In the 1960s and 1970s a fear spread across the nation that if the boom of babies produced by the World War II generation produced in turn another boom of babies, we may overpopulate the earth.
This fear manifested itself in many ways, beginning with the use of the birth control pill in 1960. In 1968, Paul Ehrlick wrote a book called The Population Bomb, an instant best-seller that tried to affirm the fear with facts. That same year a Newsweek article appeared with the title “Make Love Not Babies.” In the early seventies the rate of surgical sterilization doubled and Roe v. Wade legalized abortion.
In November of 1973, I was born.
There’s a certain satisfaction in that fact alone. Like little Moses hidden in a basket among the river reeds or the baby Jesus detoured by way of Egypt, I made it. I beat the odds.
Seventy million babies beat the odds between 1961 and 1981. In the last 15 years we have come of age, struggling to understand who we are and why we are here. The established church seems equally confused as it has approached my generation with traditional methods and been flatly rejected, leaving older leaders wondering, “Who are these kids, and what will it take to reach them?”
Journalists and sociologists have been happy to oblige us with answers as to who we are. We’ve been called a generation of “slackers,” complaining about a world where all of our needs are met. We’re considered lazy, expecting the world on a silver platter. We are written off by employers and even the church as rebellious or apathetic.
As Neil Howe and Bill Strauss say in their book, 13th Gen, we are “a generation with a P.R. problem.”
Even the names we have been given cast a shadow of negativity over us. “Busters,” “Thirteeners,” “Generation X.” The last is particularly degrading, comparing us to Brand X, generic, nothing special or unique about us.
But this is not a generic generation. We are facing a new set of obstacles that have never been faced before. We are the first generation to grow up in a post-modern society, where right and wrong are dirty words and tolerance is considered the greatest virtue.
We are the first generation to grow up in a post-Christian society. We are taught that we should have a work ethic and high moral standards, but reject the One from whom those standards come. We are more likely to get into trouble for praying in school than possessing drugs.
Most Busters, even those who are Christians, question the relevance of religion in today’s society. But in contrast, they have a growing interest in Christ and, in fact, find much inspiration in him. He shunned the institution and invested in relationships. He was a teacher and a doer. He attracted his followers with the truth of his words, but also with the power of his works. He met their needs through miraculous healing, deliverance, and reconciliation. Furthermore, Jesus sent his followers out into ministry, inviting them to do the same for others.
If the church wants to prove itself relevant to Generation X, the task is as easy as following Christ’s example.
With over 40 percent coming from broken homes, it is impossible to find a Buster who hasn’t been exposed in some way to the pain of divorce and the struggles of the single-parent home. “Latchkey” children returned from school to empty houses where they could escape into another episode of “The Brady Bunch”—a stable, though blended family where everyone always hugged and made up in the end.
In a 1970s column, Ann Landers asked her readers to write to her in response to the question, “If you had it to do all over again, would you have children?” She received 50,000 letters. An overwhelming 70 percent answered, “No.”
It’s no wonder that Busters turned to groups of their peers for support and a new definition of “family.” This is exemplified in the popularity of the television show “Friends”, which opens with the lyrics, “I’ll be there for you/‘cause you’re there for me too.” Busters are hungry for intimate, supportive relationships.
“There’s a special deprivation,” states Hule Goddard, youth specialist for the Francis Asbury Society. “We have abandoned relationships for a thousand other gods…self-actualization, materialism, whatever.”
This intense desire for relationship has led many churches across the country to relinquish large, impersonal congregations for more need-meeting forms of ministry.
The Wesley Foundation at the University of Georgia holds a weekly worship service that is sometimes attended by as many as 600. But in a crowd that large, a Buster’s need for significant interpersonal relationship is not met. So the Wesley Foundation also implements small groups consisting of twelve to twenty that meet together weekly for worship, Bible study, prayer, and often Communion.
