This paper, originally published in the peer reviewed Journal of Youth and Theology, edition 3, volume 1, 2004 (see http://www.iasym.org), aims to expose youth professionals to a number of opportunities within the corporate business world. This will enable youth professionals to self-fund their ministries/work, as well as gain credibility and experience in their area of expertise. The paper outlines the need that the corporate world has with regards to an understanding of today’s youth culture, as well as provides specific guidelines for ministry professionals who wish to pursue part-time (or full-time) consulting work in the corporate world. The paper specifically ignores theological and ethical issues such work may provoke. Since it was written in 2003, it also doesn’t take into account the many social media and digital opportunities to prove your expertise that are now available. These should obviously be utilised as part of developing one’s profile.
Expanding Youth Professionals Opportunities
The contribution that not-for-profit youth professionals can make in the corporate world
by Dr Graeme Codrington (2003)
The Professional Youth Ministry Problem
One of the abiding complaints of professional youth ministers and workers1 around the world is that they are not taken seriously. They are often seen as glorified baby-sitters or cheerleaders. Yet, in an increasing number of countries, there is a growing number of professionally trained, well qualified, called and committed life-long career youth workers and ministers (“youth professionals”).2 These people are as qualified in their specialised field as any other professionals are in theirs. Their expert knowledge and critical skills in fields such as childcare, adolescent development, youth culture and group dynamics, together with deep understanding of related disciplines, such as theology, psychology, sociology and education, set these youth professionals apart in today’s world. Yet, they are often not accorded the recognition they deserve, or the responsibilities they are equipped to handle.
In addition to these systemic challenges, youth professionals also facea financial challenge at the start of the 21st century. Churches, denominations, missions and youth agencies are no longer receiving the funding they were some years ago.3 Budgets are tight, and full-time youth professionals are seen as a luxury in many places. Many are ridiculously underpaid, and cannot sustain a career, and therefore are either forced to go part-time, or to abandon youth work/ministry all together.
This paper aims to expose youth professionals to a number of opportunities within the corporate business world that can address the challenges already mentioned. These opportunities involve consulting to Corporates in the areas of youth culture, with applications that include human resources, marketing, leadership and strategy planning. In exchange, youth professionals will be able to self-fund their ministries and activities, on what has traditionally been called a “tent making” basis.4 This paper does not seek to address the ethical issues that this may raise, nor does it attempt to differentiate between youth professionals “just doing a job” and those who feel “called” in a specific way. It does not defend the underlying theological position of youth professionals. Rather, it seeks to position youth professionals within the broader context of professions, motivate youth professionals to see a role and opportunities outside the strict confines of their current youth ministry and youth work contexts, and to provide practical guidelines for those who wish to move in this direction.
The Changing Business Environment
The world is changing, at an increasing rate.5 It was Alvin Toffler6 who first popularised our understanding of the psychological and sociological impact of constant change. The cause of the changes taking place in society today could be simplistically summarised as a gradual transition from the Industrial era through the Information era to a “relational economy”.7 The Industrial Era taught companies about efficiency, effectiveness and business basics as reflected in their annual financial statements. The Information era is teaching companies about quality, technology, communication, networks, customer service and market connectivity. But that’s not enough! Today the world is driven by relationships. In a high-tech world people are more and more demanding high touch. This is true both inside and outside organisations and corporations. Internally companies have to do much more than simply pay people’s salaries on time in order to attract, retain and motivate their best staff. Externally companies have to do more than provide quality products at a fair price in order to get customers on board.
These days, companies and their competitors are selling nearly the same products and services, to the same customers, at about the same price and quality, using the same distribution channels, advertising in the same media, using similar techniques. And they even swap staff every few years. So why should anyone buy from a particular company? Why should anyone work for them? Today, people are less interested in WHAT a company is selling, and more interested in WHO they are. The basis of competitive advantage is relationships,8 emotional intelligence,9 connections, ethics, social responsibility and basic people skills.
