Baby Boomers Rule

I just returned from a worship-music conference at which one of the main speakers was Tex Sample, retired United Methodist pastor and seminary professor, author, and cultural observer, commentator, and guru. I couldn't help but recall another event nearly 25 years earlier at which Tex Sample was also the main speaker. At that event, he spoke about the Baby Boomer generation and the tremendous impact it was about to have on the society and culture, including the church. He described the coming change, using the image of a python that just swallowed a large pig for its dinner. The python is the culture and the pig bulging inside the python is the Baby Boomers (BBs). As the generational bulge moves through the cultural python, it transforms everything in its wake.

Twenty-five years have passed since Sample began talking about the effects the BBs would have. As a BB myself, I've lived through that transformation and had a part in transforming culture, society, and the church. The transformation is still going on, of course, as it is by generations that follow. But we BBs continue to be a major force for change. The oldest BBs are about to turn age 60; the youngest, age 43. There are about 70 million or so of us in the USA today. And now, we're entering our prime years of influence, power, authority, and wealth. We own the companies and businesses, run the governments, control the institutions, and spend the money. In the church, we are the senior pastors, district superintendents, bishops, members of General Conference, committee chairs, general agency heads, and main financial contributors to church offering plates.

Who Are the Baby Boomers?
We began as idealists, but under the influence of our parents, we quickly became consumers. We traded our youthful idealism for materialism and stuff. The older BBs were idealists; but as we moved through our youth and adolescence, we were shocked by the Kennedy and King assassinations, Civil Rights struggles and violence, urban riots, Vietnam War protests and violence, students killed on college campuses, and the ever-present threat of nuclear destruction. Our parents' patriotism was replaced by our own suspicion of all things big and institutional, including government, business, education, and religion. We sought alternative experiences in spirituality, drugs, New Age, and Eastern philosophy and religion.

Baby Boomer Worship and Music
In addition to the politics of civil rights and war protesting, our worship was influenced by the reforms and new freedoms of Vatican II, the mysticism and spirituality of the charismatic movement, and the alternative spiritualities of the East, as well as rising secularism. We left our comfortable neighborhood and downtown churches and flocked in large numbers to the new suburban megachurches.

BBs were shaped by Rock & Roll. Our musical influences were Elvis, Peter-Paul-and-Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Beatles, and the many early Do-Whop and Motown artists. Musical style in the church came to imitate that of the secular culture. We embraced a variety of styles, many of them dominated by the solo singer and pop groups. Our melodies, harmonies, progressions, underlying rhythms, and musical forms in church came to resemble those of secular music. Solo singers who looked and sounded much like their secular artist counterparts took their place along with our choirs on Sunday mornings, and sometimes even replaced them. Smaller, well-trained and rehearsed praise teams and bands sometimes replaced the choir and the organ. Congregational song also resembles the emotional expression of feelings of hurt, disenfranchisement, loneliness, and longing common to pop music. Our songs may also express a longing and need for close communion with God, in lyrics and musical style similar to a secular love song. We've largely given up our attachment to the traditional hymns of the past Wesley hymns, Fanny Crosby, and the great hymns of the church for simple charismatic choruses, Scripture songs, and the contemporary praise and worship music. In worship, we don't want to be manipulated, dominated, controlled, or led by someone else's ideals. We expect to be left to develop at our own pace. We are seekers and searchers, and we want to seek and search according to our own rather than someone else's plan. Encourage us, yes; control us, no!

Baby Boomers are just now at our peak of influence. We will never be as dominant and controlling as we are today. As we age, we will decline, die, and move off center stage, to be replaced by the rising younger generations Post Moderns, Gen-X, and the Millennials. But as we age, we will remain in the church. Local congregations will be filled with aging Baby Boomer members. What will local churches do with us? We'll be looking for continued opportunities to experience and express ourselves through BB worship and music. We'll continue to need to be nurtured through educational classes and study groups. We'll be looking for opportunities for leisure activities. And we'll want to continue to serve the church in meaningful and useful capacities. And even though we're declining, there will be vast numbers of us. Tex Sample's pig has moved a good deal further through the body of the python today, but it still has a good way to go.