Carol Howard Merritt put up an interesting post early last week about intergenerational differences in work style and approaches to getting things done, and the ways in which those differences affect our churches.
Work looks different. And sometimes it pesters the intergenerational tensions like a chigger just below the skin. There is something annoying and wrong, although we can’t figure out just what it is. Older generations of people cannot point to anything that their younger pastor is not doing. In fact, the church might even be growing, but there is a difference in the manner in which she is getting it done that vexes them.
She lays out differences in the ways we study, the ways in which we communicate, and the work which we do; and though every pastor and every church is different from every other, as generalizations, I think the differences she identifies are quite perceptive. (Certainly her first point is all too familiar to me as something that got me into trouble at the last church I served.) It’s not a long article, but you’ll likely spend more time thinking about it than you do reading it.
Oh, and as a side note, you might pray for the Rev. Merritt, who fell last Wednesday and dislocated her shoulder.
I'm terribly late in commenting… but thank you so much for the prayers and link. I got my sling off this week, so I'm able to catch up more on blog reading.
Happy new year!
Hey, I haven't been around enough to complain. 🙂 Thanks very much for the comment, and I trust you're continuing to do well.