SYZYGY MISSIONS SUPPORT NETWORK

While many of us are still coming to terms with Generation X, Generation Y sneaks up on us unawares!  Leaders in missions will be starting to encounter this generation, and they’ll be starting to realise that Ys aren’t quite what they expected.  People working in short-term have been dealing with Ys for quite a while now, so will be coming to terms with the fact that they do things differently to previous generations, but these people are now coming through into doing long-term where their differences will be rubbing their leaders up the wrong way.

Generation Y is the unimaginative name given to the generation following on from Generation X, and consists of those born (roughly) from 1980 to 2000.  They’re also called Generation Next or Millennials, but I’ll stick to Y as it’s easier to spell.  These people grew up connected, having mobile phones and computers from their youngest days.  Their families may have been broken, leading to a highly important need to belong, but their parents will have invested heavily in them so they are used to getting feedback and encouragement.  They also grew up after the end of the cold war, so they were promised peace, but now find that their lives overshadowed by the war on terror.  This can lead them to distrust authority and value honesty, authenticity and integrity.

What are these people going to be like as your co-workers? Their workplace expectations are not that different from those of previous generations, but they are far more reluctant to toe the line in the way their parents or grandparents might have done.  Older people might think of them as lazy, uncommitted, overconfident, disrespectful and impatient, but those are the flip side of great strengths:

Lazy?  These people are digital natives.  Because they grew up in a multi-media world they are able to surf Facebook, send text messages, listen to music and get on with their work at the same time.  But they don’t live to work.  They’re flexible and will be more concerned about getting the overall task done than by being at their desk at the right time.  They might be working at home at 10pm, not because they’re workaholics, but just because it works better for them.

Uncommitted?  Well, they’re not committed to things just because you think they ought to be.  Duty is not a word that features frequently in their vocabulary.  But they will be highly committed to things they believe in, even though it may not look like it to older generations.  Their desire for authenticity leads them to reject much that is latently hypocritical, but when they find something genuine, they will embrace it.

Overconfident?  Because they’ve had a lot of positive parenting, Ys believe in themselves, and because they’ve seen through authority structures, they won’t tolerate spending ten years doing the filing before they’re allowed to have an opinion.  They believe they have a contribution and they don’t understand why they can’t make it now.

Disrespectful?  They respect people, not positions, so if you aren’t confident as a leader and hide behind your position, they’ll see through you.  They respect people who show that they care, make wise decisions, and don’t try to give them corporate flannel.  If they speak out of turn, it’s only because they can see a problem and haven’t had a good answer for it.

Impatient?   Ys were born connected.  They get the answers they want off the internet in seconds.  They instant message their friends.  They just want to get on with things without being held up.

So as Ys become your partners in mission, how do you need to treat them?

Teamwork.  Their whole life is made up of connections, so the idea of working alone doesn’t exist.  They’ll share problems, bring in specialists, and network with anyone they need to.  So create a flexible team structure in which they can thrive and don’t tell them they can’t talk to someone in another office just because you have a territory dispute with another manager.

Managing.  Top-down hierarchies don’t work.  These people have had positive parenting.  Create for them an environment in which they can learn and develop skills.  Feedback to them regularly.  Don’t impose rules, explain reasons.  Don’t manage the process, mentor the person.

Communication.  Give them all the facts and explain why you’ve made a decision.  They need to know the reasons before they can believe.  Your answer doesn’t have to be 100% logical; you can bring in emotions as well.  Let them ask challenging questions.  When they see you communicate openly and honestly, and allow them to be part of the solution, they will trust you and become committed.

Fulfilment.  In the secular workplace, Generation Y is more concerned to find a job they can believe in than one that pays well (although they expect to be fairly remunerated!).  This is true in the Christian world as well.  You need to ensure that they believe in what they’re doing in order to get the best out of them, and try to make sure they feel they’ve been treated fairly.

Obviously, these are huge generalisations, and individual personalities differ greatly, but this information may help to explain to you why people under 30 seem to think and act strangely at times.  These generational characteristics may not be so pronounced in Christians, since they have also been subject to the unique influences of Christian discipleship and training in church, community and possibly Bible College.  However, they grew up in the same conditions as non-Christians, were educated together with them, and used the same media, so will demonstrate similar generational characteristics.  Get to know them better, and you’ll all end up working better together.

Is this church?