In this environment, the ability to attract, retain, motivate and get the best out of employees is a critical component of business success. The Human Resources (or Personnel) function should now be at the strategic core of every business, and people issues are no longer “the soft stuff” that can be relegated to a department. But businesses have a problem. Virtually every annual report states that “people are our most important asset”, but without being aware of the dangerous position that puts a company into: people are the only asset a company has no real control over.
A New World Requires a New Approach
The generation currently dominating the workplace, those people born in the late 1940s through 1960s (the so-called “Baby Boomers”),10 were born at the start of the Information era and their thinking has been largely shaped by the transition from an Industrial era mentality to an Information era mindset. Collins and Porras sum up the shift in work culture that has dominated the past few decades:
The new economy culture, which emerged in the early 1980’s, rested on3 primary tenets: freedom and self-direction in your work; purpose and contribution through your work; and wealth creation by your work. Central to the new economy culture was the idea that work is our primary activity, and that through work, properly constructed, we can attain much of the meaning that we are looking for in life. Driving the new economy were immensely talented, energetic people looking for a practical answer to a fundamental question: how can I create work I’m passionate about, that makes a contribution, and that makes money?11
The next generation, just entering the workplace – those people born in the 1960s through 1980s (the so-called “Generation Xers”)12 – have grown up on the cusp of the transition to the era of emotions – the relationship economy. They are pushing the work boundaries even further, and redefining the corporate world even more. The young Generation Xers are intuitively ready for an even newer era of business models. “Success is no longer measured by the size of the paycheck. Success equals meaningful and challenging work.”13 Bennis and Thomas14 compare the last leaders born in the Industrial era (the “geezers”, born 1920-1940) to the first leaders to be born in the Relationship era (the “geeks”, born 1970-1990), and demonstrate that the single biggest difference between these two groups of leaders is that at age 25, geezers were looking to build their careers, whilst today’s young people are trying desperately to create a balance between work and “life”.
This new generation requires a different leadership style and acts differently as employees. It has been said that as employees they act more like consultants. They are motivated more by flexibility than money. They value adaptability more than strategy or vision. They don’t live to work (like the Boomers did) – rather, they work so that they can have a life. And they still want personal fulfilment, a sense of purpose, and financial reward.15 In short, these employees have more in common with volunteers than employees. The problem is that in most cases the leaders and managers who need to work with these new generation employees have not been trained for the relationship economy (and some even battle with the information economy), nor do they personally have this new economy mindset. They are not used to their employees acting like volunteers. They are not loyal to the organisation that employs them – at least not as their parents and grandparents understand loyalty. Rather, for them, the business world and employment provides an opportunity for self development and they see themselves on a continual basis as being marketable in a broader range of job opportunities than just their current employer.16
This generation requires a different style of leadership and management in order to be motivated and in order to be retained within the environment in which they find themselves. The leadership that predominated in the Industrial era, leadership that was hierarchical in nature, that relied quite a lot on fear and on the machinations of a system, have long been ineffective. Leadership that predominated in the Information era, focussed almost solely on function and performance, on quality, competencies and deliverables, but ignoring the “human” side of the human being, is also coming under strain now. In most businesses today leaders realise that a more “systems-sensitive”17 and emotionally intelligent approach is required for leadership. Recent business trends specifically include the flattening of hierarchies, decentralisation of control and the distribution of leadership throughout the organisation, as companies start to take more seriously the need by employees for flexibility, humanity and a more adequate integration of their private and business lives.
The corporate world is aware of the changes taking place within society and culture that are requiring new approaches to leadership. Leaders therefore need new skills in addition to the skills that they have had before. It is not that the skills that they had – skills of control, management, supervision, delegation, and other classic leadership stalwarts – are no longer valid or necessary. Leaders still need these skills. But they now need more. In addition to the old skill set, a new skill set is required these days, as leadership takes place in an environment that needs more from these leaders. They need a lot more emotional intelligence. Leaders need better relational skills. Leaders need systems thinking and a system approach to what they are doing.
