With a 1947 birth date, I’m on the leading edge of the Baby Boomer generation born between ’46 and ’64, boom years when our annual numbers of births in America jumped by 20 percent and houses, schools and even churches were being built at record-setting rates. We are children of the “greatest generation,” who returned home from the big war to make a huge difference in nearly every aspect of American society and in our country’s communities.

With the current Baby Boomer age range of 52 to 70, many pilgrims at this life stage find their faith journey making a “you-turn” back in the direction of improved attendance in church or synagogue after being somewhat absent since the time they completed a commitment to raise their children in the faith. According to the current generational label, those children are now called “Millennials,” having graduated high school in the new millennium and now in their 20’s to mid 30’s, on the leading edge of this generation are beginning to have children – the life stage when they are more likely to make a “you-turn” back to the faith of their youth as they take up responsibility for raising children in faith and faith in children.

Do you see what I see? Millennials have parents who are Baby Boomers, and we who are the elders have an extraordinary opportunity to make a big difference if we will just lead by example and get back to weekly worship with our kids and grandki ds.

Don’t get me wrong here … I’m not naive to the culture of change experienced by religious communities as the “secularization” of our society progresses. I’ve got the books and have heard the authors speak: Robert Bellah who wrote “Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life” in which he confronts religious privatism in a pluralistic society and contrasts secularism over against religious triumphalism; Robert Putnam who wrote “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community” and “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us” in which extensive Harvard research documents several seismic shocks to our nation’s religious landscape in recent decades; and Parker Palmer, who wrote “Five Habits of the Heart” (the phrase coined by Alexis de Tocqueville) in which he a ddresses “Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit” and, more specifically, in his conferences, “The Courage to Practice a Faith Worthy of the Human Spirit.”

The big picture questions are common for each: Do we have the capacity to create community in our changing culture? Can we heal the heart of our greater community? Do we have the spiritual resources necessary, the sense of community that comes especially out of worship together and the “courage of our convictions” to make the “you-turn” that results in a cultural “we-turn?”

I believe the answers to those questions are a resounding three-fold “Yes” … if we Baby Boomers who have a potential to influence choose to seize our unique opportunity to populate our houses of worship with our hungry souls waiting to be fed and our enthusiastic spirits desiring and acting to make a difference. We can take the lead with a hope and prayer that the Millennials will follow our example, but also with the awareness that it’s still true that the young shall lead them, and those young ones are our grandchildren. When God puts a child in our arms, we are led back to God.

I have the books and have heard the authors speak of the research and its conclusions, but more importantly, we have The Book, the holy scriptures, plus prayers that teach of “generation after generation that rise and fall before us, while the word of the Lord endures forever.”

We are the Baby Boomer generation that is the “bubble” moving through the American pipeline, causing the boom in senior housing and who have the potential to cause a boom in church attendance too. Now Lent/Holy Week/Easter and Passover are upon us and every week your priests’/pastors’/rabbis’ favorite words to hear fr om us are “See you at worship.”

Come on Baby Boomers, let’s make a difference!