Depression/GI	Silent	Boomers	Gen X'ers	Gen Y (Bridgers)	Millennium

14%	11%	29%	17%	28%	to be determined
up to 1927	1927-45	1946-64	1965-76	1977-94	1995-
36 million	28 million	74 million	80 million	72 million	TBD
"We will prevail"	"I will cope"	"I will be satisfied"	"We will be authenic & in relationship with someone"	"It's a hard world"	TBD
They set up today's society & church	Generous	Idealistic in 60's	Predominatly single, but may be coupled	children of divorce
Conformist	They can't Decide clearly	Became $ oriented in 70's	computer, challenge	integrated into the internet
Loyalty	Hard to lead	Impatient	Very serious parents	grew up with 50+ TV channels
Duty important	Conformist	View marriage as a contract for an exchange of goods & services	Streetwise, pragmatic, suspicious and some are violent	fully unchurched
Beginning significantly to die off	Parents were affected by the depression	First divorce generation	Like rock and roll but don't understand rap or hip hop	amoral-have no values
		Some are starting to come back to church as they start to feel/see their mortality	Boomers charm eludes them	Education oriented
		Now gaining control of the church
GI & Silent 65% Christian		35% Christian	15% Christian	4% Christian
		Watch network TV	Watch alternative TV channels and MTV is where they go during commercials

Understanding Generational Diversity, by Tex Sample

Speaking the language, understanding the behaviors, attitudes and concerns of EACH generation is absolutely necessary to set up and create a welcoming church.

Relationship thinking
Oral (40 to 50% of a church)
Literate
Electronic
Image
Talk in patterns
Sound as a BEAT
5/12/65 , the beat changed. When you change the beat in a culture you change the way they experience the body
visualization
practice in front of a screen , multi medium, multi sensory!!! Without reaching the screen people Episcopalians will drop to 500,000 (visual has passed sound.)
The increasing importance of the visual
There is a shift from the printed word to the world of images
Print priority of objective
Image priority of the subjective
Image encourages constant change of ideas
Easy listening – youth gone
Bach – homeless gone

Light the liturgy not the sanctuary

Software: Dazzle turns analog into digital, more than PowerPoint

Under 40 years, most powerful means of persuasion is multi-sensory

Technology in Worship Probably the most important piece of reaching Boomers and younger!!!