As we consider this new approach to the workplace and what Corporates have to do in order to attract and retain their best staff, it is interesting to note that many of the techniques that are being suggested in some of the more cutting-edge literature, advocate and suggest techniques that are well known to leaders within non profit organisations18 , including youth professionals. Being able to keep volunteers happy, to attract them and retain them and motivate them and get the most out of volunteers, does not rely on simply working within a contract of “I pay you money and you work for me”. Working with volunteers and getting them motivated requires understanding the entire “system” that volunteers come from and understanding their needs, their desires and their reasons for doing the work that they are doing on a volunteer basis.
Leading Volunteers
It is therefore the contention of this paper that those people who work in, and have a clear understanding of, the volunteer-based organisation, are in a unique position to be able to provide resources and advice to the corporate world at the start of the 21st century. Peter Drucker, one of the world’s most famous management consultants, has turned his considerable attentions to the non-profit sector. He has in fact founded a foundation for non-profit leadership and management,19 and his principles are now being widely applied in volunteer based organisations.20
Of course, non-profit organisations are places that corporate leaders have not often gone to for lessons on leadership and management – perhaps arrogantly they have felt the lessons should flow the other way. And the non-profit sector has a rather bad reputation for being “do-gooders” with little interest in administration and good governance principles. This is, of course, not entirely accurate, and recent corporate scandals show that all economic sectors are open to scandal. It is the contention of this paper that the issue of leadership is much more developed in the non-profit world than in the corporate world. In the non-profit sector, leaders have to deal every day with volunteers – people who could just walk away. This has meant that they have had to develop an empathy and an understanding of the people that they lead in order to get the most out of them. That will mean a daily focus on understanding the needs and aspirations of employees, and changing the role of management into a service mentality towards employees. These lessons can be learnt by looking at successful leadership in volunteer-based organisations. If today’s young people within a corporate environment have a volunteer type mentality and attitude towards their work then certainly some of the leadership qualities evident in good non-profit organisations would be helpful within the corporate environment at the moment.
What the Youth Worker Has to Offer
In the environment briefly sketched above, the youth professional has some serious offerings, including (but not limited to) the following:
1. Understanding youth culture and youth trends. Companies are in dire need of expert understanding of the mind and soul of today’s young people. From a marketing perspective, this understanding is absolutely critical to selling their products into the youth market segment(s).21 But more importantly, companies are really battling to attract, motivate and retain the best young people. There is a war for talent22 out there, and to get a competitive advantage in terms of employees, companies (especially personnel departments) need some expert insights into today’s young people. Christian youth professionals have always been at the forefront of understanding developments in youth culture.23 It is, in a sense, our stock in trade. We are also aware, possibly more than others, of how today’s youth trends are harbingers of future changes in society.24
2. Working with multi-generational teams. One of the biggest issues in the modern workplace is generational conflict. A raft of business books are emerging, attempting to assist companies to understand and deal with the generation gaps at work.25 In this growing field of study and application, Christians have always been at the forefront, and youth professionals have access to world-class materials on generational issues.26
3. Working with volunteers. As described above, the situation in the corporate world is now very much akin to the world youth professionals know very well. Attracting, retaining and motivating volunteers takes a very different set of skills, and an approach to leadership the corporate world needs to understand. There are many models available in the church. The obvious one is “servant leadership”,27 but others include “Principle-centered leadership”28 and “Invitational leadership”.29 Creating an environment in which today’s young people want to participate requires a new approach to motivating them, and will include providing many non-traditional incentives and rewards. Youth professionals may be surprised at the low level of understanding of basic human motivation that exists in the corporate world, and how many of the creative solutions used in youth programmes are easily transferable to the corporate world.
4. New communication techniques. Youth professionals are experts at packaging information in exciting formats that hold the attention of today’s young people. From the use of multimedia and movie and music clips to high level storytelling and the use of analogies, parables and metaphors, youth professionals are amongst the most gifted communicators in the world. Many youth groups also use cutting edge internet, webpage, cell phone and SMS (short message service text messaging) technologies to communicate. Most corporate webpages are little more than digital company brochures, and are not “funky”, exciting or alluring for the digital generation.
