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Generations in Inherited Blended and Post-Traditional Congregations

Congregations are the central focus of Jackson Carroll and Wade Roof Clark in their book, Bridging Divided Worlds

Bridging Divided WorldsAs they studied twenty congregations and two campus ministries in California and North Carolina. The samples included Jewish, Catholic, mainline Protestant and evangelical Protestant congregations and included predominantly African American, Caucasian, Korean and Latino congregations. In their book they profile nine congregations.

Carroll and Roof divide their nine congregations into three models:

  1. inherited model – valuing tradition over contemporary engagement.
  2. blended approach to generational diversity.
  3. post-traditional congregations focusing on a specific generation.

This typology is based to some extent on the analysis of E. Brooks Holifield in the book, “American Congregations Vol. 2“. Carroll and Roof add a category to his description of four phases in the historic development of the American congregation as an institution:

  1. Comprehensive (one congregation per town)
  2. Devotional (a variety of congregational styles with competition between them)
  3. Social (end of 19th century, programs providing a life centre)
  4. Participatory (a wide range of programs for the seven day a week church)
  5. Post-traditional/New Paradigm (added by the authors – building on the participatory model but valuing contemporary relevance rather than traditional faithfulness.

What I find most helpful in “Bridging Divided Worlds” is not so much the description of each of the three models. I recognise the dynamics well enough. I find more helpful the SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) for each model.

Inherited Model Congregations – We’ve Always Done It This Way

These congregations focus on maintaining the tradition they stand in. Newcomers are expected to appreciate and invest in the forms of worship, buildings or institutions that are valued by these congregations. Attempts to cater for emerging generations, if they are attempted, tend to be stalled in the planning process or are only partially implemented.

We’re given a reality check for people in the inherited tradition congregations. Yes there’s a stability and security. Key gate keepers attempt to pass the baton on to members of emerging generations who are interested in running the race in similar ways. Smaller and smaller proportions of emerging generations find it possible to belong in this kind of situation.

A Uniting Church in Australia example of this approach near where I live would be Burleigh Uniting Church, Gold Coast.

Blended Congregations: Seeking the Best of Three Worlds

This approach values inherited traditions of faith but seriously engages with contemporary culture. As the authors write, ‘the result is a negotiated and often fragile normative order’. A wide variety of people are able to engage with the gospel, learning from one another and enriching each other’s experience and expression of faith. However this model is marked by continuous tensions and inevitable conflict.

Factors for success:

  1. A substantial percentage of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers in the membership.
  2. Focused commitment by congregation to generational diversity, even at the cost of losing traditionalists
  3. Backing from the denomination
  4. Young in congregational age – ‘recently planted’
  5. Large size. Multiple programs can be implemented while leaving intact the programs preferred by pre-boomer members.

A Uniting Church in Australia example of this approach near where I live would be Robina Surfers Paradise Uniting Church, Gold Coast.

Generation-Specific Congregations – Beyond Tradition

This approach begins with the concept of ‘target audience’ – designing programs and practices around the cultural characteristics and needs of a particular generation.

The authors address the question, “Isn’t the inherited church designed for the needs of a specific generation, the Pre-Boomers?” They point out that the traditional church is not developed by its leaders with the needs of pre-boomer generations in mind. Instead, these older single generation churches work on the assumption that they’re doing things the way they’ve always been done.

The Generation-Specific congregation tends to provide a model of church that is fresh, uninecumbered by traditional approaches to music, architecture, dress styles and expressiveness in worship. They’re willing to ‘dance with the culture’. There’s a high level of innovation. There’s a strong attempt to engage with a sensory culture – with a variety of multi-sensory approaches to learning and worship.

The generationally specific church may appear to be less fragile (in terms of intergenerational conflict) but it has its challenges. One frustration is the high level of curious onlookers – people coming to experience the novel version of church without any commitment to staying or leading.

Then there’s the challenge that comes as people age or move into a different life stage. Do they continue to hold the reins or are they able to seed the development of a new form of ‘contemporary church’? I’m reminded of a cartoon that appeared in Leadership Magazine in which a bunch of octegenarians gather around their leader who proclaims that their church was formed for the needs of baby boomers – and it will continue to major on baby boomers, even if it is 2025.