Being Church in a Strange and Changing World

by Charles N. Fulton III

Last year I was frequently asked to speak about the changing culture of our country and the changing context of ministry. I have made generalizations about generational groups. I have said that the under-fifty population carefully chooses membership, loyalty, and commitment. I have pointed out that the majority of Babyboomers that dropped out of church have stayed out. They did not expose their children to church, and now their children are having children. I have challenged the "they will come back" thinking of the church. Most haven't come back. And their children cannot come back, because they have never been there before. If they do come they will need infinitely more help and explanation than a polite usher handing them a service bulletin. Some may or may not know about Jesus. Some may or may not be aware of their own spirituality. Some may or may not know what drew them to the church for the first time or why we are inviting them.
Recently I heard friends tell of two experiences that take these abstractions home. A friend of mine visited her cousin's family. The cousin and her husband were beside themselves with joy over the birth of their first grandchild. My friend noticed a large portrait of the grandchild dressed in the family baptismal gown used for five generations. My friend asked her cousin where they went to church. Her cousin replied that they haven't gone to church since the children were little. Surprised, because the family had been Episcopalians for more generations than they had been using the gown, my friend asked where they had the baptism. Her cousin replied that they just took out the dress, put it on the grandchild and had her picture taken.
Why are we still thinking that they will be back to get the children "done"? The family in the story has discovered the sacramental equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bath water- throwing baptism out and keeping the gown and the baby.
It is easy to judge these people as shallow. It is more difficult to see them as prospective members of a faith community. How can the church reach such people? Obviously, "Where do you go to church?" doesn't produce the result we hope for. I suspect the more fertile ground is found around the new grandchild. "What do you hope for this child?" "What are your worst fears for this child?" It has long been true that one of the best ways to reach parents is to minister to their children. Maybe it is also true for grandparents and their grandchild.
What are we going to have to do to reconnect with the grandparents and to connect with the children and the grandchildren?
Tex Sample in his latest book, The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World, reminds us that worship "works with the soul music of the people gathered." The soul music of a people gathered is not merely tunes and lyrics the group prefers; it resonates deep within them. He says, "Soul music is as deep as muscle and bone, as intimate as feeling, and as close cognitively as the way we know the world around us. The word soul, then, is a good one because music of this kind is profoundly bound up with one's being." To ridicule or put down another's soul music is a huge mistake.
Another friend told me of a family she knows socially. The mother had told my friend before Christmas that Christmas was when she misses her father most. Her fondest memories are of her father at the piano, playing the traditional carols and the family gathered around and singing with energy and joy. Since her father's death her brother would play (he plays almost like their father).
This year, however, the brother came down with the flu and was not able to come over for the carol sing. In desperation the mother suggested that they might go to church for midnight services. Everyone agreed. The older son however was out with friends on Christmas Eve and was to join the family at the church. When he got to church (an Episcopal Church) his family was not there; they had gone to the Congregational Church. He was engaged by the lively singing of carols as he entered, so he decided to stay even though his family was not there. He said he sang heartily.
When it came time for communion, he asked the people next to him what to do. They thought he was putting them on; they said that he knew the hymns and sang so well, that surely he was a churchgoer. After insisting several times that he has never been to an Episcopal Church before and that he didn't know what to do, they explained how to receive communion. They told him if he was baptized he was welcomed to receive. He didn't know if he had been baptized, but decided to receive anyway. (When he got home he asked his mother and he isn't baptized.) He said he took the bread, but the cup looked like the flu waiting to happen and he declined. My friend asked him what he thought of the service and he said the carols were great but there was a lot of Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
This story demonstrates the power of "soul music" to engage the visitor. Note that Christmas carols were this family's soul music. It is a mistake to assume that all church music resonates as effectively with visitors. Soul music if often generational as generations are becoming culturally distinct. Also, unchurched people living in an increasingly post/pre-Christian culture do not necessarily know what Jesus has to do with them.
What this story warns us is that we need to be prepared to answer the questions of a truly unchurched person who may be sitting next to us at the Eucharist. We no longer can assume that the visitors know what Christianity is about. There are generations out there that have not heard the gospel and dislike typical church music. God has been part of their lives. It is up to us to find out where and how.
The wacky therapist (played by Tracey Ullman) on the TV sitcom Ally McBeal will have nothing to do with a patient until the patient has revealed his/her song. The song must be upbeat, moving, danceable, in other words, soul music. From the therapist's view point all conversation is wasted until she knows "your song."
Tex Sample often calls to mind the Gospel of John, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Tex translates the Greek for dwelt as literally "pitched tent" with us. He does not imply that the church should pitch tent with every practice in a culture, as some are clearly in violation of the faith. But he also reminds us that, "the church is not captive to a range of cultural practices from one culture that it imposes in a colonial fashion on another culture because the church has come to identify those as essential to the faith, when they are basically an expression of pitching tent in another and quite different culture."
Sample continues, "Incarnation does not mean that God joins the human story and becomes part of it. Rather Incarnation is disclosure that the world is part of God's story. The task is not, then, how we can get God into the picture.
It is rather how we understand our picture in terms of God's greater picture." Our ministries might be described as hearing and knowing the Word Jesus, becoming the Word Jesus' flesh in the world, dwelling and pitching tent with those who haven't heard the Word. For those who don't know the Word Jesus, the order is reversed, being dwelt with, pitched tent with by those who in their flesh embody the ways of Jesus, and finally discovering that the Word Jesus is the source.