5. Pastoral skills. The basic skills of pastoring, including counselling, listening, motivation, gift/talent analysis and personal development are highly prized skills within the corporate world. More and more companies are retaining the services of professional “coaches” and clinical psychologists to assist them with human development. The rise in popularity of TV shows based on pop psychology, from segments on Oprah to Dr Phil is also an indication that these skills are now becoming seen as important within the general community. Whole being wellness is seen as important, and who better than those who can also bring a spiritual dimension to be involved in this emerging aspect of corporate life, than professionals trained in personal formation. The key to applying these skills in the corporate world will obviously be to adapt the overt proselytising motive that often accompanies pastoral work.
6. Getting women involved. It goes without saying that a world where emotional intelligence is becoming more important will also be a world that is more open than ever before for the involvement of women. Many youth professionals work in environments that have pioneered the involvement of women within different church denominations and organisations, and have an understanding of some of the difficulties and challenges faced by women professionals. The corporate world is no different, as a male bastion, and the experiences of those who have paved the way for women to become youth professionals will be useful in the corporate world as well.
Take the First Steps
One of the biggest problems facing youth professionals who wish to make the move to corporate consulting is that of confidence. There is often a feeling that working in a faith-based, non-profit, volunteer-focussed environment is too different, even inferior, to the corporate world. The simple response is that the corporate world has a different vocabulary and a difference scale, but besides that, faces many of the same issues, and operates in the same cultures and contexts that youth professionals do.
In order to bridge the confidence gap, develop and understand the vocabulary, and also fill in actual missing or underdeveloped skills, the following steps are recommended:
1. Read more. There are three categories of books that youth professionals who wish to move into consulting need to be reading: (1) youth culture books written by secular writers,30 in order to see how youth culture is being filtered and analysed by those with no spiritual bias or objective; (2) business books that describe the business environment of the21st century,31 and assist in developing a business vocabulary;32 (3) books to assist you in developing your consulting skills.33
2. Get real life business experience. One of the dangers in any form of full-time ministry, is that eager young people get involved in youth committees while at school. They are then promoted to youth leaders as they near the end of their schooling (often in a misguided attempt to simply keep them coming to the youth group), and from there fell a call to ministry, and go straight to seminary or into a full-time youth leadership position. They have no “real world” experience, and no understanding of the pressures facing business people. To obtain such experience would be invaluable. This does not require leaving ministry, but rather looking for part-time employment, or, better, even doing “volunteer” type work at businesses owned by people in their church. Simply being in an office environment on a regular basis will be helpful in gaining some perspective on the corporate world. However, youth professionals should not underestimate the skills they do have. A lot of experience in terms of leadership skills, strategy and scenario planning abilities, motivational techniques and people management skills is gained simply by keeping their ministries and organisations functioning, as balance the needs and passions of the volunteers that work with them and for them, with the needs and directives of their donors and sponsors, as well as the needs, desires and interests of the young people that they work for and minister to.
3. Develop a seminar. The easiest way to start consulting, is to simply develop a seminar that you present at free-to-view events. These can include business breakfasts arranged at your church, university or organisation, or school parent’s evenings. The idea is to develop a high-impact presentation that highlights key aspects of youth culture, with application to business. The easiest aspects of business to target are marketing and human resources (staffing and personnel issues, including teamwork, staff motivation and retention, and skills training). Make it clear that you are doing the free presentation as a way of marketing your services to;companies who wish to contract you to deliver the same presentation/seminar for their company, or wish to contract you to work with them to unpack some of your insights in a consulting role for them.
4. Write and broadcast. Most newspapers, magazines, radio talk shows and television actuality shows, will take submissions from the public, and well written/presented, insightful information on youth culture is great content for such media. Don’t be shy to create a website, and start posting a weekly, short and sharp analysis of youth culture and societal trends. Promote this website, and encourage reprinting of the content, with reference back to yourself.
5. Collaborate. There are many consultants and professional speakers who are good at what they do, but don’t have cutting edge content. If there are consultants in your constituency, that you trust and admire, offer your content to them, in exchange for consulting experience and exposure, and a share in the revenue, of course.