There’s a risk in this setting that younger members of the congregation will miss interaction with pre-boomer members. My experience is that a generationally-specific congregation will still attract older members who have an interest in innovation.

A Uniting Church in Australia example of this approach near where I live would be Pacific Parks Uniting, Gold Coast.

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Pluralism Individualism and Post Traditionalism

In chapter two of their book, “Bridging Divided Worlds“, Jackson Carroll and Wade Clark Roof explore changes in spirituality that have happened in response to unsettled times.

Robert Wuthnow, After HeavenDrawing heavily on work by Robert Wuthnow in his book, “After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s“, the authors suggest that we have moved from a preference for stability to a preference for exploration.

Spirituality in stable times (read before World War II) was cultivated through habitual practice within the familiar world of one’s particular tradition. In unstable times (read since World War II) seekers explore new vistas and negotiate among alternative systems of belief & practice.

Carroll and Roof unpack what this might mean in the religious scapes of the USA. They describe the end of the hegemony of white Anglo-Saxon male protestant assumptions. Judaism, Catholicism, Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism have taken their place alongside ‘mainstream’ Protestantism. I’ve seen this time and time again in Australia and New Zealand. What once was ‘mainline’ is now ‘sideline’ as independent or more recent Pentecostal movements draw the bulk of emerging generations.

The authors go on, though, to examine the impact of liberalised immigration on pluralism in the USA. The arrival of people from the East (and I’m not talking about East Coast!) has led to a greater awareness of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and many other religious movements. Individuals now have the capacity to mix and match – drawing from the wisdom of each movement as they see fit.

More and more, emerging generations are valuing dialogue, respect of the ‘other’, while retaining the capacity to positively assert one’s own point of view. As Carroll and Roof point out, this is more prevalent among people with higher education.

At this point the authors call on the wisdom of Peter Berger, a writer on religious psychology and sociology. Berger points out that the rise of pluralism is associated with the privatisation of religion in which the centre of focus moves to the inner world. Carroll and Roof describe individualistic & humanistic orientations clashing with theistic interpretations of life.

Mainline to the future, Jackson CarrollThe third section of this chapter focuses on the process of detraditionalization. This is a topic covered in more detail in Jackson Carroll’s book, “Mainline to the Future: Congregations for the 21st Century“. The authors point out that tradition has not been discarded. It is merely treated in a different way. In the search for meaning, emerging generations are more likely to sift through a number of traditions, holding them up for scrutiny in the light of science, contemporary thinking and popular culture. I would add here scrutiny of individual and shared experience.

A common thread coming through in the authors’ research is the tension faced in the development of ‘contemporary worship styles’. What is developed today may become old hat within ten years. The authors use the word ‘arbitrary’ to describe the unpredictable way in which Biblical texts are favoured or ignored, and the voices of tradition are respected or shunned. That’s a valid point. At times leaders can lurch from trend to trend without any sense of theological reflection or consistency. But it could also be the reflection of outsiders trying to understand the rhythms of a strange movement.

Ann Swidler, Talk of LoveFinally, we come back to the paradigm of ‘dwellers and seekers’. Ann Sidler worked with Robert Bellah and others on “The Good Society“, 1992, and “Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life“, 1996. Here we’re able to benefit from her article in American Sociological Review outlining the concept of culture as a tool kit of symbols, stories, rituals & worldviews which people may use in varying configurations to solve different kinds of problems.

In settled times, the predominant culture is drawn on by people for constructing broad well-established strategies of action that become traditions that anchor their lives. Inconsistencies are tolerated.

In unsettled times, however, it becomes obvious that the inconsistencies reveal the inadequacy of previously accepted strategies of action. Entrepreneurial leaders draw again from the cultural toolkit to develop new meaning systems, cultural styles and strategies of action.

Which brings us the nub of “Bridging Divided Worlds”. The development of new cultural forms in unsettled times is emotionally charged. Conflict is inevitable as those who seek to create cultural forms clash with those who have no desire to leave behind the certainties of the previously accepted paradigm.

