Looking for Leaders - LeadershipJournal.net
provocative article at Leadership Journal by Angie Ward. btw, i'm GenX and unlike Mark Driscoll, who is the same age as I am, i haven't planted a mega church.
Here's a teaser....
"A generation skipped?
Bob Chandler spent 13 years as a campus staff worker for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in North Carolina. Chandler always had plenty of students lining up for leadership roles within the group each year, but in the early 1990s he began to notice a shift.
'Students stopped aspiring to leadership,' he said. Instead, Chandler found he now had to work hard to recruit students to these positions. Where did he first observe this shift? In students who had been born in the late 1960s and early 1970s–the heart of Generation X.
Ray Johnston, senior pastor of fast-growing Bayside Church in Roseville, California, finds an explanation for this in 'generational theory,' the idea that there are recognizable patterns to generational cycles.
'Leadership skips a generation,' Johnston contends. 'It happens with presidents, and I think it happens with Christian ministries.'
Johnston's view reflects the work of scholars William Strauss and Neil Howe, who are considered pioneers of generational theory. According to their research, the 'Boomer' generation (born between 1943 and 1960) demonstrates the traits of a 'dominant' generation, which manifests itself in visionary, activist leadership.
Gen-Xers, on the other hand, are part of a 'recessive' generation, which also happens to be a generation of latchkey kids, children of divorce, and blended families, not to mention the most-aborted generation in history. The result, according to Strauss and Howe, is a 'reactive' mindset that values independence and eschews institutionalism.
'The emergent movement as a whole is characterized by a general suspicion of traditional forms of authority. This suspicion of authority has a profound impact on how leadership is carried out,' says Justin Irving, professor at the Center for Transformational Leadership at Bethel Seminary in Minnesota.
Feeling that traditional institutions such as families, government, the church, and"
Here's a teaser....
"A generation skipped?
Bob Chandler spent 13 years as a campus staff worker for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in North Carolina. Chandler always had plenty of students lining up for leadership roles within the group each year, but in the early 1990s he began to notice a shift.
'Students stopped aspiring to leadership,' he said. Instead, Chandler found he now had to work hard to recruit students to these positions. Where did he first observe this shift? In students who had been born in the late 1960s and early 1970s–the heart of Generation X.
Ray Johnston, senior pastor of fast-growing Bayside Church in Roseville, California, finds an explanation for this in 'generational theory,' the idea that there are recognizable patterns to generational cycles.
'Leadership skips a generation,' Johnston contends. 'It happens with presidents, and I think it happens with Christian ministries.'
Johnston's view reflects the work of scholars William Strauss and Neil Howe, who are considered pioneers of generational theory. According to their research, the 'Boomer' generation (born between 1943 and 1960) demonstrates the traits of a 'dominant' generation, which manifests itself in visionary, activist leadership.
Gen-Xers, on the other hand, are part of a 'recessive' generation, which also happens to be a generation of latchkey kids, children of divorce, and blended families, not to mention the most-aborted generation in history. The result, according to Strauss and Howe, is a 'reactive' mindset that values independence and eschews institutionalism.
'The emergent movement as a whole is characterized by a general suspicion of traditional forms of authority. This suspicion of authority has a profound impact on how leadership is carried out,' says Justin Irving, professor at the Center for Transformational Leadership at Bethel Seminary in Minnesota.
Feeling that traditional institutions such as families, government, the church, and"
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