Dealing with Change-Service (Colin Buckland)

It seems that for 30 or 40 years now people are always talking about a generation gap.  Our guest today has some ideas on building a generation bridge.  That's next, here on MemCare by Radio.

Welcome to another edition of MemCare by Radio.  I'm Scott Hollinger and I'm glad that you could take some time out and sit down with me.  Here's a question for you:  What effect does globalization and today's social pressures have on a young person's desire to serve in Christian work?  Well for the next several minutes we're to talk to Colin Buckland about how today's generation views commitment and service to Christian organizations.  Colin has served as a pastor, counselor, consultant and conference speaker for 3 decades.  If you saw him you'd find that extremely hard to believe.  Also, Colin and his wife Lorna are the founders of Claybury International, a ministry that provides leadership and organizational development consulting services around the world.  In addition, he has offered 2 books on leadership.  Colin starts us off today by comparing how a person in their 50's views job loss and how a person in their 20's or early 30's might view that same issue.

If I'm a man in my late 50's, early 60's and I've lost my job, I'm completely at sea.  I don't know how to view the world, but the younger generation is saying, 'Well, we can't even do career like that anymore'.  The effect is that those people think in shorter pieces.  They look at life in a series of jumps and so a career, now, one would expect to go through something in the region of 13 changes in a lifetime, maybe more.  I think it's getting this way more and more as the days go by.  There's a massive change there.

Well let's talk about that right now because I just said that I've been with Trans World Radio for 25 years.  What you're saying to me is that someone who is half my age would look at me and say, 'I don't know how you could do that'.  Yet, someone my age might look at that younger person, let's say they want to get involved in Christian work, you're saying they might only give 3 years to it?  Maybe 5 years?  So I know a lot of people who are between 45 and 55 or 45 and 60 were saying, 'You know, those young people they're not committed,' but that's not necessarily true, is it?

Well no.  I guess one of the things that we've been able to demonstrate well on the face of the earth is the failure to understand culture.  That's more easily seen in nationalities, national cultures.  We can see the difference between USA and China or you can understand those things, but we fail perhaps to realize that within our own nation there are several sub-cultures and actually there is as much need to understand the different cultural layers in our own nation as there is to understand these other nationalities.  It's easier to understand the different point of view of a nationality.  In actual fact, a commitment to 1-5 years on the mission field is a life-bite and equally a sense of commitment on the part of an individual from the post-modern idiom.  That's sincerely and genuinely seen as a commitment to ministry and indeed it is.  It just isn't the same as somebody else from a different sub-culture.

Perhaps what we could do right now is give our friend listening either a tool or a way that they can engage that new Christian worker, to help understand the young Christian worker that has just showed up on the scene.  If there's the potential for misunderstanding, then this way they can avoid misunderstanding and have understanding.  Help us now realize how we can relate to each other.

Again, that's another big question.  There are lots of tools available in the press to help us to understand nationality, national cultures, but probably less in terms of sub-cultures in our own countries.  As for me, I would say that perhaps the best thing we can do is end judgment, not rush to judgment.  Suspend judgment.  I think there's a Biblical case to be made for that anyway but I honesty think that lying behind our judgment is fear.  We are afraid of the challenge that these other sub-groups bring to us.  Consequently, instead of engaging to try and understand them we pull back, are revolted and build a case against as if there's something wrong with that sub-culture.  This is failing to recognize that we are also part of a sub-culture that at some point in the past people in other sub-cultures didn't understand.  I can remember, and I'm 55 years of age, being viewed as a complete mystery by people when I was 15 and they were, say, 55.  I was a complete mystery and must have been a considerable threat to older people with what they would have considered as rebellion.  They weren't taught, we haven't been taught, ...  Let me stand back.  Let me try to understand.  I think what we can do as a tool is not judge but take a good, long look at the forces that there are on the face of the earth.  What is it that leads to sub-culture?  There are psychosocial dynamics.  In other words, there are sociological shifts that change the thought-patterns of a group of people.  If companies have been failing because of the economic difficulties on the face of the earth and if that has brought an end to the possibility of a career, if young people have seen their parents or their grandparents being made redundant, what we've been generating there is a failure to get security from those norms.  They're not norms anymore.  I can't look at the future then and get security from the thought that there will always be a job for me.  In order to survive and indeed thrive, I've got to find a new way of coping.  The new way of coping in the post-modern idiom, to some degree, is to actually see life in bites rather than in long periods because there is a sense in which nothing lasts forever.  Indeed, for a lot of those young people, their parents' marriages never lasted and so they can't even get security from human relationships.  That's quite a big thing to say so I think people are seeing things in bites.

I would assume that there are those who are going into Christian ministry who will make a longer commitment.  Maybe they decide after that bite-sized commitment that they would like to stay longer with the organization that they're with.  Is that a supposition that I could make?

I think that there are some possibilities that people will do that.  I don't think it will be normal to.  I tend to feel that the forces at large have developed people as they now are in order to keep them.  Even the language of 'keeping them' is probably related to a sub-culture.  If we wanted to keep them then integrity, honesty, purpose, value, making a difference...all of these dynamics are important.  Loyalty to dinosaurs seems to be out of vogue.

Let me ask this, and then we'll move on to another area.  When we look at the length of time, or how the younger person serves in this post-modern world, what are the strengths that they bring in this kind of an approach?  What is strong about this approach in terms of ministry, serving?

I think one of the most obvious is incredible flexibility.  We were talking earlier about rates of change and I made a statement about the last 100 years.  Well, I would say the last 10 years of that 100 years has been when the gas pedal has been really pressed.  Now, we're at a stage where chaos theory is really the prevailing theory because change is happening at such a rate that it literally is chaotic.  If you are a person that views life in large chunks, you're going to be destabilized several times over with the rate of change.  If, however, you have been born for the day and you are a child of the moment, then you are capable of handing that rate of change.  It isn't without some kind of emotional impact, that's another issue that needs addressing, but you are able to roll with the punches, so to speak, because you're a product of that age.

If I as the more seasoned Christian worker look at this younger worker who has just come on the scene, then a good way for me to look at them is to view them as a real resource for helping us as an organization adapt to quick changes that are happening.  They're going to be able to adapt to it perhaps more readily and can help us understand why it's happening.

Very definitely.  This group of people are an enormous asset to mission but they are also an enormous threat because if actually we want things to stay as they've always been, that's not going to happen anyway.   You don't have that as an option.  These people are going to be of enormous benefit to us so now we need not resist them and not try to protect ourselves against them because they can make us feel dizzy with their ability to handle these things, but to embrace what they know and how they know it.  We can even learn how to help them to be the best 'themselves' they can be in this journey of small bites.  At the same time, help them to serve God and serve ministry of that period of time extremely well.  They will serve you well.  They're bright, they're energetic, they're passionate.  They've a lot of qualities that have fallen asleep in some other sub-cultures and they can really light a fire for us with some of those things.

Those are the words of Colin Buckland.  I'd like to thank Colin for his insights and how we as Christian workers can recognize the gifts that God has given to each of us across the generations and how those gifts can mesh together to make our ministries so much more effective.  I hope you've found our conversation helpful and I'd like to let you know that you have been listening to MemCare by Radio.