Leadership Journal

Steve is the thirty-something founding pastor of a midtown church. During his six-year tenure, his church has grown spiritually, numerically, and financially. He is articulate, well-liked, and well-respected, not only in his congregation but also in his community. He has trained other pastors, served in several denominational roles, and been published in several forums, including a blog that is read by several hundred of his peers around the country.

Yet Steve hesitates to call himself a leader.

Why? To Steve, a "leader" is a lone ranger, an outspoken general who calls the shots from an insular position at the top of an organizational hierarchy. Instead, Steve would prefer to call himself an "influencer." As such, he is an integral member of a network of relationships, and he considers those relationships infinitely more important than successfully achieving any particular organizational post or three-year plan.

But not everyone shares Steve's definition. A generation ahead in ministry, a cohort of Baby Boomers is growing increasingly frustrated by what they view as a serious lack of leadership among Steve and his peers.

Steve is not a real person, but neither is he entirely fictitious; rather, he is a composite of the characteristics shared by a significant contingent of Generation X, the generation typically classified as born between 1962 and 1981.

Now between 25 and 43 years old, the members of Generation X are supposed to be the future leaders in the church—except that, in the eyes of some of their exasperated forebears, many members of this "lost generation" don't seem in any hurry to step up to the plate.

In one church, an associate pastor continues to criticize his supervisors for their church's lack of postmodern awareness and ministries, but then flatly declines the offer to pastor a more innovative church plant in the area. In another, a young staff member insists that all "pre-packaged" material, such as worship songs and curriculum, are automatically inferior and should never be used in his church, arguing for "authenticity" and "originality" rather than "effectiveness in reaching the widest audience."

Examples like these have some Boomers grumbling that Gen-Xers have spent too much time in philosophical conversation, and not enough time accomplishing; they are tired of waiting for emerging leadership to, well, emerge. As one Boomer-aged pastor was overhead to say at a national ministry conference, "Do something, then write the book."

But are those descriptions accurate? Is leadership absent among Gen-Xers? Is it not even sought? Has the spiritual gift of leadership fallen victim to "neo-cessationism": seen as a useful gift in its time, but not for the postmodern world? Is the emergent generation really as anti-leadership, or as ineffective, as some of their elders portray them? Or does leadership just look different?

The answers, of course, depend on who you ask.

Bob Chandler spent 13 years as a campus staff worker for ...