SNS 130: Saturday Night Special – Interview with speaker and author of GenTech Dr. Rick Chromey

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode, 130.

[00:00:04] Dr. Rick Chromey: I'm Dr. Rick crummy. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to improve consistently over time is key.

[00:00:21] My friends. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott made it.

[00:00:30] Scott Maderer: I like to write stuff every day, just to be introspective. And today I was talking about in my twenties, what I really hunted and what I really pursued was relationships. I wanted people just to to like me and to love me and to include me and whether it was a job finding your first job or finding it, your mate those types of things.

[00:00:52] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who [00:01:00] God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact.

[00:01:17] and tonight and Saturday night special, Dr. Rick Cromey. And I talk with you about how the generations can be looked at by the technology they're immersed in Dr. Rick also shares how this interacts with culture and leadership. And I talk with Dr. Rick about how this interaction has implications for our leaders.

[00:01:38] One reason I like to bring you great interviews. Like the one you're going to hear today is because of the power in learning from others. Another great way to learn from others is through reading books. But if you're like most people today, you find it hard to find the time to sit down and read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible.

[00:01:59] Go [00:02:00] to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And instead of reading, you can listen your way to learn from some of the greatest minds out there. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast.

[00:02:27] Dr. Rick Cromey uses historical insight and cultural inspiration to empower audiences to rethink and reimagine how they lead teach pastor and parent. With over 30 years of training experience. Dr. Cromey is a sought after speaker, both nationally and internationally. He is also pinned over a dozen books on leadership, culture, history, classroom management, and creative communication, including his most recent book general.

[00:02:56] An American story of technology change and who [00:03:00] we really are. Crummy enjoys, collecting antique technology, pop culture, watching baseball, riding his motorcycle, traveling and writing. He lives with his wife, Linda and an adorable dog and an ornery cat and a small town outside of Boise, Idaho. Welcome to the show.

[00:03:17] Dr. Rick Chromey: Scott is good to be

[00:03:19] Scott Maderer: here. Thank you for having me and look forward to chatting with you for the next several minutes. Absolutely. I'm glad to have you here. So we talked a little bit about it in the intro, but how did you make the movement from being a pastor and that sort of calling to now leading a Manoj and how.

[00:03:41] Kind of w where did that come from? Where did the interest in doing this and making that change come from? Yeah. Let me just say there was no interest in the beginning. I thought in about still 20, 30 years ago. In fact in Bible

[00:03:55] Dr. Rick Chromey: college, when I was studying to be a pastor,

[00:03:57] Scott Maderer: there were certain things I said to God I would never [00:04:00] do without, oh no, don't do

[00:04:01] Dr. Rick Chromey: that.

[00:04:03] One was being a missionary Scott and that's exactly what

[00:04:07] Scott Maderer: God. For me or what's fashioning me into

[00:04:11] Dr. Rick Chromey: over these years. But I started out as someone who was just going to Bible college

[00:04:17] Scott Maderer: because they had an acting program there and I was an actor and that became a stair-step too, because we did so many youth ministry events.

[00:04:25] I became interested in youth ministry. So I

[00:04:27] Dr. Rick Chromey: got to youth ministry together. And from there, I got so good at youth ministry. They asked me to start teaching it and I became a

[00:04:34] Scott Maderer: professor of youth and family ministry for about 15 years. And I got so good with that, or basically

[00:04:40] Dr. Rick Chromey: what happened was I started to see where I needed to move and education higher education that I got my doctoral degree and moved on to to be an administrator.

[00:04:48] And at that point, the great recession hit in 2007 and my entire career. That everything happened. I won't go into all that, but it was just it was, God was working and [00:05:00] suddenly I was out there and

[00:05:01] Scott Maderer: I relied upon what my skill sets were. I was a trainer. I was a writer. I was the communicator and LA, I just started finding places

[00:05:10] Dr. Rick Chromey: to serve the church.

[00:05:12] And what happened was in 2015, I was. Oh, actually as early as 2013, but in 2015, I was asked to join a para-church ministry organization as

[00:05:23] Scott Maderer: a missionary and travel around the world

[00:05:25] Dr. Rick Chromey: and be training with them. And so that's an, I had done some training with them already, but in the process of that, I became hi.

[00:05:32] Hi. Interested and develop some basic skills on how to raise money, how to build something from nothing which has always been of interest to me to start with nothing and move

[00:05:43] Scott Maderer: and build

[00:05:44] Dr. Rick Chromey: through that visionary leadership phase of an organization and Manoj was born. It was born as a, as just a deep desire to serve the church.

[00:05:55] Mostly in the United States, but also around the world with [00:06:00] inspirational edgy treatment.

[00:06:01] Scott Maderer: So yeah. Tell us a little bit more about the nonprofit and what's the purpose and what does that do for organizations and for churches?

[00:06:10] Dr. Rick Chromey: That's

[00:06:12] Scott Maderer: really, our

[00:06:13] Dr. Rick Chromey: primary area is again, inspirational edge of treatment.

