Unpretentiousil | for those Hipsters out there

Saw this video the other day and thought it was hilarious. and such a great need in our generation

 

Hipster vs Nerd

The Sins of our Fathers | Us GenY’s & our children

For years I have heard older generations tell stories about their hardships during the first and second world war, i have heard of people living on the bare minimum to survive so that they could pay off their house before they had kids, families who would only eat out once or twice a year on very special occasions and even then there would be a budget that they had been saving up for over the past couple of months.

The Gen Xers grew up through this,  to a certain extent they know what it is like to have nothing, to save and go without. In response to their upbringing though the late BabyBoomers and early GenXer’s brought us into a new world of individualism and financial greed, throughout the late 60′s and 70′s with a focus on “Freedom” and “I can do whatever I want” attitude and then starting in the the mid 70′s and 1980′s the prosperity gospel permeated every sphere of society and culminated in with the GFC in 2010 suffering the consequences of greed that their generations embodied and built. Unfortunately though i believe there are other subtle consequences we are encountering which are cause by the sins of our fathers and we need to figure out what to do about them so as not to impact our children and the generations that are to follow.

These are not scientific categories, or even scientifically researched, but rather general observations from the past 10 years of leadership and counselling people and leading teams. Many of these categories I would probably fit in myself or have been art of in the past so this post is not coming out of arrogance or judgement but rather a sense of self reflection and concern for my generation as we raise children and an awareness that the sins of the fathers affect our children and our children’s children, just like the sins of our fathers are affecting us.

an over-realised sense of self importance
as GenY’s many of us have grown up being the apple of our parent’s eye, because our parents experienced need and struggle at times we have grown up with parents wanting to provide all they could for us, much of the time hiding us from the realities of perseverance, hard work and the fact that we need to work and save for what we need and want.

This has meant that we have grown up as Lords of our own kingdoms, places where we want something and it is brought to us, safe havens where we are always supported (which to a certain extent I firmly believe is the role of the family) but we have always been made to feel that we are right and that our opinions and feelings are “my right” and as they are mine, they deserve to be heard.

Whilst we all listen to our children and want to encourage them to think, share, explore and air their emotions, i am not sure the extreme that my generation has been allowed to voice these in has been helpful as it has trained us to be slaves to our emotions rather than be emotional thinking people.

Much of how i see people interact and respond to one another is impulsive, not well thought through and reactive rather than proactive and productive because “I am an individual and my opinion matters NOW”.

This might sound harsh but sometimes how you feel about something may not be important right now as the decision needs to be made and other people have processed much more than you and just because you are an individual doesn’t mean you can speak into this situation, as you may have little knowledge of what is going on. Because we have always been taught as children that our opinion matters we feel the need to vocalize it to the whole world. This is evident in the growth of addiction to social media, blogging and so forth and the never ending search we have for friends and followers so as to broadcast our thought too. (kind of ironic that a GenY is posting a blog to the world cause i believe my opinion that aren’t scientific or researched matter :p )
but this lead me to a second characteristic of our generation which I can only see getting worse with our children.

Impulsiveness
Because our parent’s did all they could to meet all our needs and wants, we have become accustomed to having what we want NOW! we are a self-gratifying generation that is looking out for number 1. We want what we want and we want it now, some would argue that we’re developmentally stuck in our toddler stage in this area. You don’t have to go far to see evidence of this, just look at the credit debt we are in, look at the way shops sell us stuff “get it now and nothing to pay for 24months” basically don’t worry about the consequences, you can delay them, but you can have what you want NOW. In our nations capitol I saw this all the time with young guys on great money but in huge debts because there was no sense of self control and huge level of impulsiveness, “i want the pleasure NOW”.

