The Australian Church Record, number 1901, December 2010, has been released.
It will happen quietly on 1 January 2011: the revolutionaries of the sixties will start to go out with a whimper. That is the date that the first baby boomers officially retire.
Baby Boomers entered the world in 1946, then blew out the birth statistics through to 1964. As the tail was still being born, the early boomers were old enough to begin to make their presence felt and the ‘sixties revolution’ began to implement the programme of ‘out with the old; in with the new’, and revolution against became the catchword of that generation and others after them similarly infected with the disease of perpetual change to who knows where. As the dust settles, future social commentators and historians of the period may perhaps be bold enough to use words that are not too flattering: such words as instability, social fragmentation or even disintegration, rank consumerism, etc. As the same dust settles in Christian Churches, future commentators will begin to notice their own negatives about how these same forces have worked in the midst of God’s people.
But 1 January 2011 is the beginning of the end. The revolution must now go into decline. From now on natural attrition will take its toll. It may take twenty more years, but as the world sheds these vast numbers of revolutionaries, a whole new world must inevitably take its place. What is most vital is for Christ’s people to ask, how will they be involved in the reconstruction after the revolution? Will Christian people help to pick up the pieces?
January 1 is the day for new year’s resolutions. In 2011 it ought to be the day for new world resolutions.