The newly-planted Grace Fellowship United Methodist Church in West Houston, Texas, has purposefully down-sized its programming in order to focus solely on home groups. In two months they have established nine groups of eight to sixteen. Pastor Jim Leggett notes that the small group structure is particularly attractive to Busters because it puts the emphasis on people, and particularly on families.
“The Buster generation has a passion not to be the workaholics that their parents were,” he explains. “The church offers too many programs and people try to do them all. We spend so much time at the church that we are neglecting our families.”
The shift to small group ministry is happening all over the world, from college campuses to Korea where pastor David Yonggi Cho’s mega-church ministers to more than 700,000 in small groups.
Mike Mozley, a former youth leader and now director of missionary personnel at the Mission Society for United Methodists, advocates small group ministry in any Christian setting. “It’s discipleship that says, You’re significant. I know your name, I know your birthday, I know what your family is like, and I care about you.”
You don’t have to be a peer, however, to minister to Busters. Goddard feels that the older generations are the most effective in reaching Busters for Christ. “They are starved for moms and dads, craving people who will love them,” he explains, “people who will focus full attention on them and listen to them unconditionally, not because of any motive, but because of the love of Jesus.”
But forming relationships with Busters requires a certain intentionality. “Start with an open mind,” suggests Goddard. “If you make a place for them in your life, they will come. It doesn’t take a great deal of creativity.”
Making a place for Busters means being a tangible example of unconditional love, a concept that many have never seen lived out. It means overlooking ponytails, body piercings and other personal-appearance choices that seem incomprehensible to older generations to whom long hair is considered an act of rebellion.
“It makes us uncomfortable when we see kids with baggies on, or with rings in their tongues and their bellybuttons,” says Pierre Moranza, youth pastor at Aldersgate UM Church in College Station, Texas. “But it’s not my love that I’m trying to love them with. It’s the love of God flowing through me.”
If you want them to believe that Christ loves them unconditionally, show them that you do too, even when they wear blue nail polish or clothes you wouldn’t sell at a rummage sale.
It also means living out the love of Christ with patience. Busters are extremely cautious. They want to see Christianity work in your life before they are willing to commit to it. They want to see if you are going to give up on the relationship if they run away for a while. They want to know that your experience with Christ is genuine.
“This generation is looking for people that are real. If you’re not real they don’t want anything to do with you,” explains Moranza. “Before I try to preach to them, I need to make sure I present my body a living sacrifice….They’ve heard people say it. We have to live it.”
“To me its wildly exciting,” Hule Goddard states. “The Holy Spirit of God lives in us, and this holy God can get within arm’s reach of people in the darkness if we will go to them.”
Reality is hard to come by in the popular culture that brought us escapist entertainment from television to movies to virtual reality computer games. Advertising executives tantalize us with the things that will make us richer, faster, more attractive. All this really makes us is emptier. We are a generation starving for substance.
While many churches have implemented flashy multimedia and other forms of entertainment to attract Busters, we are likely to tune out if we can’t find meaning in it.
“We in the church have something that Hollywood will never be able to duplicate. We have the power of God,” Pierre Moranza says. “I believe in using whatever media and technology we can to capture this generation’s attention, but if there is no power, once you’ve captured their attention, then you’re just drawing a crowd. There’s no life-changing taking place.”
The church must be a place where Busters can encounter a real and holy God who loves them. The best way to facilitate that encounter is through vibrant worship.
“The main thing is to offer them a worship experience that is alive—where they can worship with their hearts and not just their mouth,” explains Tom Tanner of the University of Georgia’s Wesley Foundation. “They need to be free to express themselves in worship, not just follow the stand-up, sit-down order in a bulletin.”
Busters are attracted to vibrant, passionate worship because they are attracted to a vibrant, passionate God. Tanner asserts, “Worship is not an expression of who you are, but an expression of the kind of God you have.”
Busters are longing to know a God who is hope for the hopeless, a Father to the fatherless. They are looking for a faith that is worth their radical commitment—a Christianity that endures past Sunday morning service and applies in their everyday world.
