We don’t need another brand. We need a people who remember who they are. And that’s us, Gen-X.
We were the generation of latchkeys and late nights, mixtapes and middle fingers. We skateboarded over broken pavement and away from broken homes. We grew up under the drone of Cold War fear, and the blinking blue light of late-night television. We watched the Berlin Wall fall and the Twin Towers crumble, and somewhere between Nirvana’s Nevermind and Columbine’s horror, we learned that authority couldn’t be trusted and truth couldn’t be tamed.
We were not idealists. We were cynics with soul. Sarcastic, skeptical, half feral and half poetic. We wore flannel like armor and eyed the church from the back pew (if we showed up at all). And when we did, we wanted truth, not polish. Substance, not slogans. A sermon that felt more like a punch in the gut than a commercial break.
And now we are no longer the young ones. We are forty-five, fifty, some of us older still. Grey in the beard, scarred at the wrists, and standing in a Church that needs more than branding campaigns and video devotionals. The generation that once said “Whatever, man” is now being asked to say “Here I am.” And the question that haunts us now isn’t, How did it all go wrong? It’s, What are we going to do with what the Boomers left us?
We are not called to rage for its own sake, but to become the kind of prophets who make the rage useful, who carry the holy grief of a wounded world to the altar, and name it before the living God.
Because it’s still there, you know. That old wildness. The punk rock spirit. The sacred refusal to play the game. But it has to be transfigured now. We are not called to rage for its own sake, but to become the kind of prophets who make the rage useful, who carry the holy grief of a wounded world to the altar, and name it before the living God.
We can still wear black. We can still be loud. But now the noise has to mean something. The sneer has to give way to the psalm. The eye-roll to the lament. We were once the kids sneaking smokes behind the church. Now we’re the ones standing in front of it, trying to rebuild what was left in our hands. Not with spreadsheets or strategies, but with songs, with stories, with the truth.
Back then, we hated pretense. We saw through hypocrisy like it was an open window. That’s still a gift. But now we must aim that sight inward too. Our sarcasm needs sanctifying. Our distrust needs direction. Because the world doesn’t need more post-ironic critics. It needs elders. Elders who remember what it was to be bruised by The Machine, who never forgot the sound of real freedom, and who are ready to stand in the breach for the sake of the young.
We have to stop pretending someone else is going to fix it.
Go gcuire Dia misneach ionainn—May God put courage in us. Because the Church is groaning. She’s been shaped to look sleek, but she’s starving. She’s been told that what matters is relevance, reach, performance. But the body is famished, and the soul knows it.
We know the truth. We knew it as teenagers scrawling lyrics in our journals and mouthing off at school. We knew it in the pit of our stomachs when we walked away from empty services. We knew it in the alleyways and the dorm rooms and the tour vans and the AA meetings. We knew that there had to be more. That the gospel wasn’t meant to be cute. It was meant to bleed.
We need sacraments served by shepherds, not institutional yes-men.
We are not called to tame the Church. We are called to let her be the wild creature Christ made her to be. To be a home for the broken, a shelter for the strange, a hospital for the sinner. We need to bring back the creak of wooden pews and the awkward grace of real repentance. We need sacraments served by shepherds, not institutional yes-men.
We don’t have to become the Boomers we swore we wouldn’t be. We can still be countercultural. Still be weary of institutions. Still be allergic to pretense. But now, instead of checking out, we need to check in. Not to control, but to serve. Not to reform the Church into our image, but to let Christ reform us for hers.
There’s a way to grow older without going cold.
There’s a way to keep your boots and your beard and your broken heart and still be the kind of man, the kind of woman, who walks into the sanctuary with tears in your eyes and a gospel on your tongue. Who teaches the young not to wrestle with memes and ideologies, but with angels.
The world is burning down clichés at both ends. Kids are drowning in confusion, sold self-expression in place of soul. Churches are mimicking platforms, and platforms are replacing pulpits. And we who knew the edge before it was monetized are the only ones left who can say, This is not the way.
So why not pray to God to give us tongues of fire? Why not ask that the Spirit let the Gen-X voice be the voice of grit and grace?
Why can’t our generation be the voices that know how to name things? That can call out corporate garbage, and still pray the Creed. That can remember what it felt like to be lost, and still light a candle for someone else to find the road.
Why not?
There’s no going back. And there shouldn’t be. But there is a way forward that remembers. There is a kind of priesthood for those of us who were raised on chaos and counterculture, who found Jesus in the middle of the noise. It begins with picking up the ancient tools. Prayer. Confession. Bread broken and wine poured. It begins with showing up. Again and again. With old songs and new scars. With stories we never thought we’d live long enough to tell.
We were once the rebels. Now we must be the remnant.
Ní neart go cur le chéile—There is no strength without unity.
We don’t need another brand. We need a people who remember who they are. And that’s us, Gen-X. No more hiding behind cynicism. No more posing. Christ is calling. The Church is waiting. The kids are watching. It’s time.
