I’m reading Can’t Even by Anne Helen Peterson, a social exploration subtitled How Millenials Became The Burnout Generation.
The generalisation that an indulgent society raised a generation of individuals who lack resilience is challenged by the notion that preceding generations have instead nurtured a culture that present generations are now experiencing in full flower, a culture with constant striving but no pay-off.
That western culture in the past 100 years or so (particularly after World War 2) is something of a pyramid scheme that functions by drawing on a greater and greater sense of aspiration until we’ve finally hit a point where the normal expression of that sense of aspiration (achieving and having more than the generation that preceded – that raised – it) just cannot ordinarily be achieved.
As church and ministry cultures have changed, this brings a question in my mind as to whether that dominant cultural expression has been subconsciously informing those new church and ministry cultures mirroring the trend toward producing burnout.
This means we don’t try to demand more resilience, but ask whether the culture itself is creating the damage.
Church culture should be the opposite, a culture that refreshes instead of drains, a culture that encourages faithfulness for its own sake rather than demanding results that only lead to an expectation of further results.
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