A Conversation Between The Generations Podcast Episodes

People were not self-sufficient. They needed each other. They relied on each other to provide for each other’s needs. And so, whether it was help with the butchering or all those types of things that the community did and that the neighbors did together. The front porch was a very active place in that time. And now, today, it’s the decks on the back patio. What’s gone from the front porch to the backyard has now gone to the internet. 

Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. It’s wonderful to have you along. In the studio today, I’ve got Amber Miller, who’s no stranger here. Welcome, Amber. Thanks, Matt. And Tim Funk. Tim, this is your first time on. Welcome, Tim. Yes, it is. 

Tim is our administrator. So great to have you on, Tim. Thank you, Matt. Good to be here with you. Today, we’re going to talk about generations. So Amber, why did the Millennial cross the road? Oh, boy. I know. I feel like I’m being set up for this. You should just see her eyes of disdain of jokes of this nature. 

Because there are a lot of jokes out there, aren’t there? Oh, for sure. I just made that up. I have no idea why the Millennial crossed the road. Oh, I’m just in suspense. Yeah. I don’t know. My point is we throw around these terms of generations quite a bit. Quite frequently, right? We all know what that means, Millennial or Gen X or Baby Boomer, right? 

But there’s something really deep here. There’s really something worth having a conversation about. So, I tend to work a lot with Millennials and the next generation below them, Gen Z. And what I notice is that we can often be very misunderstood and there are plenty of stereotypes and jokes, especially about millennials. 

And so, it just seems like it would be helpful to have a little bit of a discussion to maybe dispel some of those myths or just bring some understanding as to why they act the way they do. But you’re saying there’s conflict in life, and some of that conflict, if you get down to the moorings, is generational ideals that are just different. 

And so maybe you’re pitting folks against their kids a little bit and saying okay, there’s a disconnect here. There’s frustration and there’s warranted frustration, but there’s an explanation for the frustration. Is that what you’re saying? For sure. There’ll be plenty of situations where a parent or a support person doesn’t understand why this younger person is behaving the way they are, doing the things they’re doing. You know, so like the joke that I was playing right there, I mean, we do have jokes among the generations and really catchy nuances that everybody acknowledges. 

Don’t they? I mean, that’s why the joke makes sense. So, there are some nuances among the generations, but you mentioned there’s some hurt and there can be reason for misunderstanding, miscommunication. In very similar manners, you might travel to a foreign country and Tim, you’ve done a lot of travel to foreign countries. 

You probably take some notes, what’s the culture going to be like here? Because those things are meaningful. And you might just misinterpret something, miscommunicate something, if you don’t understand that culture. And am I far off by saying generations are like cultures? Yeah. They really are. 

Yeah. Tim is representing our Baby Boomers. Yeah. Amber’s a Millennial. I’m a Gen X. So yeah, we have some perspective here and let’s just have a conversation about that and lay a landscape to give some understanding, because when we understand maybe that culture you’ll see for its beauty, which first comes off as odd. 

And it’s like, oh, okay. And then sometimes there’s a reason behind that culture as well. So, let’s first start by laying out the architecture of the generations, certainly the existing generations or the large playing generations today. Sure. So just to give a snapshot here, when we talk about a generation, it really is looking at about a 15-to-20-year age range. 

And so, the big generations that have really been studied and are most talked about today would be those people and was known as the Silent Generation, which is anyone who was born before 1945, the Baby Boomers make up a huge percentage of the U. S. population right now. And so those are people who were born between 1945 to 1960. 

And then Gen X, which is you, Matt, is more the early 60s to the 1980s, individuals born in that era. And then Millennials, early eighties to mid-nineties. And then the newest generation to reach adulthood, the Gen Z, also known as the iGen or the Postmillennial Generation. 

And they’re just starting to do some research on Alphas, which are kids that are about 10 years old or younger right now. So those are the big players at this point in time. And of course, it is going to vary a little bit. People who are right in between a generation are maybe going to have features of both. 

It’s really fascinating that we are molded as much as we might not like it. So let me just use this. One time I was tying my tie. And I looked in the mirror and I realized; this tie is really wide. In fact, this tie is as wide as the tie was in the family photos that I laughed at my dad for wearing. 