“When I was in seminary we talked about how having adequate parking and quality worship would bring people in. That’s irrelevant now,” states Mike Mozley. “The greatest need of a Buster is substance, daily application of how to make it in this world, how this Bible has an impact upon my world and makes sense to my daily situation.”
This Bible reveals the Truth that sets Busters free.
“This generation has been underchallenged and lied to,” explains Tanner. “They’ve been told that everything is relative. That the greatest virtue is tolerance. That it’s okay to be a Christian, but you have to let everyone else believe the way they want to. That all that matters is that you are sincere—you can be sincerely wrong.”
“The church sometimes sugar coats because they don’t want to offend anyone,” says Beth Brown, a self-described Buster and now a youth pastor at Union Chapel United Methodist Church in Muncie, Indiana. “Generation X wants the truth.”
While Busters are ready to seek a relationship with Jesus Christ, they keep that relationship outside of their definitions of “the church” or “religion.”
Busters see the church as an institution, and we are extremely skeptical of institutions. We have never known a government without scandal. In politics we lean toward political libertarianism, refusing to identify strongly with an established party.
This skepticism also applies to the institution of the church. In a post-Christian society, Busters who didn’t learn Christianity at home learned it from television personalities like Jim and Tammy Bakker, or Jimmy Swaggart.
We have seen institutions get bogged down with bureaucracy and churches split over trivial issues. We prefer to focus on the common bond we have in Christ rather than the non-essentials that divide us.
“They could care less if you speak in tongues or lift your hands,” explains Moranza. “They want to know, do you love Jesus?”
“This plays heavily into who we are as a denomination,” states Mozley. “More and more we are seeing all kinds of denominations saying the walls must come down. They are not attracted to us because we are Wesleyan or Methodist but because we reflect a biblical mandate that is going to meet the needs of an Xer.”
Pastors and congregations in their 40s and 50s are going to have the difficult task of making the transition from a traditional denominational church to a non-traditional, need-meeting church.
“They can’t just sit back and think that people will continue to be a Methodist because they were raised Methodist,” explains Beth Brown. “The church has got to be constantly seeking to meet needs. You don’t change the message or compromise the gospel, you just package it to meet the needs of people where they are.”
Mike Mozley agrees. “In terms of Methodism, if you send another preacher that will bide his time and rise up in the conference, they’re not going to put up with that. They don’t have time to put up with denominational games anymore. They want true worship, and true preaching that they can experience for themselves.”
Busters crave personal experience. Growing up in the colossal shadow of the Baby Boomers, we are continually compared to the politically and socially active coeds of the 1960s and 1970s. We live in a recycled culture of oldies radio stations and bellbottom polyester fashions. While Boomers had Woodstock and Vietnam, even great spiritual movements like the Jesus People or the 1970 Asbury College revival, we have never had a defining moment.
While Boomers had free love and experimental drugs, we have AIDS and crack cocaine. Fifty-three percent of Busters are worried about the future. Sixty-five percent believe that it will be harder for them to live as comfortably as previous generations. Eighty-eight percent believe that the American Dream will be harder to attain.
This harsh realization often breeds resentment—like a poison whose only antidote is forgiveness through God.
Beth Brown helps spread the remedy by conducting services of generational reconciliation in churches she has served and at Aldersgate ‘95. “It’s really an emotional time,” she says.
She begins by polling the youth and asking them what the older generations think of them. Responses have included everything from “loud, irresponsible teenagers” who are going to lead the nation into disaster to “spiritual losers.” One response even read, “They are sort of scared of us.”
After a flood of statistics about low self-esteem due to the conditions of society, neglect, and abuse, the audience sits in silence. “Adults started crying,” Brown says. “They thought by leaving the kids alone they were giving them their space, but kids interpret that as not caring.”
Then Brown delivers the good news. She gives practical examples for bridging the gap across the generational divide.
“Be someone they can follow,” she suggests. “I base my ministry on 1 Corinthians 11:1—‘Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.’”
