By Stephanie Hausner
Synagogue Change Specialist
Synagogue Leadership Initiative
Did you know that my generation—the Millennials (born between 1978 to 2000)—are the largest generation of the 20th century? Bigger than GenX and even larger than the Baby Boomers. As Millennials come of age, this means a lot for our synagogues and how we operate. I recently came across an article “Are You M-Ready?” by Nick Shore, who is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Consumer Insights and Research at MTV, which is probably the coolest job. His premise is that, based on the large size of the Millennial generation, any business will have to start thinking about this next generation of consumers. And it is clear that Millennials think differently than the generations before them. As Shore says, “Millennials are not just a more voluminous generation than Boomers, but better educated, more self-esteemed, more demanding, more technologically savvy, more empowered and wired to win at the game of life.”
There is so much great stuff in this article, and I strongly encourage reading the whole thing.
MTV “made a decision at its
point of inception to never grow old with the audience
but to reinvent periodically for each "generation next." This to me
is fascinating. Could we operate in such a structure? How can we in the
synagogue world adapt quickly and never grow old, even if our suburban
synagogues are dealing with rising senior citizen populations? Are we adapting
quick enough to embrace this new generation? NO! So how can we? What do we need
to know?
Let’s learn from MTV and
the Millennial traits they have identified. I’m going to focus on just a few
things MTV has highlighted.
Percentage of Millennials who agree with the following
statements (from MTV Millennial Edge Study, 2010):
- I'm always expressing myself in different ways–81%;
- I hate it when other people expect me to live by their rules–76%;
- If I want something, nothing is going to stop me–69%.
The Millennials are an
empowered group. While some have said Millennials are a coddled generation, I
don’t believe it’s coddling, but more aptly “empowerment.” A little empowerment
with some new technology and Millennials are off and running. Millennials don’t
take no as an answer and don’t ever say something is because we have always
done it that way. That’s just not a good reason. While other generations rebel,
Millennials explore. Millennials “will
demand a voice in, a stake in, even a creative point of view about, everything
that your business does.” How do we as synagogues cope with that?
How
do we engage Millennials, allow them to explore, and give them a voice all at
the same time? What about membership? Do we only engage members? These are
complex questions. Here are a few dos and don’ts that I think may guide us.
DO: Listen to your Millennial membership.
If they tell you your programming is stale or only for “old people,” it is not
because they want to upset you, but because to them your programming is stale.
Even when you take something that could be fun like karaoke, doing karaoke with
your grandparents or people your grandparents’ age is NOT FUN. The same
activity could appeal to different generations, just maybe not at the same
time. Maybe you schedule Karoake with an after party for the 20s, 30s, 40s.
Everyone gets to sing, and the folks who want to sing GaGa are not fighting on
song choice with the Barbra Streisand crowd.
DO: Engage Millennials in conversation.
Bring a bunch of Millennials together and see what they want to do. Millennials
are SO community service oriented—maybe they can get engaged in the social
action/chesed committee. Maybe they form a new synagogue committee.
DO: Put your events and even service times
on Facebook, and have an easy accessible informative website. I’m not going to
call the synagogue to find out information; I want to be able to find it
myself. What’s the point in having a cheesecake sale for the synagogue if only
your board knows about it? By putting more information on your website, you are
keeping your whole congregation informed. You might see an increase in Friday
night service attendance. Why? Because people knew what time it started.
DON’T: Limit programming to just members.
Millennials, more so than previous generations, feel a strong sense of
community, but we believe in global community. So not all of my friends are Conservative
Jews, even though I belong to a Conservative synagogue; some of my friends who
grew up at Reform synagogues love our synagogue’s young professional
programming and come to programs with me. Some of my friends grew up with
little Jewish background, but they are connecting through my synagogue’s
programming. Are they going to join? I’m not sure. Are they more likely to join
my synagogue if they join any synagogue? YES!
DON’T: Start a conversation with a Millennial
you meet for the first time at a Shabbat service with “Can I set you up?” Millennials
are on a different timeframe than prior generations. Most of us aren’t getting
married at 22 and having our first children at 25. This creates an interesting
situation in synagogues, which may need to look at membership levels and think
of how to accommodate singles in their 20s and 30s.
I
want to conclude for now with the end of Nick Shore’s article, partly because I
love hockey, but also because it leaves us with an important lesson in creating
not just our synagogue’s today, but really how we move our synagogues to
tomorrow. “As the old hockey adage goes, you don't skate to where the puck is,
you skate to where it's headed. And in the case of the Millennials, we're
looking at a hundred million pucks moving towards open ice where bold,
as-yet-unimagined products and services will someday await them. So heads-up,
here come the Millennials.”