6. Create a business plan. It is beyond the scope of this paper to provide details for creating a business plan. Suffice it to say, that the danger for the youth professional is of undercharging for their time, and of not being professionally presented when marketing in the business world. Of course, people within your own constituency may battle to see you in a different context, and want to toss you a few coins for your time, treating you as a youth worker who deserves not much more than a tip and a thank you note. You will need to work hard against this. Do not be discouraged – it does take some time for word of mouth to get around and to develop a reputation for cutting edge content that deserves professional fees.
7. Ask for help. Don’t be scared to pick the brains of business people in your church or community. You will be surprised how helpful many of them are prepared to be if you take them out for a cup of coffee. Don’t be scared to set up formal mentor relationships with Christian business people. In certain circumstances, it may be prudent to create a personal accountability board, with members from your constituency who can provide valuable insights and directions, and also keep you accountable as you head into the corporate arena.
The Potential Benefits
The most obvious benefit of selling youth expertise to the corporate world is financial. The corporate world places a much higher financial value on intellectual capital than the Christian community does, and using your professional expertise should bring financial rewards similar to other professionals in related fields. This is not necessarily self-enrichment, especially if the purpose of the work is tent making. In this case, it becomes a way to redirect funds from the corporate world to ministry activities.
But the benefits are not simply financial. In addition, the youth professional may find personal fulfilment and growth as they develop a new side of their abilities and expertise. This development should result in greater insights into their core speciality and assist them in preparing young people for the changing corporate world. Most youth professionals understand that their role in formation of young people extends well beyond simple spiritual formation. In fact, most understand that spiritual formation cannot take place in a vacuum outside of the formation of the whole person, which includes their vocation and career.
When called to ministry or work amongst young people, youth professionals need to realise that although the primary locus of that ministry would be within the context of a local organisation, such as a church, school, university, or community centre, they must never forget that these local organisations are a very small part of the entire system that young people find themselves in. That is why many youth ministers in particular, for example, are not only involved in just doing ministry on the church campus itself, but also extend their ministry, where possible, given the constraints of the countries and the laws of the land in which they find themselves, into schools, local sporting clubs, and community projects, and even into shopping malls.34 Even so, there are not many youth professionals who have considered a potential role in impacting the local, national and multinational companies that in many instances are involved in the creation and spread of many of the youth trends that we pickup within our youth cultures.
It should be possible, although difficult and not a calling for everybody, for a youth professional to have an impact on the lives of young people in a local community and even around the world, by having an impact on the people and companies who will provide employment for young people in the future and will be able to change the type of environment of the workplace. They can also have an influence over the way in which marketers target their particular markets and the type of messages that they are packaging for the market, especially dealing with issues of ethics around marketing to children and infants.
Conclusion
There is a great opportunity for youth professionals to have an influence on the corporate world at the moment. The benefits for systemic influence of youth culture as well as personal professional development and short-term financial gains are great. In this paper I have not dealt with the ethical questions that could be raised surrounding this thesis. In particular the most important of these is whether by going into the corporate world and helping them to understand youth culture, we may not simply be assisting and oiling the machine we should rather stand against. This of course is a very real issue and I trust that others will pick up where I need to end off in this particular paper, and take this particular debate forward. The purpose of this paper was to open the debate and to allow others to experiment with it on a theological level, on a philosophical level, on an ethical level and of course on a practical level as well.
Dr Graeme Codrington is a business consultant and strategist, with his own consultancy, TomorrowToday.
NOTES
Note that some of these references may be out of date, and some of the websites no longer active
1 There is a reasonably artificial distinction made in these two titles. Reference to a youth minister usually means someone who works within a church or para-church environment, with a particular emphasis on spiritual formation. Youth workers are those who focus more on social, physical and psychological development, often from a non-faith-based organisation. The focus of this paper is on Christian youth professionals, which applies to both youth ministers and Christians engaged in youth work.
2 By “youth professional” in this paper, I mean any individual, ordained/licensed or not, who is paid by an institution or organisation and whose main role is to work with young people of the church and/or community, youth researchers, or any individual whose main task is to teach, train or develop other “youth professionals”. I therefore specifically include full-time researchers, professors and lecturers in youth ministry and youth work in this definition.By “professional” I envisage someone who has an equivalent tertiary academic qualification required in their particular country/culture for other professions, such as lawyers, accountants and engineers.
