It's a generational thing....

It’s a generational thing.

The younger generation in our family either are part of the university sports team or a high school team that was in medal completion at the provincial level. Their grandparent, on the other hand, had their first experience of a gym in their 77th year. However, ALL three of them have the Bronze Cross from the Lifesaving Society!

As I thought about this, this past week, I began to see that while some interests have remain common in both these generations, there is also a new reality for the Millennials. After all, for example, gyms didn’t even exist in their grandparent’s time, except maybe as part of a school setting. Now it is an everyday occurrence for them to go to the gym after or before school or work several times a week.

As I think of all the other changes that I have experienced in the last 70 years, it is mind-boggling. There have been so many medical advances; the discovery of DNA, of new drugs, the use of ultrasound and magnetic resonance, the cardiac pacemaker, heart and transplant surgery that have all radically influenced how we live and understanding our physical being. From 1950 when the first TV remote was manufactured to today, there has been massive changes in how we live with technology: from computers that once took up a whole room to today's wireless computers that keep getting smaller & faster, with larger and larger storage capabilities. The Millennials have grown up in a world that always had microwaves, digital music, computer games, and cell phones. These are the realities of their world.

While there are still things that link them to the world of 50 years ago, like the Bronze Cross, in the story I started with, so much of their reality just had not even been thought of 50 years ago. Now it is not only THEIR reality, it is also mine [and yours as well].

So why then does the church cling to their reality of 60 years, or even longer ago? Would you go to a doctor who practised medicine using only the tools available 50 years ago? Live in a house with only a dial telephone, no microwave, and no remote for the TV, if in fact you actually had a TV? What about probably not having chequing account or a credit card, using only cash? Would you get upset if your children and grandchildren thought such a life was just a tiny bit weird and archaic? And then we wonder why they are saying away from the church in droves!!!

Honestly I don’t see any way of changing that reality until the church is ready to change their reality to reflect the new discoveries in the fields of science and biblical scholarship of the last 200 years, and becomes a place where the Millennials and others can feel comfortable with their knowledge of the world in the 21st century.

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