The Chambers Online Dictionary defines “hybrid” as

noun
1 an animal or plant produced by crossing two different species, varieties, races or breeds; a mongrel.
2 linguistics a word whose elements are taken from different languages, eg bicycle.
3 anything produced by combining elements from different sources.

adj
being produced by combining elements from different sources; mongrel. hybridism or hybridity noun .ETYMOLOGY: 17c: from Latin hibrida the offspring of a tame sow and wild boar.

So that’s what we’re seeing here with the development of pluralism, individualism and posttraditionalism. Each person developing within themselves, and with others, their own assortment of resources from the cultural tool kit.

Robert Wuthnow – After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s, 2000
Jackson Carroll – Mainline to the Future: Congregations for the 21st Century, 2000
Ann Sidler – Talk of Love: How Culture Matters, 2003

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Generations as Cultural Waves

Bridging Divided WorldsWade Clark Roof and Jackson Carroll, in their book, “Bridging Divided Worlds”, bring us into the world of generational change with the image of ocean waves battering the shore. The image is one of both subtlety – where do you draw the line between waves – and clarity – one can see the effects of each wave.

The authors run with the idea that major events in society during an individual’s adoslescent and early adult years shape his or her outlook. Consciousness is formed in individuals and in groups.

The first chapter goes on to list the effects of major social events on the pre-Boomers (GI Generation and Silent Generation), Boomers, and Generation Xers. The authors appear to draw heavily on the categorisation provided by Strauss and Howe.

Roof and Carroll go on to explore the impact of generational change on the social meaning of age. A classic example is the development of the ‘youth’ phase in the second half of the twentieth century. This adolescent ‘liminal phase’ was seen as a time of freedom and expressiveness rather than conformity. Add to this the more recent trends of prolonged economic dependence and birth control pills which have made it possible to postpone committed relationships and marriage.

I found the section on religion and education fascinating. The authors reflect on the increased value of higher education in emerging generations – valued largely for economic reasons. Students in the post-World War II era have been exposed to a pluralism that challenges narrow understandings of the world. Carroll and Roof believe that religion has been more and more polarised between those with a higher education and those without: people who tend to make decisions about meaning and morality with the benefit of psychology and personal experience, and people who prefer to stick to recognised sources of revelation and authority. People who value the immanent and people who value the transcendent.

I believe that organised religion in the USA is more polarised than in Australia or New Zealand. But I’m still seeing the same tension being played out in email conversations over morality and Christian faith here down under. One colleague commented on the fact that the Uniting Church in Australia tends to attract a high proportion of people who value broad education. But what’s interesting in this book is that we are seeing a higher proportion of people who have engaged in tertiary study and are reluctant to subscribe to beliefs merely on the basis of authoritative tradition or writings. I personally think it is tragic to have to choose between the immanent and the transcendent.

Jackson and Carroll go on to unpack the impact of generational change on religion and family. They say that the move away from the traditional family structures have meant that religious values are not being consistently handed down. We have moved toward a much more individualist society in which children do not necessarily adopt the values of their parents. The values of their peers are more likely to be of influence.

One comment was telling. The level of religious participation is relatively low for singles, divorced and separated, and so-called nonfamily households. It doesn’t surprise me. So many of the activities and even beliefs of the church are based around the assumption that people belong to traditional family structures. I get the impression that some churches are relieved to let people go in their early adult years – thinking they’ll fit in much more nicely when they’re married and have kids. Singles who are working out their relationships, or are in defacto relationships, who are not interested in relationships, are generally a puzzle or headache for many of our leaders. But, as the authors point out, the trend is moving further and further in this direction.

The first chapter ends with an analysis of changes brought about by the emerging generations’ ease with communication technology. It is no longer adequate to sit and listen to a sermon delivered as rhetorical logic. We’re now expecting to enter into the logic of consciousness – featuring the visual and engaging the wider experience of the participant. The authors write briefly about multigenerational congregations that attempt to hold together experience and proclaimed truth.

All this is to show that emerging generations, like waves, bring change to the whole of society. As much as some people would like to live in a generational ghetto, we’re all affected in some way by the broad sweeping movements that are emerging in our society.