Right? When did I start to adopt wide ties? Somebody tricked me. Right? Ten years before, I was laughing at it. And now, that’s what I’m pulling out of my closet. And I kind of looked up to the heavens and said, who is controlling my thoughts? You know what I’m saying? But there is this idea that we like to think we’re self-made people, but we’re not. 

Would you say we’re influenced? I mean, is that the bottom line there? I am influenced and we are all influenced, and we’re influenced by different things. What are the big influencers? So, as we think about the Boomers, what were the big influences in that generation, Tim, that like it or not, affected the psyche of Boomers? 

So, I’m at the tail end of the Baby Boomers. And so, I start to bridge into the Gen X and my thinking as well. And so, you can see the influences across there, but many of us were raised with the understanding of World War II. And that World War II happened and a lot of the things that happened after World War II and the frugality of the country and there was respect and then we started to see the advent of teenagers rising up and we started seeing rock and roll come on the scene. 

And so, then we started to see things like technology. We started to see the Apollo landing on the moon, right? And that was an amazing thing. We saw a couple of presidents in our time be assassinated or attempted assassinations. So, there were just a number of things that have impacted us. 

And some of the things like shifts in technology and things that happen, but you don’t realize they’re happening. Yeah. There were these events that had an effect on you and on your generation. Amber, let’s highlight some of those major events that somewhat define the generations and provide some helpful wherewithal to say, oh, that’s what influenced me to the wide tie.  

You know, I’d say speaking metaphorically here, yeah, so certainly if you look at the silent generation, it was shaped by the wars and even their parents would have grown up through the industrial revolution. 

And so, some of that influence started to impact them and frugality and some of those dynamics were there. And the Great Depression not being too far in the distant past, right? Right. I mean, there was no escaping that effect on life. Right. And so, all of a sudden you come out of like a World War II and there’s a boom in a lot of ways, economically. 

You know, I wonder if sometimes what affects us is the successes we have. You take the success of World War II, for example, and you come back home. That’s got to shape your thinking on how business should look. I mean, after all, if we defeated the world evil by coming together and by falling in line and by having a clear leader and by doing your due diligence. 

I could see how that would trickle out into family life. So, then you move into like the 60s and the 70s which were very turbulent times, and you see things like the Civil Rights Movement. You see things like Woodstock. You see Vietnam. I mean just a lot of that pushback against authority. 

Exactly fair to say. So, you see a product starting to arise from that time that really has an influence on the Baby Boomer generation that you were mentioning there, Tim. And so, then that moved into your generation, Matt. And so, what do you think of? Well, in Gen X, I remember when the Berlin Wall came down. That was formative. That was big. Even though I was young enough to not totally understand what it meant. Some call Gen X the Latchkey Kids Generation, right? Dad is working hard at his job. Mom now is maybe getting a job. Which was a bit of a different life family dynamic than previous generations. 

Kids were coming home and being raised by the television set and really having a lot of freedom. And here on our scene we’ve got the computer that’s really starting to make mainstay effects with Gen X’s. I think we’re called digital immigrants in that we weren’t necessarily raised with it like our kids are today, but we adopted it pretty quickly and pretty easily. 

And so that whole technology piece makes a huge difference. So, then you move into millennials and 9/11 certainly was very shaping for us. I remember being in school when that happened. And then also Y2K. And we did grow up on screens in a lot of ways. We grew up with computers and cell phones and having access to those things. 

And also, I would say diversity was so pushed in our generation, it seems hard to remember, hard to believe that the Civil Rights Movement was just a few decades back. Right. And so, I think there’s a very different outlook from Millennials on diversity and ethnicity. Well, I think one of the things you saw, too, at least in the times of the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers is you saw where ethnic groups would stay together. 

If you were Catholic, you were Catholic, and the Methodists were Methodists. And so now you have neighborhoods of ethnicity, Italian or Greek and it was always, hey, you have your culture you can certainly recognize, and you are kind to everybody, but this is your culture. 

And so, you hold to these cultural practices and these things. And then as I saw my children coming up and they were raised alongside different races and different religious beliefs and different cultures where they come out of. And kids now are reaching across there, and this diversity is being encouraged. 

