Is America's Greatest Generation the Church's Worst Nightmare?

I know two men who worked for the same employer for 60 years.  One man worked for the Dekalb County school system for 60 years before retiring and the other worked for Atlanta Dental for six decades before he finally stopped going to the office every morning.  Both men also live in the same homes that they bought in their young adult years.  It occurred to me recently that these may very well be the only two people I will ever know to accomplish this feat.  It is a remarkable testimony to their stability and commitment to their jobs and companies.  Many of the people that I worked with in my church job were of the WWII generation, labeled the Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw.  As young teens and young adults, they were called on by their country to leave their homes and lives and fight tyranny overseas.  They responded with tremendous patriotism and freed Europe from the clutches of a madman.

When they returned to America after the war, our nation experienced a boom.  Suburban neighborhoods began to pop up all over the country.  Housing could hardly be built fast enough for the exploding families and schools, shopping and places of worship followed these young families to their suburban neighborhoods.  Many of these people stayed in their homes for 50 plus years and built strong stable neighborhoods that remain today.

For the church, the post WWII years were one of great prosperity and populace.  Churches were built in every neighborhood and would be full within a few months as new families flocked to new faith communities.  In my city of Atlanta, almost all the churches inside the perimeter, it seems, were started in a 20 year period around the end of WWII.  Of course this is an exaggeration but many were started in these years.

            These patriots fill houses of worship and faith communities flourished with their stable and deeply committed life styles.  Churches came to depend on them and began catering to them as the shape of American Christianity was transformed.  Their values of local neighborhoods, stability, patriotism and institutionalism became synonymous with the Western church.  Their generosity and commitment, especially as they retired, made them vital to the life of thousands of faith communities around the country and they became the driving force in Western Christianity.

The type of religion that grew in America alongside the WWII generation gave rise to some of the hallmarks of our histories.  They built fabulous buildings, schools, printing presses, newspapers, mission agencies, and their loyalty to their denominations and churches made almost anything attempted prosper.  Their institutional stability and resistance to change drastically altered the way church was organized and run.  Missions became sending money to cooperative projects rather than serving hands on.  Education became synonymous with denominational curriculum rather than true spiritual formation and commitment was shown by loyalty to denominational programs rather than by a life lived in accordance to Jesus’ teachings.

Today, many mainline and Evangelical churches are still predominantly filled with the members of the greatest generation.  Some of the churches that were founded in the post WWII boom are still populated with their original members.  Some of those churches still look relatively the same today as they did fifty years ago when they were started.  What impact does a generation of people who worked at their jobs for 40+ years and lived in the same home for 40 + years have for the modern church?  Could the values (denominational loyalty, stable to the point of resisting change) that made this generation so vital to the church in the 60s and 70s be hurting the church as it seeks to move into the future?

In no way do I mean to lay responsibility for all the churches problems at the feet of a stereotyped group of people.  I am merely pointing out that the majority of church attendees in my denominational tradition are from a generation that strongly held to the ideas of spectator religion, conformity and as little change as possible, then newer generations who value modern expressions of faith and live in a fast paced world where innovation and change are prized possessions are not going to feel at home in our WWII generation churches.  I would love to hear your thoughts.

With all my heart, soul, mind and strength

Brian