3 See, for example, L. Kageler’s unpublished research presented at the IASYM Conference in January 2003, “A Global Youth Pastor Salary Survey: Sociological and Ecclesiological Perspectives”.
4 “Tent making” is a traditional evangelical Christian label for people who fully or partially self fund their ministries by doing “secular” work. The Biblical basis that is cited as Paul’s work (Acts 18:1-3, cf. Acts 20:34), which was probably more technically sail repairing in the harbours of the cities he was ministering in.
5 A detailed reading list on the 21st century business and leadership environment and challenges is available at http://www.tomorrowtoday.biz/books.
6 Toffler, A. Future Shock. (London: Bantam Books, 1970).
7 Coats, K. ‘A Glimpse Into The Future: Good News / Bad News For Leaders’, unpublished. Available at http://www.tomorrowtoday.biz/article/article_034.htm.
8 Coats, K. Relationships: The Economic Return of the Future’, unpublished. Available at http://www.tomorrowtoday.biz/article/article_011.htm.
9 The book that did the most to popularise emotional intelligence as a business imperative was D. Goleman’s, Emotional Intelligence. Why it matters more than IQ. (Bantam Books: New York, 1995).
10 Cf. Strauss, W. and Howe, N Generations. (New York: William Morrow, 1991);
Strauss, W. and Howe, N. The Fourth Turning. (New York: Broadway Books, 1997); Codrington, G, Fourie, L. with Grant-Marshall, S. Mind Over Money. (Johannesburg: Penguin, 2002).
11 Collins, J. and Porras, J. Built to Last. (Random House, 2000), p 247.
12 cf. Strauss, W. and Howe, N. 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?(New York: Vintage Books, 1993). They prefer “the 13th Generation”as a moniker. Barna prefers “Baby Busters”. Cf. Barna, G. Baby Busters.(Revised Edition. Chicago: Northfield Publishing, 1994).
13 Jensen, R. The Dream Society. (McGraw-Hill, 1999), p145.
14 Bennis, W., and Thomas, R., Geeks and Geezers.(Harvard Business School Press, 2002).
15 Our anecdotal evidence is backed up by major studies, including those done by Bruce Tulgan, documented in Managing Generation X, and by David Stillman and Lynne C. Lancaster, documented in When Generations Collide, (HarperBusiness, 2002), as well as interviews done by Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas, documented in Geeks and Geezers, and a major study completed by South Africa’s leading employment agency in 2003, the 2003 Kelly Human Capital Satisfaction Survey, see http://www.kelly.co.za/Display_Trend.asp?tT_ID=192.
16 The concept of a branded employee is a theme in some of the latest business books. Peters, T. The Brand You50: Or Fifty ways to transform yourself from an ‘employee’ into a brand that shouts distinction, commitment and passion!(California: Alfred A Knopf, 1999). Also: Ridderstråle, Jonas, and Kjell Nordström. Karaoke Capitalism. (London: FT Prentice Hall, 2003).
17 One of the best books written on leadership from a systems perspective was specifically focussed on leadership in the church context. Armour, M.C.,and Browning, D. Systems-Sensitive Leadership. (College Press Publishing Company, 1995).
18 In an unpublished desktop analysis of literature on the lessons non-profit leadership has for the corporate world, I have found very few authors applying their minds to this. Besides Peter Drucker, the only other decent piece was ‘Nonprofit Leadership – The Leader of the Future’ by David E.K. Cooper, http://www.thepaf.org/palc/ldrship.htm.
19 The Leader to Leader Institute, formerly known as the Drucker Foundation, and the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, http://www.pfdf.org.
20 For example, Stubbs (quoting Drucker, ‘The Age of Social Transformation’)says “I further suggest a good strategy would be to pay attention to the attitudes and actions of non-profit volunteers and donors.”. See Stubbs, Randall A.”A recipe for non-profit success: Managing the linkages… ” In ‘Fund Raising Management’, Jan 1998, Vol. 28 Issue 11, p17.
