This is part 3 of a series on The Church, Technology, Millenials, and the Generation to Come.

In Part One: Deconstructing Millenials, we looked at the fact that the Church is already late to the party in trying to capture the attention of so-called Millenials. In Part Two: It’s Not the What, It’s the Why we looked at the philosophical (both practical and theoretical) shifts taking place and how why those shifts are more important than simple behavior modeling for predicting trends. Here we will look at the generation coming after the Millenials (here called the “Homelanders”), a generation that the Church has the opportunity to prepare for.

In their book, The Fourth Turning, sociologists Strauss and Howe go to great lengths to discuss the concepts of mythmaking and archetypes (an idea raised to 20th century popularity by Carl Jung, but dating back much farther). Strauss and Howe present the array of Prophet, Nomad, Hero, and Artist — and they track these archetypes over the past 500 years (or 26 generations). As they state, “Many academic historians decry mythmaking whenever they spot it,” however, the authors make a very convincing case.

If we follow their hypothesis, then we encounter a series of generational archetypes known all-too-well in American consciousness: The G.I. Generation (Hero), The Silent Generation (Artist), The Boom Generation (Prophet), The 13th Generation aka Gen X (Nomad), and The Millenial Generation (Hero ?). Destined to follow next would be the “Homelanders”, those born post-9/11/01.

Their predecessor Artist generation — “Silent” born 1925-1942 — contained some of the least silent members of the past century; names we still call to mind often: Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and virtually every member of the classic Motown roster. You’ll find actors and activists from the Monty Python team, to Muhammad Ali, to Martin Luther King Jr. “…the sensitive rock ‘n’ rollers and civil rights advocates of a post-Crisis era…”

Here are some thoughts from the authors on what the next generation of artists may look like,

• Picture compulsory kindergarten uniforms in a time of wholesome new trends in young-adult fashion.
• They will be the Crisis era’s fearful watchers, tiny helpers, and (if all goes well) lucky inheritors. Tethered close to home, they will do helpful deeds like recycling, keyboarding, or tending to elders, the circa-2020 equivalents of planting World War II victory gardens or collecting scrap metal.
• Crisp rights and wrongs will be a common adult message, unquestioning compliance the expected response.
• Children’s activities that felt new for Millenials will now feel well established.
• No one will be particularly interested in teen culture, except to chastise anything that offends.
• Later in life, they will recall their Crisis-era child’s world as having been oversimple, overslowed, overprotected, too grounded in moral cement — and, like the Silent, they will loosen parental authority accordingly. (297-298)

All of this may seem hard to believe in today’s age of Miley’s twerking, an incredible spate of teen suicide brought on through abuse and bullying, and rampant sexuality. A swing back to the other side, however, may be more close than many realize. As Millenials begin to give birth and reconnect with the pre/post-Modernism discussed previously, we can expect to see values rise. They likely won’t resemble what they were in the 40s and 50s, but they will likely stand in stark contrast to today’s environment.

If we look into the future through this lens, with our historical forerunners such as those mentioned above, we may rightly begin to prepare for the next generation… a generation in search of meaning, with time to spare, and an openness that may have gone unseen over recent decades. To be clear, though, this does not in any way ease the task of speaking to this generation as they will likely bear the marks of post-modernism including a distrust for grand stories and definitive answers.

We must bare all of this in mind as we begin to look at ways to prepare for this rising generation… which, I promise, we’ll finally look at next time.