I would argue that our impulsiveness and lack of self-control is why rather than ‘discussing’ the biblical view on sex, sexuality and marriage we just slag it off as ‘outdated and restrictive’. If we look at the way God set out his intention for sex the Bible says “sexual relationship is special” all of us whether we believe in God or we just think He is a load of crap can agree with that. Sex is special, and ideally you would want to share it with the one person you commit your life to, the person you are going to work hard at loving for the rest of your life, it will be a marker that your relationship is something different to your relationship with anyone else in the world. I would guess that many of us would agree that this is actually a fairly cool view of sex, that it be something exclusive for a male and female who commit themselves to each other for life. unfortunately though our generation is here for the quick and easy and rather than sex being something special and exclusive it is something cheap and public.

This impulsive need for satisfaction and an over-realised sense of self importance I would suggest go a long way to also explain the growth of porn addiction within our culture

an over-realised sense of self importance linked with impulsiveness together lead to an over-realised sense of rights without responsibilities.

the world owes me
if i could have a dollar for every time someone talks about their rights without balancing it off with their responsibilities i would be a very rich man.

Once again i think this is linked into how we were brought up. Since our parents provided everything we needed and asked “how high” when we said “Jump!” we now think that everyone else should owe us that same level of service. I do realise that many business and companies will use and abuse you if you let them, but talking to many of my peers is just this list of “i should get this or that” but very little sense of commitment or loyalty.

general softness
Many of us have never done it tough, many of us have always had someone else come and deal with the messes we have created, and many of us have never faced the consequences of our decisions, so rather than being able to cope with the world we are emotional, impulse driven soft people with a massive chip on our shoulders who fall apart at the slightest sign of things going pear-shaped, and rather than dealing withe situation at hand and working through it, we withdraw further into our sense of “the world owes me” we blame others because our decisions are perfectly valid and there couldn’t be anything wrong with them.

Conclusion
Whenever you put something like this out in the public forum, some people will agree, some will be really offended and find fault yet others will think through the issues at hand and weigh up what might resonate and what is complete rubbish and just the rantings of another GenY who wants his voice heard.

I do not claim to have the ultimate truth in this area so take these thoughts or leave them, but if there is an element of truth in what i have said about our Generation i would ask you to consider what the impact might be on our kids and how we might try and change this so as we might limit the effect of our sins on our children.

that’s my 5 cents worth for today

Pope Resigns – Soft or Great Leader ?

It has been interesting reading through the flurry of news reports about the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. One of the things that I find amazing is that sooooo many people are in disbelief about his resignation, some are calling into questions his commitment to the position and so forth because he is the first Pope to resign and not die in the position in 600 years (not counting those that got chucked out). Is he soft and just can’t hack it, or is he actually a great leader?

I am going to cast my bets (can do that because he is roman Catholic not Baptist) on the fact that he is actually quite insightful as a leader. One thing that always amazes me within leadership, whether in the church or secular world is that often when people get the top spot, they just don’t know when to quit and to hand over the reigns for the greater good of the company or organization. It has been very evident in recent years with some CEO’s not letting go and not allowing new people coming through the ranks to take up the highest position and the role of leadership, and this has lead to their downfall.

I think there is something in us where we always want that top spot and don’t want to let go of it, but end up losing it because we strangle it to death, when we could have left and our leadership team could have continued to grow and go forward.

In the end is the Pope soft or a Great Leader? I will go with great leader, he recognizes that his time is done in the role and that he can’t do all that he needs to so that it will move forward, so he is happy to step aside and let someone more capable or energetic to  take the Roman Catholic Church forward. Good job Benedict, you are a great leader.

Drop in with Zack Giffin

Amazing footage and such a great skier

The importance of answering questions people are asking

One of the things that I have noticed with much of what we do within churches is that not only do we struggle to communicate with people but also the fact that often people don’t care about the questions that we are answering. I often struggle with this, because it is often much easier answering questions the just exist within “churchie” circles, but if we want to reach people outside the church we need to not only be communicating in a way that people can relate too and understand, but we also need to start with the questions, doubts and struggles that they have with life, God, faith, Christianity and the church.

In the lead-up to Easter we are trying to something a but different. On Thursday nights we are hosting a series called “Debunking Christianity” and going where many preachers and pastors fear to tread. Especially as we talk on the topic “Aren’t Christian’s just a bunch of narrow-minded, hypocritical homophobes?”

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