Jackson Carroll and Wade Roof in their book, Bridging Divided Worlds: Generational Cultures in Congregations, give a wonderful typology that helps us to understand the three basic congregation types in the US and how they function. The three types are the Inherited Model, the Blended Model, and the Generation-Specific Model.
The Inherited Model is a church where the programs and practices of the faith community are inherited from the past. These churches usually have multiple generations present and the leadership is aware of some of the generational differences but the church, as a whole, does nothing specific for any given generation. The assumption is that, “This is how we do things here.” People follow the past practices without questioning them. There can even be an unspoken assumption that what we do worked for my parents, grandparents, and great grand parents so it should work for my kids, grand-kids, and great-grand-kids. The focus is about maintaining the traditions as they focus us on our faith.
The struggle for Inherited Model churches right now is that cultural mobility and constant change have de-emphasized the importance of tradition and so most of the churches that represent this model are aging because younger generations simply do not care enough about tradition and so are uninterested in these churches.
The second model is the Blended Model in which churches intentionally develop ministries and programs that appeal to each generation present within their faith community. The goal is the spiritually feed each generation in a way that makes the most sense to that generation. Worship becomes one of the places where this diversity is seen the most, especially in the styles of music and types of liturgy used throughout each service. The goal is to try and provide enough spiritual sustenance to sustain all present knowing that there is no way to fill a specific generation up without sacrificing the nutrition of another generation.
These congregations usually contain the most conflict because each generation wants a bit more that they are getting. It is a difficult task to keep all the ministries as balanced as possible and a second difficult task is transitioning ministries as the older generation dies and a new, different generation is born.
The third model is the Generation-Specific Model in which a church makes its primary focus ministering to a single generation. In these churches, the ministry programs, worship style, musical choices are all tailored to appeal to a single specific generation. This does not mean that other generations are not present or that the church does not appeal to people from every generation. The core of the church is a single generation with everything pointing to that generation’s interests and understandings whether it is a church focused on the Baby-boomers or Gen. Xers.
The primary struggle for this model of church is that as the specific generation ages so does the core church membership and at some point the church will either need to slowly decline and die out with its generation or change what generation the ministries appeal to at the risk of alienating the original generation that founded the church.
So why is this typology important? Because it reminds us that God is present in every church and no one-way of doing and being church is the correct way. Churches are to point to God and not be a thing in and of them selves. Churches are always both divine and human and we need to make sure we don’t loose site of one over the other. To transition from one model to another is extremely difficult and is usually derailed by not fully understanding the model one is moving out of or into. All of these models fail when they loose sight of the living God behind each called group of believers.
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