And part of it out of necessity and part of it out of just the desire for people to interact better and to team better in the workplace and things like that. Yeah. So, you see that’s morphing over the generations. That’s interesting. Let me place my finger on something that I’m curious as a case here, and that is blind spots, seeing things clearly and not seeing things entirely. 

We have blind spots, and we have things we see clearly. And sometimes the divide between us lies along those lines. So, I interrupted you, Amber, on the major influences. You mentioned 9/11 for Millennials and those types of things. Why don’t you fill out the rest of Generation Z. Yeah, so then we think about the Great Recession that started to come in and I would say that impacted a lot of Millennials and then you move into Gen Z which have grown up in a world that has always gone through airport security. 

They know everything that is going on in the world because of the social media and news. And so, every tragedy is reported upon. School shootings have been a thing for them. And so, there’s been a very high level of anxiety that has started to emerge in the younger generations. And you think about just some of those things I mentioned. So, the question, am I really safe, comes to play for this youngest generation. Yeah, it really starts to pop up. And it’s a generation that has grown up in a fairly prosperous time.  

And so, I think that’s a big place where I see a difference where an older generation looks on some of their kids or their grandkids. And they wonder why in the world are they anxious? You know, they have everything at their disposal, but they miss some of that piece where, 50 years ago, the only news they knew about was the local community news. They didn’t know what was going on with the other side of the world. And now we know of every school shooting that occurs, right? And they are far too frequent.  

And just to go into the amusement park, you have to turn over your bags and go through a metal detector in some places, right? That is impactful for this youngest generation. Absolutely. I think what’s important is we realize while we can look at one generation and say, well, I can’t believe that. We have to remember that we are a product of them, or we are producing them. 

That’s a very true statement. Yeah. You know, another dynamic that I see too, is sometimes almost like a paralysis that comes around decision making, and I’ve often wondered if it is simply because we have so many options and choices available to us today, where, again, looking at an older generation, it was pretty streamlined. 

You are kind of speaking to your generation when you’re saying this. Yeah. Yeah. So it was, hey, you grow up in a small community and you probably marry within that community, and you probably find employment in that community and buy a house there where today it can feel like life is so unsettled. 

And if you want to move across the country, you sure could, or if you want to go online and find a spouse, all of a sudden, you open up thousands of possibilities where again, it just can lead to this paralysis that happens because it’s like, well, how do I even know how to make a decision because there are so many options in front of me. 

So, Tim, hearing the open options, does that strike a chord with you? Oh yeah, it does because as an old man, you look at this and you say, okay, we do have a ton of options today. And we see a ton of options within the family unit, a ton of options within the church and ton of options within the community. 

Right? And with options inherently comes this idea of commitment and it goes against what I was raised with is that you commit to something. If you go to work for a company, you’re committed to that company and the company is committed to you. And you go into marriage and marriage is forever. And that’s what’s intended. And now today, these things are all options, right? And yet according to Scripture, they’re not. Yeah. So, it’s in those things that for me, as I look at it as an older man, it’s like, where is the commitment? Where’s the commitment?  

So, let’s just highlight that particular character quality. I think this very much mirrors the type of angst we have in the family across generations, right? This very character issue of commitment. So, Amber, I’d love to hear you respond to that because I’m guessing that perhaps there’s an important lens to include if we’re going to be talking about the character quality of commitment. I think there’s an element that we really prize in flexibility and freedom and being able to not have those deep roots in a certain place or in a certain possession like a house or things like that, just because it could be gone. 

And we’ve maybe grown up watching some of our parents wrestle through that as divorce rates rose or people moved or lost their homes or whatever that was. And so, I think there’s an element where it can be hard for our generation to commit and to really set down those roots. There can almost be a feeling of being trapped or suffocated. 

So, I think some of it was born out of watching what has unfolded in previous generations. And then some restlessness too, with just so many options in front of you and not really knowing what to do. Choices is a key piece of that. I think there are, like you said, Amber, there are so many different choices out there today. 

This gets into an area that is maybe a little more delicate, but I never had to think about, was I born male or female? Yeah. And today we’re hearing things in the news that are just earthshaking to some of us because we see them as totally counter scriptural. 