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Wade Clark Roof and Jackson Carroll Bridging Divided Worlds

Wade Clark Roof (on the right) is a sociologist of religion, teaching religion and society in the religious studies department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He’s known for his work on the spirituality of Baby Boomers, published in 1993 and 1999.

Bridging Divided WorldsJackson Carroll (on the left) is another sociologist of religion. He carried a similar position at Duke University Divinity School before taking up a position there as director of Pulpit and Pew, a research project on pastoral leadership. He’s well known for his book on the future of main line congregations, published in 2000.

These two authors, together with David Roozen, edited “The Post-War Generation & Establishment Religion: Cross-Cultural Perspectives“, in 1995. The book was based on a collaborative effort across ten Western countries: England, Australia, USA, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Italy and Greece.

About the same time Carroll and Clark Roof were researching the impact of generational change on congregations. At last, in 2002, the research has been made available in their book, “Bridging Divided Generations: Generational Cultures in Congregations“.

I’ll put a post per chapter for this book. It’s certainly worth it. And then maybe back to the one on the Post-War Generation.

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Generational Marketing by Defining Moments

Considering that the financial backing for generational research has come from the marketing sector, it makes sense that there’d be some decent research published in this field. The best I’ve seen so far is produced by Geoffrey Meredith and Charles Schewe with Janice Karlovich in their book, “Defining Markets, Defining Moments“, published by Hungry Minds, New York, 2o02 (now part of Wiley)

Meredith & Schewe, Defining Markets & Managing by Defining Moments

Geoff and Charles provide a useful introduction to the move from mass marketing through sector marketing to one-to-one marketing. They take issue with what they regard as simplistic generalisations about people based merely on the year they were born. They go right back to the origins of generational theory, examining the work of Karl Mannheim on generations and cohorts. Cohorts, they explain, are formed as people experience life-changing events together in their formative years (age 17 – 25).

Their analysis of American generational cohorts leads them to describe:
Depression Cohort coming of age 1930 – 1939
World War II Cohort coming of age 1940 – 1945
Postwar Cohort coming of age 1946 – 1962
Leading Edge Baby Boom Cohort coming of age 1963 – 1972
Trailing Edge Baby Boom Cohort coming of age 1973 – 1983
Generation X Cohort coming of age 1984 – 1994
N Generation Cohort (Millennials, Y) coming of age 1995 – ?

This makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve tested out some of their time lines with colleagues who resonate with the findings. In particular I found the work on the ‘Post war’ generation revealing. Among these people are the ones who actually sponsored the revolutions that happened during the 1960s. The early Baby Boomers provided a lot of the energy but their leaders were a cohort earlier. They place me in the Trailing Edge Baby Boom along with Douglas Coupland.

Charles and Geoff outline the “Lifestage Analytic Matrix” – five crucial factors influencing people’s attitudes, behaviour and buying patterns as they age:

  1. Cohorts (defining moments shared)
  2. Lifestages (a wide range of 25 different points in life)
  3. Physiographics (the effects of aging)
  4. Emotions and affinities (longings etc.)
  5. Socioeconomics (spending power, education, career, marital state etc.)

These five factors allow marketers to focus on specific people groups rather than broad generations.

Geoff and Charles lay down five new rules of multi-dimensional marketing:

  1. Demographics don’t do the job anymore.
  2. Generational cohorts reinterpret lifestages.
  3. New cohorts mean new behaviors.
  4. Values define generational cohorts, and core values don’t change.
  5. Younger generational cohorts are converging globally

The book ends with a reflection on the application of these marketing principles in non-USA settings. Charles and Geoff conclude that the development of cohort values is more likely in developed countries in which mass communication allows a whole nation to quickly experience pivotal events and reflect on them. They explore the impact of pivotal events in Russia, West Germany and Brazil.

The same two authors paired up again in 2002 to write their book, Managing by Defining Moments: America’s 7 Generational Cohorts, Their Workplace Values, and Why Managers Should Care.

Geoff Meredith and Charles Schewe work together as associates of Lifestage Matrix Marketing. Geoff is based in California, Charles in Massachusetts.

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