Gen Y Conversation Skills
In response to surveys showing a lack of conversational skills stemming from an over-reliance on video games, text messaging and TiVo, a number of American mainline churches have begun to offer classes in fellowship and social conversation with Generation Y’ers.
“We feel this is meeting a real need in our congregations,” said Jerod P.Ainsworth, youth director at Loma Linda Presbyterian Church (LLPC), a leader in what some observers have called the “small-talk education movement.”
“This is causing a real rift in congregations that is breaking fellowship between the generations,” Ainsworth said.
The classes offered at LLPC include “Me and My Friends Alone: Clique Talk in the Foyer,” “Endless Conversations about One’s Children,” “Endless Conversations About One’s Grandchildren,” and “Biblical-Seeming Gossip.”
“These young people seem so immersed in their own world, they just cannot seem to share in this centuries-old tradition,” said Forbes McGintley, head of a commission designated by mainline churches to study the problem.
Suggestions offered by the authors break the problem into four distinct areas of instruction for the parents of Gen Y’ers:
1. How to talk about one’s children and family (and others’ families exactly like it) to the exclusion of all other topics.
2. How to network and bring up one’s job and/or profession in subtle yet profitable ways.
3. Exclusive vacation spots, including activities like skiing, para-sailing,kayaking, bicycling, and (of course) golf.
4. Talk about God-given possessions like cars, jet skis, pools and spas and “most importantly, improvements on the house.”
Howard Bowman, Wittenburg Door, January 30, 2008
Read the full article, How to De-Program a Gen Yer, at Wittenburg Door.
[SATIRE WARNING]
