What About Your Region?

Most of the people who read this blog are from places far removed from Ohio. We have many readers from California, Massachusetts, Great Britain, Spain, Russia and Asia. Welcome to my world.

I wrote earlier today about the dramatic and ominous changes that are occurring in Ohio. I think these are similar if not worse in other regions of the USA and the world.

Europe is in worse shape than the US. The nations in Europe have a much lower birth rate and are not replacing the deaths. This means more immigrants.

People there retire earlier than we and have greater social security. But, there are fewer workers meaning that the retirements cannot be sustained. And, unlike the USA, very few Europeans have private retirement plans.

The crisis there is even worse than here and it is horrible here.

Storm Warnings

I have been talking about the ominous and potentially dangerous tidal wave of aging people for some time. It is an "Age Wave" that is more threatening to us than Al Qada or Iran. It might destroy the USA.

Despite that fact, only one Republican candidate, Ron Paul, even mentioned it last night in the debate. The Democrats are even worse if that is possible. They mention seniors but recommend worse solutions than passive acceptance. They want to throw more money away and a lack of money is the crisis.

Despite the implication for every church and Christian organization in the Western Democracies almost no Christian leader is addressing it. Talk about an ostrich mentality!

The church's answer is to drive hard to recruit more kids and abandon ministries that appeal to Seasoned Believers.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has a headlined story about the crisis in the paper today. In the article is a web link to The OHIO PUBLIC EXPENDITURE COUNCIL that put out the report mentioned by the paper. Read the report at: http://news.enquirer.com/assets/AB96286110.PDF

Here are a few facts:

1. Today, Ohio experiences a daily net increase of 14 people age 65 or older.


2. By 2012, that number grows to 119 per day.
3. A half-million more Ohioans will leave the work force than enter it between 2011 and 2020!


4. OPEC President Rick Yocum called it a disaster for state and local budgets, with no obvious solution. "You're never going to be able to pass a school levy," Yocum said. He called the numbers "ominous."

More on this later.

Good Book

One of the great challenges we all face today is how to relate to workers, churches and families with folks from several different generations. It is hard when we see the world through different glasses. In fact, we may even believe that younger people have very different and, therefore, faulty values.

Jennifer J. Deal, research scientist at the Center for Creative Leadership, says, "Don't give up! There is hope for leaders and managers." Her very interesting book, Retiring the Generation Gap lays out the results from several thousand studies about various generational age groups and suggests that almost all of us have similar values.

What, then is the problem? Why do we have so much difficulty understanding each other? Jennifer suggests it is because we communicate our values in very different ways.

Dr. Deal researches people by a different set of age cohorts than we usually see. She separates the age groups into:

Name------------Born------Type

Silents-----------1925-45---Quieter but with great influence

Early Boomers--1946-54---Right after WWII-Huge

Late Boomers--1955-63----Second Half of Boomers

Early Xers------1964-76---Boom is over-Bad rap from a novel

Late Xers-------1977-86---Younger Gen X

The Silents and Early Boomers have enormous clout. Clout is what separates the generations and attitudes. Many Silents are invisible since the group is smaller than Boomers. However, they are often influential, wealthy and successful. The Silents plus the Early Boomers do not identify themselves as "Seniors" or as "Over the Hill" so they are often left out of our plans.

When Dr. Deal, her PhD. is from Ohio State, sorts out her data she concludes that there are several myths about different generational attitudes. The myth: "Young people are flexible and open to change while Boomers fear change". Ms. Deal says, "That is wrong! Neither group likes change if it threatens their jobs and reduces their resources. The issue of threat is who has the CLOUT!

The book has a subtitle that says it all: "How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground". I suggest that leaders carefully read this and other books about the best ways to understand and influence different age groups.

More Great Information

Boomers Knocking on SS and on Church Doors

My friend Ron Tate is reading about everything there is about Boomers and Pioneers. He then summarizes it and posts it on his blog. "The Boomer Wave" http://theboomerwave.blogspot.com/

I do enjoy reading his stuff because he has done the hard work of filtering out the fluff so I don't have to. Anyone interested in Christian ministry, church growth and how to be a "missional church" needs to look at Ron's blog and start thinking seriously about the implications of the facts he presents.

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The Federal Government has been planning ways to meet the needs of the enormously large number of maturing, seasoned citizens for decades. Is your church thinking about how to wisely integrate these huge groups into its life?

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If you are a Seasoned Believer, send me your name and email address so we can add you to our growing list of contacts.

Just place it on the Comments Page.

Books and Such Things

Our Latest Book: good for Coaches, Mentors and Counselors

Solomon wrote that, "Of the making of books there is no end" and that is just one of many reasons he was considered to be a very wise man. I have produced several books, usually in conjunction with other colleagues and friends.

In every case my books have arisen out of the research I did on my Doctorate at the University of Cincinnati way back in 1974 and 75. During my course work in Counselor Education I saw research that growth and healing are mostly the result of the relationship between a Helper-Counselor and a Seeker-Client than the knowledge and theories of the Helper-Counselor.

This research was shocking because most of our classes emphasized the theories and styles of the Counselor who was supposed to be an expert on diagnosing and treating Clients. Students were paying thousands of dollars to learn things that really did not work.

My dissertation looked at how the Bible and outcome research on counselors and not their theories, could be correlated. There is a very high correlation between the fruit of the Holy Spirit found in Galatians 5:22ff and healing. The Bible was written two thousand years before counseling texts but already indicated what really works in care and counsel.

So, what did I do? I began to write books that trained people how to relate in the skills most closely related to the fruit of the Spirit. We called the first book, Apples of Gold and the rest is history. Some 300,000 people have taken the Apples' Courses and read the books in over 50 countries from Norway to Russia to Cuba to South Africa to Taiwan to Australia to New Zealand.

These three remain; faith, hope and love, but the greatest is love.

See http://www.amazon.com/ and type in my name, Gary Sweeten to order my books.