When Neil Howe and William Strauss’s book Generations came out way, way back in 1991 (is the 20th century starting to seem like ancient history to anybody else?), I was pretty impressed. It explained why I was a grumpy, not-especially-focused, go-it-my-own-way-even-if-it’s-wrong kind of guy who couldn’t stand my forty-something bosses. I was a Gen Xer. And it explained why my parents belabor fairness, will go to any length to avoid confrontation, and actually like bureaucracies. They’re classic Silents. But I wasn’t ready to put my faith fully in Howe and Strauss’s four-stroke cycle of generations-not yet. Their system described, but could it predict? Fortunately, that book did wax prophetical about the youngest generation of Americans, the Millennials (according to the authors, those born between 1982 and 2002), even though the oldest of that generation were still carrying lunch boxes at the time. So I decided to watch my nieces and nephew, and other little Millennials, to see if indeed they did turn out to be clean-cut, optimistic, compliant, team-spirited, and heroic young people, as Howe and Strauss prophesied.

The years passed. In 1993 Howe and Strauss published their portrait of my generation in a book called 13th Gen. In 1997 they extended their generational theory (not much and not so convincingly) in an abstruse book called The Fourth Turning. Meanwhile, I was beginning to see some apparent fulfillment of their predictions regarding the Millennials. Let’s take just a few examples from my own evangelical subculture. Ministries like Focus on the Family and Promise Keepers both boomed in the last decade, showing (whatever you think of those particular organizations) that church people were becoming deeply concerned about family life and child rearing. Meanwhile, programs like See You at the Pole and True Love Waits demonstrated that Christian teens were not afraid to band together and live out their beliefs. Even the tragedy of Columbine High, which you might think would disprove Howe and Strauss’s theory, became a rallying point for Christian teens as they honored Cassie Bernall, she who said yes. By the time I picked up my copy of the newly published Millennials Rising last month, I was persuaded that Howe and Strauss had done about as good a job at predicting a generation’s character as anyone could expect.

Millennials Rising contains many examples of the kind I just offered, though drawing from the wider American culture. From Pokémon to school uniforms to the synchronized gyrations and sugary lyrics of today’s boy bands, Millennial culture is indeed displaying many of the characteristics the authors predicted in 1991. The problem with such anecdotes and quotes as they include in Millennials Rising, of course, is that, knowingly or unknowingly, the authors could select only the ones that buttress their thesis, ignoring the rest. In fact, Howe and Strauss do a better job in this book than in the similar 13th Gen at presenting contrary evidence in their portrait of the generation. And to this reader the evidences they adduced in support of their theory seemed so spot-on and so mutually reinforcing that I found myself often nodding in agreement and only occasionally thinking, But what about … ? In particular, the book’s statistics (despite the alleged affinity with lies and damned lies) were hard for me to discount. Did you know that the average time grade school students spend on homework has nearly tripled since the early 1980s? Did you know that teen suicides are down sharply since 1994? Did you know that from 1993 to 1998 the rate for violent crime committed by youths aged 12 to 17 was cut nearly in half? As a matter of fact, research reveals declines in teen social pathologies occurring virtually across the board just as the last Xers were leaving that age category and the first Millennials were taking their place.

I know it’s unfashionable anymore to believe in generations. Certainly, greater claims than are justified have been made for that model of sociological analysis. But I, for one, keep seeing tendencies in people that I can account for by no other shared characteristic among them than their age, that is, their generation. Until someone can offer a better explanation, I’m going to keep believing in generational thinking as one useful tool among many. But even if you accept that generations exist and that a book like Millennials Rising can accurately portray a generation, why should you care? Because to minister to people effectively, you must know them. I’m not, of course, advocating a crass "marketing" of Christianity to the Millennials. Shudder. But just as cross-cultural missionaries must study to contextualize the gospel for people living in different places, so church leaders should learn to contextualize the gospel for people born at different times. To treat the Millennials as a mere extension of the X generation, for example, would be a gross error. Today’s kids are different and deserve to be treated differently.

At least three books have been written about the Millennial generation from a Christian perspective, the best of them being Generation 2K by Wendy Murray Zoba. You may want to dip into one of those. But if you work in children’s or youth ministry, or if you’re involved in any way in planning for the future of your church, here’s a tip that Millennials Rising is definitely worth clicking over to amazon.com <http://www.amazon.com/> for.