Recently, a retired chaplain* messaged me through a social media platform in response to content I had shared about an important global issue. We conversed briefly until he misunderstood something I said (DMs are the greatest place to delineate nuance, said no one ever).
I will not quote the chaplain’s response here, but suffice it to say that, to me, it sounded a lot like: “You and young people who think like you are so stupid.”
As I was reading and feeling the weight of the insult toward me (and “young” people who think like me), I knew he had no idea just how insulting his words were. Father forgive him, he doesn’t know…ran through my head. I could see, even as I absorbed the shock of the punch, the boulder of experience, pain, hurt, frustration, and bias that made his worldview impervious to a perceived objection from a member of a younger generation.
And truth be told, I sorrowed at this revelation.
You see, I have three daughters. Two are solidly Gen Z and the third is up for grabs by whichever social analysts make the best case for including a 2010 baby in Gen Alpha or not. These young women have grown up in ways that were unimaginable to me when I was in high school. While I have won wisdom, relational savvy, and self-control through my four-and-a-half decades of slogging through life’s good, bad, and ugly, they had worlds of information at their fingertips before their first school dance. They’ve witnessed more of what’s good, bad, and ugly about the human race via the internet than they have in real life (that is, if you don’t count the internet as real life) and certainly more than I had by the time I was 21. For better and for worse, “Did you learn that on Tik Tok?” was a question I asked one daughter regularly throughout her high career.
During most of the two oldest girls’ high school years, I pastored a church that met on the edge of a Midwestern university campus. For six years, I met student after student who wanted to know what I had to say about war, elections, Black Lives Matter, #metoo, the environment, their gay neighbors, Donald Trump, Fox News, and the ways in which older Christians they knew weren’t living according to the Golden Rule. Would I listen, they wanted to know. Would I put on their spectacles and see what they saw? And, could my articulation of the need for and role of the Church–and the very gospel message itself–take into account the truths they were living and seeing?
These young people, along with my daughters, gave me invaluable lessons about Gen Z. To be sure, they’ve got blind spots unique to their generation and immaturity that goes hand in hand with developing prefrontal cortexes, but their ability to spot hypocrisy is strong. Alarmingly acute is their ability to notice how their elders don’t always live according to the lessons the elders have taught.
The fellowship I am a part of ordains women and young people because of the Old Testament book of Joel and the way the apostle Peter quoted it as descriptive of the new work God was doing through Christ on the day of Pentecost and is still doing today to pour out the Spirit on those who believe.
The Lord, speaking through the prophet Joel, said:
I will pour out my Spirit upon all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
Your old men will dream dreams,
And your young men will see visions.**
My fellow ministers and I do not believe that God speaks only through men or only through elders. Sons and daughters, young men and young women can hear and speak the words of the Lord. But sometimes, like the prophets of old, Spirit-inspired words from the young will bring offense and upset the powers. They will cause the blind-who-think-they-see to stumble. And the powers will be tempted to say: He is only a young man. What does she know?
Incidentally, before my exchange with the retired chaplain, I had been quivering for weeks with an impassioned interior prayer that, until I die, I might not lose touch with the sensibilities of emerging generations or be afraid to try on the spectacles of a new people shaped by experiences, technology, and voices absent during my own coming of age.
Today, I still pray for keenly sensitive ears (bodily and spiritual), so that I might hear my grandchildren (biological, adopted, spiritual) explain the future cultural equivalents of Funko Pops, Studio Ghibli, Taylor Swift, language denoting sexual identity, politics, war, and climate crises, as well as–most importantly–whatever messages the Spirit might be speaking through them for the Church.
I pray for understanding, too, so I might speak the language, articulating answers to their uniquely articulated questions about meaning, life, God.
And, I pray that the Spirit will pour the Spirit’s self out on me, an old woman, that I might see and speak the mysteries of God to a new generation as they sing, with a different melody, the same mysteries back to me.
*Some details altered to disguise identity
**Joel 2:28
Thanks for your support in reading and sharing my work! I’m a holistic life and leadership coach, pastor, author, podcaster and seminarian. For essays and podcasts that come straight to your inbox, subscribe to this newsletter in the subscription box above. Fun fact: I’m also the author of Dear Boy:, An Epistolary Memoir and the host of the Your Pastor Reads Books podcast. For more info, visit my web site at heatherweber.org.
TY
a clear thrust through the generational layers that exist.
having charted and seen that every third and fourth generation has been economically plagued in the US after reading your passion and niche mandate has legs to form, aid& serve many to achieve" z legacy" in Christ.
we see and sadly obeserve that maybe 10% of seminarians know, administer and or teach the elementary/ foundational doctrines. this leaves followers and seekers without the complete lenght,depth& width of the platform to walk out and fully manifest mature doctrines.
one of our most pivotal places on the elementary part of the platform is the teaching and as led the administration of the four baptisms.
second is the teaching and impartation of the sound deeds nearest to the mature doctrines. see bottom of the building elements of the glorious church chart.
See both here as conceptual teaching aids.
second sound deeds concept also includes both a teaching visual aid as well as a self diagnosis glimpse here:
this chart is derived from stringing all of the 128 clusters of 7's across bible and distilling them out to form negative and posiitive principles.
these 7's are the conceptual front load deposited in the human DNA code.
Or saying it in anaother way they are the receptacles in us that receive and manifest the Holy Spirit through our spiritual design.
for fun please consider taking time to view to see if anything resonates. if it does then it will be either in a positoive or a negative aspect of one or more of the 7 gifts.
not to worry these have 0 to do with salvation but go a long way to extend an individual out across the span of the platform of maturity toward fulfilling their known or unknown destiny in Christ.
have fun
https://drive.google.com/file/d/165T3RSiABS4jhxgquXQ7t5J2UWluTbxW/view?usp=sharing
link to teaching on elementary/ foundational doctrines:
https://awakegloriousbride.com/category/foundational-elementary-doctrines/