February 2010 CoGS Wheels

During an enjoyable Christmas performance of The Nutcracker Suite by Ballet Kelowna, I could not help but be distracted by a young woman who persisted in texting repeatedly on her cell phone. Not only was the light annoying, but I felt it was also thoughtlessly inconsiderate of others. Shortly after I read a perceptive column in The Vancouver Sun by Shelley Fralic, "Will a new decade spell the end of Generation Me?"* At the last CoGS meeting, the Draft Report from Vision 2019 presented several key themes, including the need for the Anglican Church of Canada to find new ways to focus on youth and the family. The theatre encounter led me to thinking about how adult society and our church in particular have been failing our youth. I want to be clear from the outset that there are fine youth in our church who do not fit the stereotypes of Generation Me, but I contend that they are relatively few in number and are frequently overwhelmed as they struggle to live the Gospel in the indifferent and often hostile world of their secular peers.

Ms. Fralic contends that Generation Me young people have been raised by "those in-their-own image baby boomers to think life is all about them, so coddled and cosseted that they emerged from their cocoons as generational poster boys and girls for socially ingrained narcissism." And if that is not enough, "along came social media and the pervasive influence of pop culture, whereby Generation Me swallowed another dose of conceit and became Generation Look At Me." And finally the writer gave expression to my irritation with the texting teen, "This, for the most part, is a generation of youth raised without benefit of feeling shame, of personal embarrassment and boundaries, so obsessed with the minutiae of their daily goings-on and banal trivia that they’ve made billionaires of the lads who invented Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, iPhone, Utube and every other form of social media to which millions are so attached that they spend more time telling each other what they’re doing than actually doing it."

Ms. Fralic ends on a less cynical note hoping that "2010 will be the turnaround decade, whereby Generation Me gets a slap upside the head, not from the Me Generation but from harsh reality, and transforms into something closer to Generation We, where the outward is once again equal to the inward."

My experience with young people in my Parish and across the National Church is far from this bleak assessment. However, for most of Generation Me young adults, the Anglican Church of Canada's proclamation of the Gospel is irrelevant; we seem to have sadly lost any moral high ground we once may have held. A fundamental key for successful youth and family initiatives resulting from the Vision 2019 Project is for our church to again become a recognized place where parents are enabled to help their children acquire confident moral independence. And even if parents don’t care to do that, then the church still has a Gospel inspired imperative to try to reach and appeal to youth who will otherwise be adrift. Where else are young people going to acquire and honour moral principles such as selflessness and altruism, that add real value to society?

I believe that General Synod will agree to the Vision 2019 Project. We really don't know anymore how to successfully engage youth and their families and that is going to demand some innovative hard work. When the harsh realities of life that Ms. Fralic talks about inevitably hits young people from this and future generations, can they be equipped to meet those head-on by useful spiritual explorations and new foundations in faith effected by the Anglican church? Might that include turning the use of social media from banal trivia to the truly creative? If we fail our youth, I fear we will have few excuses, as our church shrinks ever further away.

*See Shelley Fralic, The Vancouver Sun, Page A5, December 24, 2009