But the other thing is, it is a thinking of a generation. So, we take this concept of commitment, I think is, is really interesting because we can see how a couple of things are at play. Tim, you just mentioned previously about how homogeneous communities existed, right? And you explained, Amber, that diversity is experienced in the younger generations, right? 

Where that’s not held as an ideal, you can see how commitment according to the older generation might look like commitment to your people. And that means something. It means a neighborhood. It means a place of employment. We have all these circles, right? But as you’ve just described diversity and opening up that world, the Millennial might say, I’m not against commitment. I’m just committed to a larger world. Right. Is that a true statement? Yes. So, we could talk about commitment. And we can disagree with that application, but I think it’s important that we tease out what it is we’re talking about here. Because we can see how one thing compounds another when it comes to these generational shifts. 

And I think the key thing, Matt, is that right now between Amber and I, between our generation is you. And so, you can hear both of these things, and you can help us understand each other. So, here’s what Gen X is, we’re kind of like middle children. We’re kind of like the middle child between two personality plus siblings. And so, we just kind of hunker down and I don’t know, let us fight it out. But the interesting thing is in the power of hearing each other, right? And for me to hear Amber explain that is it’s enriching. It brings a richness to the discussion of where’s your commitment. 

Right. So that’s key to hearing each other. Well, this is fun. Thanks for being along, everyone. We’re going to cut into the conversation right now. We will be back at the next episode. We’re going to continue to mine some of these nuances, some of these blind spots, some of these incongruencies that we have between the generations with the hopes that we might understand one another better. 

So, thanks for being here on Breaking Bread. Have a great day. 

But the interesting thing is the power of hearing each other. And for me to hear Amber explain that is enriching. It brings a richness to the discussion of where’s your commitment. So, that’s key to hearing each other. Welcome back to Breaking Bread, where we’re continuing a conversation with Tim Funk, Amber Miller, and myself, Matt Kaufman, and we’re discussing the generations and delightfully our eyes are being opened to some of our blind spots and helping to understand one another. 

Well, let’s talk a little bit about hearing each other. And then on top of that, trying to understand one another. I think we have to have humility to hear another person for the true benefit that it might provide. There has to be a humility that says, I need to be informed, I need to be influenced. Going back to my wide tie analogy. I am being influenced. Period. Always. I’m being influenced. I’m being influenced towards and away from things. Okay. Now that I understand that I’m being influenced, I can’t get out from underneath being influenced. Why not step into the influence? 

Does that make sense? That we would look and say, you know what? Period. Tim, help me understand, I need that influence and that perspective and vice versa. What are some of the qualities? What are some of the basic skills of being able to do this well? So, I think it is really important to be able to be a learner and to be able to be a listener in those situations, because especially as Millennials, I see a defensiveness that can start to pop up. 

And honestly, I think one of the reasons for that is because of all the stereotypes there are about Millennials. And I feel like we are very put down in so many ways as irresponsible and self-centered and all these things. And so then you almost do see a moody or a defensive reaction sometimes to that, which if you would take a step back and try to understand us, I think would make a lot of sense and help fill in some of those gaps. 

But if a person just sticks to the stereotypes and never steps back and thinks about the strengths of that other generation and that other age group, that’s a real limitation. Yeah. I like what you said there, Amber, about strength. So, we’ll just share strengths between the generations, but one strength that I see in the Millennial, I found them to be very open to instruction, very challenging, but they have allowed those voices in and have seen, for example, I think you would find in mentor/mentee relationships the Millennials are pretty willing to sign up. 

I think it’s a really admirable trait. I think too, as you look at the Millennials, I’m amazed that their thinking process is no limits, and in my generation, we felt there were limits, right? There were, in some form, sure. And there’s pros and cons to that, but what we’re highlighting is the real value coming to the table without limits. 

Right. You’re going to get some ideas that are like, how did you ever come up with that? They’ve been told they can do anything. Yeah. And we, as parents, told them that. Yeah. And part of the reason is because the world has changed significantly. Yeah. Well, we’ve seen that some of the boundaries that were there before for women and for girls and some of the boundaries that were there in many different forms just in society have broken down due to diversity and some of those things where it starts to open up doors. 

