How’s your timing? Personal, generational, organizational…

This weekend I get to preach for the first time in a while, and I am a little excited about the title: Is God on time?

That is a pretty loaded question for a person that is admittedly late for just about everything in life. My Dad used to joke that I would be late to my own funeral, to which I remarked that it could be arranged as a final tribute to everyone who spent time waiting for me! Maybe that is why it is a question to grapple with, considering we humans struggle with the sense of time in some way or another with every waking moment. Maybe you are blessed to the point of not considering time at all, which is ok, the rest of us will forgive you 😁

I also stress about time, become impatient with things not coming together, and fill blocks of it up in fear of having too much of it. (You can check out the 7-4-3-1 framework on the downloads page for more on this)

What about generational timing? What about seasons of leadership? Or seasons of rest? These are not simply marks on a timepiece, they are eras we walk through as we enter something completely different. Case in point, an era the church in North America is wrestling with beyond numbers in general declining, is a notable generational loss: Gen Z. It will take a few years for us to get a handle on how we understand the latest group, Gen Alpha, but most of us are still getting a handle on the Z’s.

In case you don’t feel like clicking on the ‘Gen Z’ link above, here are a few generational indicators:

• Pragmatic
• Less positive outlook on life ahead; anxiety and overall mental health ranks lower than previous generations
• Not ‘pie in the sky’ when it comes to the economy; they expect the struggle
• Desire inclusive and supportive community
• Political and social activism; views expressed quickly through social media
• Strong sense of personal expression

Activism, inclusion, personal expression…all are key in the separation from church in many cases. But there is another piece missing that churches are specifically dealing with:

“You say you worry about the younger generation, so where are they? Why are they not here with you?”

(Miriam Swanson, Fusion USA, at the Missio Alliance ‘Awakenings’ conference)

It was refreshing seeing this challenge brought to a room full of faith ‘thinkers’ who were in deed asking this question throughout the conference, but seemed dumbfounded with the challenge of not inviting a single young adult to a conference on leadership and change in the church. She wasn’t wrong. We could point out all 5 people under age 25 in the room. That is the very definition of an echo chamber. I hate to include myself in the ranks of a ‘bunch of old guys talking about young people’, but it was obvious during that presentation.

Do we want Gen Z to figure out how to be part of our institution? Or are we inviting them to the table of a growing and changing people movement? Speaking as a Gen X ‘old guy’, I really hope we can move past forcing the former. But therein lies the issue with much of what happens during a time of dramatic, almost immediate, change within a system. Those of us who are part of the establishment must choose to either be gatekeepers of what we see as the ‘right way’, or we can be hosts, welcoming the other into conversation and discernment.

Telling or asking. It makes a big difference in how we take the next step in creating an environment that is less about wondering where ‘they’ are within the camp, and more about who ‘we’ are in the middle.

Timing is key in so much of what we do in life. We don’t get to relive past lives as we go forward, so the question is always about what we do with the time we have now. When change happens, and questions arise about what we do next, we may need to ask if God is asking us to reset our clocks with his.