Another suggestion to the Boomer generation is to stop speaking curses and start speaking blessings. “It is time that we break some of the curses that have been spoken over Generation X. As a church we have got to start blessing Generation X and releasing them to carry the torch.”
At the end of the service, Busters and Boomers stand looking eyeball to eyeball, and each are led by a member of their own generation in a prayer of confession. The Boomers accept responsibility and repent for the legacy they have left. Busters confess and ask forgiveness for rebellion, disrespect, and apathy. “Then say, ‘We forgive you and we need you.’”
These services have lasting results. “The older members see the younger members in a new light,” says Brown. “They see them as valuable members of God’s family now, not just when they grow up.”
For some Busters, growing up has been a struggle. We are losing our innocence earlier and facing rites of passage into adulthood such as marriage and college graduation later than previous generations.
At the same age Boomers were feasting on the opportunities of life, Busters are still waiting for a table. In the church, even those in their late 20s and early 30s have been labeled “the church of tomorrow.”
“They’re not,” Brown insists. “They’re the church of today. They can be leaders today.”
Linda Smith, youth leader at Pine Forest United Methodist in Pensacola, Florida, encourages her youth with the long list of young, radical followers of God in the Bible. Just like David, Daniel, or Timothy, “God wants you now, he doesn’t wait until you have graduated from high school. He’s not like the world who says ‘get a degree and then we’ll talk.’”
The Wesley Foundation at the University of Georgia provides opportunity for ministry by sponsoring three short-term mission trips each year.
Aldersgate UM Church has a separate Sunday morning service in which the youth lead worship, preach the Word, even take the offering.
“They can say, this is ours, they can take ownership,” explains Pierre Moranza. He encourages the younger generation in their personal walk with Christ as well as in leadership in the church by inviting them to lay hands on and pray for people at the altar.
At Grace Fellowship, Jim Leggett has found that home groups are the perfect environment for equipping people for ministry. Six of their nine home groups are led by Busters. “Rather than one pastor trying to minister to 400 people, you free up the people to minister to one another,” he says. “You train up leaders.”
Even paramount Christian figures like Billy Graham realize that the time has come to equip a new generation to spread the gospel. The 77-year-old Graham employs the Christian rap group dc Talk and pop sensation Michael W. Smith to bring high-energy music with integrity to his crusades. Since June of 1994, five of his six youth specials have broken stadium attendance records.
dc Talk rapper Toby McKeehan told Christianity Today, “We’ve made it our goal to be missionaries to our generation. We thought, ‘If we speak their language, they’re more apt to listen.’ For our generation, the language is music.”
Just like Graham needs McKeehan to help speak the language of today’s youth, young artists like dc Talk need the wisdom and accountability of an experienced and respecers. An overwhelming 70 percent ey need to be equipped and commissioned into Christ’s service. Busters need Boomers. And they need Boomers to need them.
We must remember that the generation of children that seemed so unwanted in Ann Lander’s column is desperately wanted by the Lord. He understands them, loves them and is calling them to a purpose.
Consider one last grim but exciting statistic about Generation X. One of every three babies conceived in this generation has been aborted. The world has never seen this kind of infanticide… except in the generations of Moses and Jesus, when both times God was preparing to do an incredible work for his people.
Beth Brown asks, “If the enemy tried so hard to keep this generation from coming into being, what kind of plan must God have for them?”
Linda Smith agrees. “Satan put it in Pharaoh’s heart, and Herod’s heart, and he has put in the heart of people in my generation the idea that babies are dispensable.” She states, “I believe Satan knows that God is going to raise up an army to cover the world with this generation. They will be empowered with the Holy Spirit and will wield the power of the sword of the living God, his Word.”
“We like to call them Generation X-treme,” explains Tom Tanner. “They are a generation of extreme importance that will have a significant impact on the world.”
Andrea Nasfell is editorial assistant at Good News. She also does freelance media work and writes screenplays.
This article was printed in Good News magazine (January/February 1997).