And they continue to push until they find improvement. Right. Okay. So, let’s just take an example. Growing up, Folgers Cup was all you needed, and you bought a can, and you used it for a month, and you went and bought another can. Tim, do you know that stuff was ground months ago? I mean take coffee. This is a very simple thing. Coffee’s been around for a long time. You make it in a pot, you drink it, and then all of a sudden, they are wondering if that could be improved. And you know what? They did! Who thought you could charge $5 for a cup of coffee? That’s the brilliant part, right? 

But hey, they got a good gig going on, right? Charge $5 for all sorts of things you never even knew you needed in a cup of coffee. All right. So now it’s my turn to see if you can say anything positive about us. Oh boy. Here goes. Tim’s sitting straighter. He’s sitting to listen to this. So, you know, a strength that has already been a little bit mentioned, but I’ll just build off of was the commitment level and steadiness. As a characteristic of the Baby Boomers that I do appreciate in the sense that they raised their families, and they were very committed to their communities and tried to build up a world that was a better place to deny yourself.  

Yes, and we’re talking about the generation before committed to deep sacrifice and, something else to say, us, Gen X and Millennials obviously, we haven’t lived end of life for the most part, you know what I’m saying? And so, while freedom we might tout, we don’t know what it’s like yet to have to come back to bedrock. Does that make sense? And I think that the older generation has that bedrock, they have that foundation. 

And so, I think our generations are yet to learn about the need for that and an anchor to go back to. Well, and again, with the Gen X, that is a generation that is kind of the glue in some ways of being able to just do what needs to be done, I would say.  

And so, you, as we’re just talking here, I’m just struck by the way we need each other. And if, if you did just let the Millennials keep going with their ideas and just keep going, that could be a dangerous thing. So, you need the gravity that the Baby Boomers bring into the situation. Likewise, we have to keep moving forward and we do need to keep making improvements in our world. 

And so, you know, being able to listen to the Millennials and not just write them off as crazy is really important. Okay. Then how about the blind spots? I think blind spots are healthy to think through for us to self-check and say, you know what, this is something I need to think about. 

So, we’ll play the activity differently this time. We’ll let each one explain their own blind spots rather than us pointing them out. Who wants to go first? Self-reflection, Tim. Blind spots of perhaps our generation, and I don’t know if it’s just our generation, when I say the Baby Boomers and maybe the early Gen Xers, but also the Silent Generation is that we think we know the things that are tried and true, and it’s hard for us to see change in those things that we believe are tried and true. And most of our life, things have proved to be tried and true.  

I just want your initial reaction, both of you. When I say change, Tim, does that word have a negative connotation or a positive connotation? It depends on what you’re going to change. I just said initial, I want your initial reaction when I say change, positive or negative? Caution. Amber? Excitement. Isn’t that amazing? Just that one word. That one word says a lot. Okay, keep going. I think as we look at just the ability to change and recognize that there are things that do need to change and that the younger generations are bringing them in, then the Millennials are bringing change in. 

Some of these changes are good. The key is for us to be able to accept those changes. We have to be able to trust that the changes that the people making those changes have the right goals in their hearts. So, change is a blind spot, right? As he mentioned, it’s a caution. That’s a cautionary word, right? 

What would you say, Amber, is a blind spot of your generation? Yeah. So, I’ll kind of lump the millennials and Gen Z together here a little bit and say that when it comes to change, we need to remember that. We shouldn’t just change for change’s sake and be careful not to throw out some of the tried and true methods just because we do want innovation and we do want change. 

And so, I think that’s an important thing to remember. Can I make a comment on these two things, change and commitment? Because these two words actually go together. All right. Part of the reason why the older generation has caution around change is because they’re committed. They’re going to be committed to the change. 

Could it be that part of why we’re eager for change is that we don’t see commitment necessarily tied to it? And so, we can play this out in a church setting, we can play this out in a work setting, we can play this out in lots of different areas. It’s like, okay, we’re going to make this change, are you going to be with me next year? 

Or are we making this change for you and then the rest of us are going to plow this ground? Because it’s against my ideals to not be committed to this. Does that make sense? We have these things knit into us and we can see why it tees up problems. I think one of the things too is that maybe a blind spot, and it may be more subtle than it comes out, but it’s the group versus the individual and more. What is good for the group? What is good for the whole, what is good for the organization? So, when you’re saying we are cautious, you’re saying that older generations have more of a larger focus and the Millennial many times thinks more individually and it’s just a different way of thinking. 

