Worship Leader - September, 2007

and seeking a rational defense of the faith. They are caught up in an Enlightenment dualism that separates mind and body and places the emphasis on right beliefs with little regard to the fact that transformative religious experience may involve all the senses, not just cognition. The attempt by the Resisters to reclaim the faith has legitimacy, but its appeal will only be to a small group of intellectuals or philosopher wannabe’s. It has the feeling of a sectarian response—trying to create a “pure” form of Christianity—without respect to the complex ways in which Christian faith and practice have always been culturally and politically embedded. Furthermore, the Resisters may use computers to write their tomes and send e-mail, but they have little appreciation for the potential of digitally generated art or music in worship.

Reclaimers

The Reclaimers are reacting to the sterile worship locations of most mega-churches and the emphasis on entertaining worship. They happily forego the skits and jokes and Hawaiian shirts of Appropriator clergy in favor of a gothic cathedral, flowing incense, candles on a well worn altar, robed priests and dim light streaming in through stained glass. They believe that tradition has value— that the saints of ancient times developed liturgical and meditation practices that have the potential to bring one closer to God. While they are backward looking, they are surprisingly postmodern in their desire to unite mind and body in mystical union with the Holy. Although some Reclaimers seek out Orthodox churches (e.g., Greek, Russian, etc.) in which to worship, a much larger group of people are turning to the Anglican tradition and especially to those congregations that prize the sensuality of “high church” liturgy. In terms of the digital revolution, Reclaimers typically see the church as a refuge from the bombardment of the commercial world. Worship is a time to shut out the external buzz of contemporary life and move inward to a place where God’s presence can be felt more than proclaimed in words.

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H ere are some stats about the Millennial generation as found on Wikipedia, and in U SA Today, LA Times and CNBC News Articles.

GENERATIONAL STATISTICS:

■ Born roughly between 1977-2000.

■ Millennials are the largest generation since the Baby Boomers

(about 76 million people).

■ They are the newest group to enter the professional workplace.

■ They are racially and ethnically diverse.

■ Sociologists define Millennials as those youths raised in the sensory-inundated environment of digital technology and mass media at the Millennium.

EVENTS THAT HAVE DEFINED THE GENERATION:

■ The Challenger explosion on January 28, 1986 is one major event that separates Generation X and Millennials, as most members of Millennials were either not yet born or too young to remember this major national event.

■ The fall of the Soviet Union and the First Gulf War are both midway events for members of Millennials, occurring in 1991, as many members were old enough to remember these events as children, but many had not yet been born.

■ The Columbine High School Massacre.

■ The date of the September 11 attacks is an often-proposed end-point for the generation. Those that were not yet born in 2001 and those that were otherwise too young to remember and/or understand the events of that day (about 1997 up) would thus be grouped into the Millennial Generation.