21 Lopiano-Misdom, J., and De Luca, J. Street Trends: How Today’s Alternative Youth Cultures Are Creating Tomorrow’s Mainstream Markets. (New York: HarperBusiness, 1997).
22 One of the earliest authors to identify this was Bruce Tulgan, who interviewed thousands of young people leaving the corporate world to seek fame and fortune in the Dot Com hype era of the 1990s. Now these young people are free agents, and companies don’t know how to attract or retain them. Tulgan’s latest book is helpful. Winning the Talent Wars. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002).
23 In a sea of books on the topic, Walt Mueller’s center for Parent/Youth Understanding (http://www.cpyu.org) stands out. Mueller, W. Understanding Today’s Youth Culture. (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1994).
24 Most of these types of books, written by Christian authors, have applied an understanding of youth culture trends to the future of the church, rather than the future of society and the corporate world. For example: Rabey, S. In Search of Authentic Faith: How the Emerging Generations are Reshaping the Church. (Waterbrook Press, 2001); and Barna, G. The Frog in the Kettle: What Christians Need to Know About Life in the Year 2000. (Ventura: Regal Books, 1990). It isa reasonably simple step to apply these same thoughts to wider applications of the changing environment and prevailing cultures.
25 The most comprehensive of these include, Zemke, R., and Raines, C. Generations at Work: Managing the Clash of Veterans, Boomers, Xers, and Nexters in Your Workplace. (AMACOM, 2000); Stillman, D., and Lancaster, L.C..When Generations Collide. (HarperBusiness, 2002); and Codrington, G.& Grant-Marshall, S. Mind the Gap. (Penguin: Johannesburg, 2004).
26 The list of Christian books on generational issues is too large to list. The most academic and researched include: Regele, M., & Schulz, M. Death of the Church. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995); Long, J. Generating Hope. (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1997); Ford, K. Jesus for a New Generation. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996); and Harkness, A.G. “Intergenerational Christian Education: An Imperative for Effective Education in Local Churches” in Journal of Christian Education. (Australian Christian Forum on Education vol. 41, No. 2, 1998). Other authors to follow include Zander, Easum, Barna, Armour and Browning, and Bird.
27 This concept was first popularised by Robert Greenleaf, a research manager at AT&T in the early 1970s, using insights from Christian leadership applied to the business world. Others like Ken Blanchard and John Maxwell have pursued similar lines of applying Biblical principles to corporate leadership.
28 Covey, S., Principle-Centered Leadership. (Simon & Schuster, 1991).
29 Coats, K., ‘Invitational Leadership: A Model for the Future.’ in Journal of Youth and Theology. IASYM, Volume 1, Number 2, November 2002.
30 There are many such books, but a good starting point would be: Elkind, D., All Grown Up and No Place To Go – Teenagers In Crisis. (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1984); Rushkoff, D., Playing the Future. (New York: Harper Collins, 1996); Tapscott, D., Growing Up Digital. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998); Strauss, W.,& Howe, N,. Millennials Rising. (New York: Vintage Books, 2000); Chester, E., Employing Generation Why? (Colorado: Tucker House Books, 2002); and Lindstrom, M., BrandChild. (London: Kogan Page, 2003).
31 There are too many to list, and the straining racks of bookstores may be overwhelming to those not versed in business literature. A good starting point would be the book list at http://www.tomorrowtoday.biz/books.
32 Again, there is a vast selection of these types of books. Probably the best selling one of recent years has been Silbiger, S., The 10 Day MBA. (Revised Edition. Quill, 1999). Note that www.Amazon.com indicate that this book is rated 6th best based on purchases by Accenture, one of the world’s leading consultancies.
33 One of the books most recommended by consultants is Weiss, A.,Million Dollar Consulting: The Professional’s Guide to Growing a Practice.(Third Edition. New York: McGraw Hill, 2003).
34 It has long been argued that some ministry can only be effected outside of traditional spiritual environments – so called “outside in” ministry.See in particular, Ward, P., God at the Mall