All in the Family Is Now Grey's Anatomy
Today's segregation is by age.
Chad Hall
October 1, 2006
How things change. As a kid, I remember well Archie and Edith keeping things at a low boil, and how the entrée of the hippie son-in-law would put things over the top. Political opinions would fly, social perspectives would clash, and tension would build, culminating in Archie's caustic comment, "Meathead!" The live studio audience would laugh and so would my family because it was All in the Family. Now one of the biggest hits is Grey's Anatomy. The show tracks a group of medical interns figuring out who they are by befriending, arguing, and sleeping with one other. Plenty of conflict and some high drama, but almost none of it is intergenerational. The same is true for plenty of other recent TV hits. Entourage, Friends, and Seinfeld come to mind. While older adults and young children may occasionally enter an episode, the series move forward via conflict created and cured among the young adult main characters. These shows display a trend also found in some churches: the move away from intergenerational interaction. The attitude seems to be: Who needs another generation? After all, we have our friends! While many established churches struggle to attract and retain young adult members, newer churches are attracting nothing but. A 50-year-old friend in Portland recently visited a popular church plant there, and she took her 11-year-old daughter with her. She said later, "I loved the energy and mission of the church, but I was too old and my daughter too young. There just wasn't a place for people our age." As a church planter and ministry coach, I've worked with churches who are primarily young and others who are obviously older. What these churches have in common is a voiced desire for community. Yet that "community" is often ...
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