[00:06:17] Scott Maderer: What I want to do is I want to inspire, I want to bring insight and I want to bring ideas and

[00:06:23] Dr. Rick Chromey: it's pretty much in that. In that order. My, my first

[00:06:27] Scott Maderer: thing I want to do is I just want to inspire, and we have four target audiences, Scott, and we have, obviously the pastors are part of that, but

[00:06:35] Dr. Rick Chromey: We define them as leaders,

[00:06:37] Scott Maderer: teachers, pastors, and parents.

[00:06:39] So

[00:06:40] Dr. Rick Chromey: I do parent training as well as teacher

[00:06:42] Scott Maderer: training, as well

[00:06:43] Dr. Rick Chromey: as leadership, training development, all that.

[00:06:46] Scott Maderer: I also

[00:06:47] Dr. Rick Chromey: do consultations and I write and blog and.

[00:06:51] Scott Maderer: All those areas are wrapped around those four targets. And we just

[00:06:56] Dr. Rick Chromey: go with the wind blows where the

[00:06:58] Scott Maderer: spirit leads me. That's where [00:07:00] I traveled.

[00:07:01] And so I have such a

[00:07:02] Dr. Rick Chromey: wide variety of experiences and I've worked with just about every single church under the sun I, and I've been all over the world doing it. And it's just been a wonderful life. I've been, I call myself in many ways, the Johnny Appleseed of missions. And also maybe a little bit like the apostle Paul, I've never sustained.

[00:07:21] One place too long. My job has been to come in, build up,

[00:07:26] inspire,

[00:07:26] Scott Maderer: and then move forward. And even right now I'm a pastor at a local church here two hours away

[00:07:33] Dr. Rick Chromey: and a little small church and it's time for me to be moving on from that. So

[00:07:38] Scott Maderer: that brings us to the book part of it too. And you mentioned Paul it's you didn't have to get thrown into prison so that you would sit down and write things down.

[00:07:47] That's not how the book came about.

[00:07:50] Rick shaking his head for everybody. I, cause I swear, that's why Paul got. To, to is because that was the only way he was going to slow down long enough to actually [00:08:00] write anything down,

[00:08:02] Dr. Rick Chromey: but write some of his best stuff. Absolutely. That's a,

[00:08:05] Scott Maderer: that's why, like I said, that's why I think that happened.

[00:08:08] You've written this book on gen tech and we talked about that a little bit in the intro to, how did you get interested in that idea of that? The intersection between leadership, culture, generations, and all of that? Where does that coming to the story?

[00:08:25] Dr. Rick Chromey: That comes in through my youth ministry path.

[00:08:28] And obviously when you're a youth pastor and you're

[00:08:32] Scott Maderer: talking with parents and you're trying to equip your volunteers and such,

[00:08:35] Dr. Rick Chromey: you

[00:08:36] Scott Maderer: know, one of the things I was doing back in the eighties, it shows you how old I am back in the eighties. When I started in youth

[00:08:40] Dr. Rick Chromey: ministry, I was helping them to understand the generational context that we're, that our kids are growing up.

[00:08:47] Scott Maderer: And then I started to talk and a lot of people started to have me, a lot of organizations started having me come in and talk about these

[00:08:53] Dr. Rick Chromey: generational contexts and so forth. Literally 25

[00:08:56] Scott Maderer: years,

[00:08:57] Dr. Rick Chromey: I say this book is 30 years in the making [00:09:00] because it really is because for the over the last 30 years I've been studying and researching it out.

[00:09:05] And then about 10 years ago. Oh it'd be more than that. Now it was back when I was doing my doctorate work in the late two thousands that I was specifically honing in on how. Culture shifts as the

[00:09:18] Scott Maderer: result of mega technologies the 500 year shifts that we

[00:09:23] Dr. Rick Chromey: see it's technologically driven the modern age as we like to call, it was driven by the Gutenberg press and the mechanical clock and the scopes, the microscope telescope.

[00:09:34] Yeah. And now we're seeing a new postmodern age for lack of a better term. And it's been driven by television technology, internet, and cell phone. Those are the mega techs. And what happens, Scott was, this is I was doing my normal stuff with generations one time. And all of a sudden, I just started to think, I wonder if the big texts can shift us in the big ways.

[00:09:59] [00:10:00] Could other technologies, particularly in communication, shift us from generation to generation about every 20 years. And when I started to research it out and play it. It started to be about every 10 years, a new. Technology popped. And so that's how generation Gentek and generations came together.

[00:10:19] Technology it's, we're not boomers. I told my boomer friends that's a label that's been put on upon you in 1980 by by a writer for, I think he was people magazine. He was editor for people magazine. He used the word boomer in his book title.

[00:10:36] Scott Maderer: That's how we got it. You're just because there was a big population growth.

[00:10:40] That was where that that's the population growth is what he was referencing with the word boomer. So it was a, B,

[00:10:47] Dr. Rick Chromey: it was appropriate to the demographic. The problem is his Le his frame was too. 1946

[00:10:54] Scott Maderer: to 1964 was a

[00:10:56] Dr. Rick Chromey: bad frame for the boomer generation. The boom generation [00:11:00] started demographically to boom in 1943, when the soldiers came back and really busted in 1960, when the pill was introduced into American.

