 60s and preceding generations was as distinct as the contrast between black-and-white and colour TV, as the following quote from Paul McCartney demonstrates.

In response to the question, ‘Were you a hellraiser?’ McCartney replied, ‘In terms of girls? Not unlike any other young guy at the time. The Pill had just come in. That was a very handy thing. Suddenly women were prepared to sleep with a fellah with no great risk of pregnancy. Now we could all have some fun. Everyone started looking sharper, had a little bit of money in their pockets, there were clubs to go to, good music to listen to . . . it was like a paradise had been created for young people – a time when everything was switched on at once. There were all these possibilities opening up that our parents could only have dreamed about. Suddenly, our entire world was bright colours.’

In the light of such cultural revolutions, it’s not surprising that the maintenance of tradition and certain customs became requisite for an older generation in order to provide them with an anchor in the midst of such uncertainty. Is it any wonder, then, that older members of our churches may prove indignant when the church insists on changing with the times?

This cultural upheaval has often resulted in a conflict of expectation in churches – whether it’s over questions of mission to today’s generations or service style. But is aggravation between differing generations of Christians inevitable? We have to figure out whether this unique point in church history will result in a parting of the ways or a uniting across age barriers. While successive generations live next door to each other geographically, culturally they seem to be in two very different worlds. The church is in a special position in that it’s one of the few sections of society that’s still actively trying to bring the two worlds together. Unfortunately this often happens in the form of a collision rather than the creation of a harmonious whole.

It’s the new wine for new wineskins dilemma, if you like. Do we need to accept that in many places the church simply needs to rip it up and start again, to prune savagely in order to create new growth? Are the generations born into the post-World War II communications explosion more likely to be able to adapt to quick changes in culture? And if so, will they be the ones to take the church forward in an everchanging world, while the generations who are used to slower cultural change will inevitably resist the quick-change culture and eventually peter out?

We can see where this is happening in Britain. The church is experiencing segregation: we do have instances where young people are being drained from existing churches into youth churches or youth congregations. And many pastors or youth workers can testify to the strain of seeking to forge change in churches where change is often simply not wanted.

The conflict between the expectations of young and old for church services is just one example of this. When young people ‘do’ church, it turns out very different from adult church. The organ is replaced with DJ equipment, the lighting becomes less Methodist and more Ministry of Sound, and so on. Many churches often allow such services to take place only once a month. This provides a separate space for young people rather than seeking to blend in elements they’ll appreciate in every Sunday service. As such, it’s a fairly ineffectual placebo aimed at young people. This is where the generation gap becomes evident, and this book is dedicated to looking at how deep the problem is in the church and gauging whether our efforts so far have been successful, simply adequate, or plain misguided.

In order to do this, we’ll have to map out our territory. The first chapter of the book deals with a bit of history – tracing social changes at the beginning of the twentieth century that had huge consequences for the creation of youth culture.

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 concentrate on factors that added to the growth of youth culture and help to sustain it. We’ll be dealing with consumerism and globalization, the rise of peer pressure and the huge role that information and communications technology has played in aiding the divide between young and old.

Chapter 5 aims to outline a serious by-product of twentieth- and twenty-first-century life: the blurring of boundaries between childhood and adulthood and how this impacts the way we do youth work.

In response, chapter 6 takes a look at how the Bible views the differing roles of adults and children and how we can take its cue when it comes to passing on faith.

Chapters 7 and 8 deal with the church’s response to the generation gap and suggest that the church needs to reassess seriously its mission to young people and how we meet, worship and teach as God’s kingdom on earth.

Chapter 9 sets out some ways forward, suggesting possible solutions to bridging the gap, detailing examples of pioneers in this area and outlining important lessons that the church in today’s world needs to take on board.

In conclusion, chapter 10 proposes an answer to the question at hand: can intergenerational church succeed?

Throughout I’ll reflect on how today’s culture has shaped the way we reach and teach young people, and how the church needs

to take the reins back and lead culture in the way we treat our young people.

It’s at this point, as a member of Generation X (roughly those born between 1965 and 1980) who understands the wants of that particular cultural ‘brand’, that I hesitantly suggest that this book is more of a dialogue than a series of answers. I hesitate on two accounts. First, because many people would simply prefer a good old ‘how to make your church an intergenerational success’ and they might stop reading now (perhaps another example of ‘generational tension’). Second, because it obviously isn’t simply a dialogue. I hope it’s something of a wake-up call. I hope it’s incisive enough for churches all over Britain to make serious changes to the way they practise. And I hope it’s not overambitious and too far reaching in the way it attempts to accomplish this.

So read on. At the end you may want to fire your youth worker or hire four more. You may decide to shift your church into a neo-hippie eco-friendly commune, or you may simply want to add more smells and a few new bells. You may want to chuck out your TV and your PC, or you may want to run workshops for eight-year-olds on debugging the latest version of Windows. But what I really hope you take away from this book is that Christ’s ability to inspire a whole big bad beautiful mix of people to follow him, regardless of their age, has not diminished, but burns more brightly and more strongly than it did 2,000 years ago.