When you hear the word ‘church’ what image comes to mind?  A building?  A community?  A service?  A family?  Perhaps all of these do, or perhaps only some of them.  What do you think is essential for church?  Your answers to these questions may vary significantly from those of people of a different generation to you.  They might also acquire additional significance if you’re working in a missions community where the local church may have lengthy services in uncomfortable conditions, with repetitive singing in a language you don’t fully comprehend, and loud sermons that are not aimed at your needs.  And that’s just if you’re lucky enough not to be preaching or leading the worship.

For most older mission workers, church may not be an enjoyable experience, or even a relevant one, but it’s part of the job.  You go to church, because you should.  It’s expected of Christians, particularly of mission workers who should set a good example to the local believers.  And what happens there is pretty standard: Acts 2:42 sets out the four pillars of church: teaching, fellowship (whatever that is), communion and prayer.  Though we always leave out the embarrassing bit about having all things in common and nobody being poor – that was just culturally appropriate to the Jerusalem church.

Is this church?????

Somebody I spoke to recently was completely unable to understand why young people did not want be part of an experience like that.  They’re just not committed, she complained.  I was able to explain that young people (postmoderns, Gen X) are able to be highly committed, but only to things they believe in, and not merely to things somebody else thinks they ought to be committed to.  So younger mission workers are increasingly spurning traditional ways of doing church, just like young people in Europe.  They are finding new ways of doing things, and making them work, but this doesn’t always look like church to an older generation.

Why is it not church when a group of people meet regularly together in someone’s house for prayer, or worship, or Bible study?  Because they don’t do them all at the same time?  Because it’s not Sunday?  Because there’s no leadership?  Is that really what defines church?

This conflict has its roots in a transitional phase that the western world is going through at the moment: the much-talked-about but little-understood transition from modern to postmodern.  It’s not merely an intergenerational conflict where the old don’t understand the young and vice versa; it’s a change of epoch on a scale of the fall of the Roman Empire or the rise of the Enlightenment out of the middle ages.  It involves fundamentally different worldviews and ways of doing things.  Including church.

Is this church?

Here in the west there are already many different ways of doing church which do not fit the traditional model.  House church led to cell church, and 50 years later there are simple church, messy church, cyber church, deconstructed church, and an awful lot of people who love God together but don’t do church at all.  While this development may not have touched the cultures of the two thirds world in the same way yet, it has had an impact on a large number of young people who have grown up among a postmodern generation who are passionate about church in a different way.  When these young people enter the mission field, they want to keep doing things in a different way, but often the older generation not only sees this as a threat to the work they’ve spent their lives establishing, but doubts the very genuineness of the young people’s relationship with God.

I write this brief introduction to a highly complex issue in the hope that older mission workers will be able to be tolerant of younger ones who want to do things differently, and that younger ones may understand why the previous generation just can’t see what they see.  This of course relates only to the church needs of the mission worker; how it impacts on the church needs of the local believers is an entirely different matter!

This week adult TCK (Third Culture Kid) Gill Gouthwaite reflects on what it meant to come ‘home’ to England as a missionary kid.

To me, England was a land of aniseed balls and liquorice, sticks of rock and gobstoppers, dolly mixtures and wine gums.  It was a land of daisies and dandelions, cowslip and hawthorn, where the most dangerous nature got was the occasional bramble or rose-thorn, or on a particularly bad day, a nettle sting.   Food was sausage rolls and quiche, scalding hot tea or instant coffee in church cups (never with sugar, which rots your teeth in England, though presumably not in Brazil), smoky barbeques in spring showers, aspartame-flavoured orange squash and overdone lamb.  Hillwalking in cagoules, wet feet, the excitement of clambering over a stile, of reaching the summit and being lifted to stand proudly atop the trig point, eating soggy sandwiches, and sipping a well-deserved taste of mint liqueur at the local pub after a long day’s walking.  The Beano and the Dandy, stamps printed with pretty pictures, the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  This was England.

Naturally I knew when we returned that I didn’t know what the English were like.  Logically I knew this, but in my heart they were a simple, sweet people who saw my parents – and me by association – as heroes, willing to leave Everything to do the Will of God.

But to people at school this was not who I was.  I was the Brazilian girl who, disappointingly, turned out not have luxurious Latin locks or olive skin…  I was the American who had never lived north of Mexico.  I was the English girl who wasn’t even born here.  I had the right to whichever countries they chose, when they chose.  England, it seemed, was a land of Eurovision politics and sarcasm, of ‘health and safety’, of the infernal ‘Spice Girls’ and of  ‘Steps’, where one could dislike any and all of these things, but one must absolutely know who they were and why one disliked them.  England was also a place of profound ignorance and apathy about international suffering, which, when it impinged on one’s consciousness, could be assuaged by putting £2 in Oxfam’s collection bucket.