Amber, any reaction to that? Would you agree with that? I think it’s true. And it is an interesting dynamic because I would also say that our generation really pushes inclusivity and really pushes some of those features too. And so, we do really highly prize that diversity piece or allowing people to be like the individuals that they want to be. Certainly, the blind spot with it is that you can go off the rails with that really quickly if you don’t have some boundaries in place and some biblical truth that is guiding that and recognizing that, hey, there are some things that just aren’t going to work.  

So let me say, you just mentioned boundaries. Tim, you mentioned limits at the beginning of the podcast. Those could kind of be the same thing, right? So, which is really important? Right. So, as I think about Gen Xs’ blind spots, I don’t know if this is like a self-admission, like I don’t know if this is like coming from my experience or not, but sometimes I think Gen X cannot maybe see the large picture of things. 

Does that make sense? And we might have our head down in the daily grind, and as much as that looks like due diligence and hard work, we can be apathetic. Yeah, I think we can be apathetic in our parenting. I think we can be apathetic in our marriages and apathetic in a larger vision. 

So, there’s my blind spot and confession. So, you know, as we’re talking about blind spots here, one piece of advice that I would just offer would be to make sure when you look at your circles of friends and community that you do have representatives across the different generations. I think it’s really important to just make sure that you are catching each other’s blind spots and giving them the opportunity to learn from one another. 

Amber, there are really few places in our world that do that better than the church does. Right? I mean, if you think about your work setting, you’re going to have some crossover generations and work setting, but you probably don’t have the generation Z there yet. And you’ve probably retired off much of the silent generation, right? 

And you think about the school setting, and we think about all of these settings. Well, what setting in my life has got all, we’ve listed five generations or six, whatever. I really can only think of one place and that’s the church. Besides my larger community that I live in too, which is another place. 

But anyway, to your point. It is so true that we can just start to revolve around our peers and people who think like us, and they become our comfort zone and what starts to develop really is more of a group think. And so, it starts to reinforce some of the blind spots and some of the negative beliefs we maybe have about people from different age groups. 

And so again, to your point, Matt, just being able to have a place to go like a church that embraces the beauty of multi generations, is really a gift. Well, and really what you’re welcoming in, Amber, with all of that is influence, and that’s a word that I dropped off early on. You are welcoming influence, again, acknowledging that we are always being influenced, and it’s important for us to know where we are being influenced and how we are being influenced. 

That group think really is solo influence. We’re allowing one influence, right? There’s a thought out there that the generational shifts are going to speed up. So, you had mentioned 15 to 20 years. But because of the exposure, our youngest generations have all kinds of impactful things happening because in their life, they know it all around the world. We’re not just talking about Central Illinois but we’re talking about the entire world. So, you can imagine the influences they have. Some might say in a lifetime they live many generations quickly. Yeah.  

So, to think we’re going to lay to rest this generational shift idea is not possible, right? We have to learn how to live with generational shift. What’s the larger perspective that we need to take? So let me lay the question to you here in closing. What perspective should we take? What is the main anchor, the main rudder, to navigate generational shift, whether it be in our families, whether it be in our workplaces, or whether it be in the church? 

I think there’s one place where all these generations meet. One is that all people are God’s children. God has created them all. He knows them all. Inside and out. Each one has a living soul. And for all of us to recognize that if Christ is the center of this, Christ can bring these generations together. 

He gave us two great commandments. And I think if each generation holds to those great commandments and humbles themselves in the sight of God, he will lift us up. And he will lift us up together. In those two greatest commandments, to love God and to love our neighbor, right? And I think that wonderfully points us all in the same direction. 

Tim, I appreciate that the number one greatest influence and such a refreshing influence are the Scriptures, the Word of God, Jesus Christ, his life, his example is so calibrating and so important as we navigate generational shifts. Thank you both. Amber, Tim, thanks a lot for coming on. Thank you. 

Thanks for sharing. And thank you each one for listening in. We trust that this has probably been familiar to you. It has touched on concepts that you well experience in your life and relationships. We pray that this conversation orients you towards Christ and gives some perspective. Thanks for being along.