I rarely just post other people’s articles here – there’s plenty of that elsewhere. But in our continuing conversation about generational dynamics, and particularly the recent talks we’ve been having about the forgotten GenXers, I want to highlight this article from Salon, entitled “Generation X gets really old: How Do Slackers Have a Midlife Crisis?” …
Pardon the interruption into what is obviously a really important conversation between Boomers and Millennials. Obvious, because in the last couple of weeks, there has been a flood of blog posts and articles about how Boomers need to rethink church to capture Millennials. And yes, it’s important; every time a new generation of young adults …
I’ve been reading with interest a couple of the recent Berry Street Lectures – Paul Razor’s from 2009, and Fred Muir’s from 2012. They both explore what the future of Unitarian Universalism can be – from finding ways to embrace multiculturalism to shedding the negative impacts individualism and a polity founded in the dominant European-American …
Moments after two bombs went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon yesterday, my Twitter and Facebook feeds were filled with prayers and information (and, sadly, misinformation). But a few moments after that, my feed began to fill up with the comforting words and image of Fred Rogers – in particular, this one: …
Among the more striking characteristics of generational theory is the particular personalities of the four generational types; as Strauss &Howe explain, the cycle of historical events, parenting styles, and cultural shifts lead to a cycle of general generational traits. Of course, each person is different, and each specific generation is different, but there are patterns …
Join me (with my lovely colleague Naomi King) on Wednesday, August 24 at 8pm EDT for a tweetchat on Generations in the Church – Experifailing! Use the hashtag #genchurch to follow. I recommending using TweetChat.com to isolate and better follow the chat. IMPORTANT: When you are chatting, please do BOTH of the following: Use #genchurch …
Join me (with my lovely colleague Naomi King) on Wednesday, August 10 at 8pm EDT for a tweetchat on Generations in the Church! Use the hashtag #genchurch to follow. I recommending using TweetChat.com to isolate and better follow the chat. IMPORTANT: When you are chatting, please do BOTH of the following: Use #genchurch in your …
Just about everyone has a theory about leadership style – they’re tied to personality types, astrological types, temperaments, right- or left-brain types, gender, and more. So it seems kind of redundant to offer more theories about leadership, and yet there seems to be something to the broad strokes of generational types that helps us understand, …
One of the areas congregations struggle with most is stewardship. If your church is anything like mine, it’s like pulling teeth to even find people to head the stewardship campaign, no less getting people to give in a way that’s meaningful. I can’t deny sometimes wishing that in our UU congregations, we had a culture …
In our last installment, I gave you a brief overview of the generational types – Adaptives, Idealists, Nomads, and Civics. So far, so good… at least we have a general sense of who we’re talking about here. But who are these people when it comes to our congegations? In today’s exciting episode, I want to …
You may be looking around your congregation wondering “who are these people, and why can’t I lead them?” Every generation has its own style, flair, needs, and triggers. Churches, more than most other places, are significantly multigenerational, which means we’re often trying to serve as many as five different generations with one set of programs, …
So many things I wonder… I wonder about Union Theological – here’s a link to the tour video; it’s in the first few seconds that I saw in living color the sanctuary I have imagined in decades of dreams and meditations (although on second look, I see this one is enclosed with glass whereas my …