This was how I felt for years.  Things have changed now, both in me and in this, one of my countries.  But the changes did not come easily, or quickly.  I wish now that someone had taken me under their wing and taught me why it is that we don’t like Eurovision, but still we watch it; who ‘Posh Spice’ was, and to pity her; and to laugh aloud at the absurdity of a ‘wet floor’ sign in a shower room.  I could not laugh then, but now I do, by the grace of God.

Gill still likes to stand proudly atop trig points, but no longer needs to be lifted. . .

My host for my week-long trip to Ndola was my good friend Lene Pedersen, who many will know following her speaking tour in Britain last year, and it was great to spend time with her, get to know her fiancé Dale, and help them prepare for their wedding next month.  Lene continues to be one of the three directors at Lifeline in Zambia – a ministry which we featured last August which provides home-based care and support for people suffering from AIDS/HIV.  LiZ continues to develop and it was an encouragement to visit premises which I had not been to before and see how well suited they are to managing the work and training the volunteers.  There is also a commitment to take on more highly qualified staff which is already having benefits for the work.

I returned for the first time in seven years to Kaniki Bible College, which trains church leaders for the Apostolic Church in Zambia.  There has been a lot of staff turnover since then, and only the Zambian workers whom I knew remain there.  All the overseas staff have changed, and the college is led by a new Zambian Principal supported by two other African faculty members.  There are currently 55 students and there is also a new BA course.  There are plans to build a new classroom block to meet the increased number of students.

Also on the Kaniki campus is African Quest, a missions training and discipleship programme for young people with which I have been involved since its beginning 15 years ago.  Many fine young people have been through this programme and gone on to be involved in missions in a variety of ways, and AQ is currently led by two of its former students, Tim & Gemma Mills.  This six month gap course is currently recruiting for next year and I will feature it in more detail later this summer.

I also spent some time with the new leaders of School Mission for Christ International This fantastic ministry employs Zambian pastors to go into schools and preach the gospel.  Thousands of students have met Jesus in this way, and teachers testify to the return of stolen property, decline in the use of drugs, and falling pregnancy rates as a result.  This powerful witness leads many teachers also to give their lives to Christ.  SMFCI is looking to expand both within Zambia and to neighbouring countries.

Near to Kaniki is Jabulani Children’s Village, where Tom & Ruth Dufke took over an abandoned farm 13 years ago with a view to developing a home for needy children.  There are currently 18 children living at the site, in small, ‘family’-type cottages.  With a view to maintaining financial independence, the village is partly funded by a huge sawmill operation, which now employs 65 local people, thereby keeping them out of poverty and providing food and education for their children.  There are also training facilities for the community on site, such as a sewing college, and there is a clinic to meet the needs of the local community.

While visiting these various ministries and catching up with old friends, I was able to spend a lot of time encouraging mission workers, helping them understand the causes of stress in their lives, and planning how Syzygy can help to support them.  Like many overseas mission workers, they have a number of challenges to face, and it was a joy to be able to help them find ways of dealing with them.

I was talking recently to a young woman who’s been serving the Lord in France for a few years.  In the course of conversation I enquired whether she’s thinking of doing missions long-term.

“Long-term!” she exclaimed, aghast.  “I’m postmodern; I don’t do long-term.”

Which raises an interesting question: how do people who don’t do long-term engage with missions that do?  Which one changes?  And how? Or can the two approaches be brought together?

The traditional missions model thinks of ‘terms’ of 3-5 years with a break in the home country in between.  I’ve heard it said that in your first term you start learning the language, in the second you start to appreciate the culture, and in the third you’re just about ready to start doing some useful work.  Add in the time you spent preparing to go, at Bible college, raising support and getting other training, and it could be nearly 15 years before you’re actually getting bedded in.  That’s the equivalent of nearly two careers for a postmodern!

It seems likely that in future, more people will do missions as a phase of their life rather than make it a long-term career choice.  This has huge implications for those organisations which stress language acquisition and cultural familiarisation.  But maybe postmoderns with their global perspective will actually integrate much more effectively than their predecessors, who may speak the language fluently but may also have a tendency to isolate themselves in homogeneous micro-communities.

We need to accept that increased turnover is a fact of life.  People come and go.  We can loathe that or we can embrace it.  It might mean that young people don’t stay with us for life, but it also means that older people can join in at a later stage in life than they might previously have done, bringing life skills with them.  The important thing is that we greet people well, and say goodbye well too.  Moving on is neither a lack of commitment or a failure.