Introduction
This is a book by and about baby boomers. In case you didn't notice, the generation born between 1946 and 1964 is slowly taking over our country and our churches, and that makes them worth looking at in a new light. A fad has been defined as "something that goes in one era and out the other." You'll soon see that tracking baby boomers is not a fad because our sheer size makes us a force and an influence in American society that must continually be reckoned with. Our influence is only gaining ground across our land — we are fast becoming the new "grown ups"— a massive new power bloc in America with very opinionated views about almost everything.
Consider this: the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 76 million people were born in the U.S. between 1946 and 1964. Add to that number all of the children boomers have had (we are on the verge of what I call a boomer boom), and you arrive at a total of at least 130 million people — half of the population of the United States! Boomers are indeed the largest generation ever seen in this country, and all projections indicate that these numbers will not be matched again in the lifetime of anyone reading this book.
No longer just making noise on the sidelines, boomers are taking charge of the corporations, factories, organizations, schools, and churches of our land. With this positioning comes influence, the power to change the way things are viewed and done. In short, baby boomers are taking over and running America!
I am a card-carrying baby boomer, born in 1951 to German
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parents in Huntsville, Alabama. I arrived in the world squarely in the bulge of the early boom years. During the 60s I became a hippie and a yippie, deeply involved in the drug counterculture and the student riots on my college campus, the University of Alabama. Many of us dropped out of the path our parents had planned for us, rejecting en masse the world their generation was handing us on a not-so-silver platter. I guess we realized later that our solutions to the ills of this world weren't much better than theirs, but at least we tried to make a difference as a generation.
At every turn of my life, even now as I approach the benchmark 40, my consciousness of who I am always seems to be influenced by certain baby-boomer values. We seem to have a consciousness as a generation that holds us together like glue — values, beliefs, and attitudes unique to us.
We need to understand ourselves better. We need to understand where the battles are being fought over the values of this generation. Anyone who is a baby boomer and also committed to a lifestyle of obedience to Jesus Christ needs to recognize some of the unique pressures that our generation puts on us, forcing us at times to shout, "Help! I'm a baby boomer."
In this journey through a generation, we will look at who the baby boomers really are, what they believe (unique value systems), and how Christian boomers can cope with the unique pressures of their generation. We will propose some alternative lifestyle values for Christian boomers who want to do more than survive, who want to impact their generation for Christ. At the end of each chapter, I've included questions which will help you think through important issues. The questions may also be used for group study.
The goal of this book is to crawl inside the head. of the baby boomer to understand what makes this generation tick and the unique traits and values that have welded our generation together in strange ways. To understand our roots is
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to understand our values. But we really only start there. Understanding must lead to action. We must impact the biggest generation America has ever seen. We will have to use different methods and different approaches — even a new language — because each generation has its own set of values and perspectives, like a new culture in a foreign land.
No one is sure how many baby boomers are also believers — followers of Jesus Christ committed to making a difference in their world. The numbers are unimportant. What is important is their influence. One of the basic questions this book asks is, "Who is influencing whom?" What effect is the general value system and lifestyle of baby boomers having on Christians trying to live a Christ-honoring life? And vice versa, what impact are we believing boomers having on our fellow generation? That last question is the critical issue of this book.
In writing this book, I have studied contemporary literature in books and periodicals about our baby-boom generation to discover what people are saying about us and the times in which we live. The collective consciousness of our generation comes through loud and clear, in countless books, movies, TV shows, and newspaper and magazine articles. I have tried to summarize and present that consciousness — our generational values — and then run them through my own biblical convictions as a believing boomer. I trust the results will be as enlightening for you as they have been for me.
Hans Finzel
January 1989
Garden Grove, California