[00:11:13] Scott Maderer: And so

[00:11:13] Dr. Rick Chromey: demographically 1964 was picked because baby boomers tend to have a connection to

[00:11:20] Scott Maderer: JFK. And of course JFK's assassination was in 63. The problem with that is I was born in

[00:11:26] Dr. Rick Chromey: 1963 and I was just a baby. When JFK was assassinated. I have no recollection of that. My first cultural memory

[00:11:35] Scott Maderer: is of a moonshot in 1969, July 20th.

[00:11:39] Dr. Rick Chromey: That's my first cultural memory. And my

[00:11:42] Scott Maderer: memory is I can remember the Nixon resignation. On TV. I can remember seeing that on TV. I technically was born before the moonshot, but the same thing. I watched people land on the moon as an infant in my mother's lap as I was born in 68. [00:12:00] Giving you that mix.

[00:12:01] Yeah. You're

[00:12:02] Dr. Rick Chromey: proving my point because that was the. Is that cultural memory we often talk about? I remember things

[00:12:10] Scott Maderer: in my family when I was one or two years old and I always okay. You're not going to argue against

[00:12:15] Dr. Rick Chromey: that type of stuff, but cultural memory,

[00:12:17] Scott Maderer: sociologists and developmental psychologists and biologists, cognitive

[00:12:22] Dr. Rick Chromey: biologists will all tell you the same cultural memory.

[00:12:26] Emerged around

[00:12:27] Scott Maderer: age five, your first call. I was six. Yeah. I was six when Nixon resigned. So that's right in that timeframe. That's where you remember it. Yeah, exactly. So

[00:12:37] Dr. Rick Chromey: we're not boomers and like me I'm not a boomer. I'm

[00:12:41] Scott Maderer: not even gen X, really. Gen X is another one of those ambiguous terms. I wouldn't call gen X on those parts, but yeah

[00:12:49] Dr. Rick Chromey: We're the space generation, Scott.

[00:12:52] We grew up with space technology. We grew up with Quispe cereal and what was that? That. Tang. [00:13:00] Yeah, I was thinking Tang. Got it. Thank you. Yes. We grew up on Tang and those type of things. We grew up on microwaves and technology that was very Spacey and of course, star

[00:13:09] Scott Maderer: Trek and star wars framed our existential

[00:13:13] Dr. Rick Chromey: experience in the space generation, but we also grew up on video games.

[00:13:18] And that was that was part of this whole motif

[00:13:22] Scott Maderer: for me. Scott was, as I started lay

[00:13:25] Dr. Rick Chromey: it out every 10 years, a new technology was popping and we're part of actually two technological generations, not long generation

[00:13:33] Scott Maderer: with a hard and fast

[00:13:34] Dr. Rick Chromey: in. It's very fluid. It's more dynamic. And I think

[00:13:40] Scott Maderer: really more helpful as far as how do we understand who we really are?

[00:13:45] And that's the title of the book

[00:13:46] Dr. Rick Chromey: technology changing, who we really are.

[00:13:50] Scott Maderer: So let's dive into that a little bit. If you talk about the. The 1980s, 1990s, the [00:14:00] age of the computer, getting into the internet and all of that. So that's that's my, I was a school teacher for 16 years.

[00:14:08] That's a lot of my, a lot of my students were in that timeframe kind of thing. What are some of the characteristics of them? What are some of the implications of being in that kind of computer? Computer age for lack of a better word. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:25] Dr. Rick Chromey: And right. And those born between 1980 and 19 or 2000 that 20 year period, I call the PC CP generation PC personal computer CP cell phone.

[00:14:36] There they're one of only two generation technological generations. They

[00:14:40] Scott Maderer: have twin technologies. And so they have the cell phone

[00:14:44] Dr. Rick Chromey: and the personal computer, but those born in 19, between 1990 and. 10, which we commonly call. We all lump them together in the millennial areas,

[00:14:52] Scott Maderer: especially the older ones that the millennials I call them the net generation because

[00:14:57] Dr. Rick Chromey: the internet was popping.

[00:14:59] [00:15:00] And so that's the internet, personal computer cell phone. Those three technologies are really what defined the millennial generation. Now, who are they characteristically? I say, think about www. Think about it. It's a great acronym for the millennials or for this computer generation as you mentioned, the first is that they were a wanted general.

[00:15:25] They were the baby on board generation. For those of us who grew up gen X, we remember the shows, the television shows the movies that were made about us movies like Goonies and we were nerds and we were Children of the corn excersice children. So there was,

[00:15:43] Scott Maderer: there was an evilness. We were bad news bears.

[00:15:48] We were later

[00:15:49] Dr. Rick Chromey: In the 1980s, we were depicted as breakfast club delinquents. Love was mine. I love that. We had,

[00:15:58] we had all of these very [00:16:00] negative labels attached to us. In fact in the wider culture, we were known as slackers

[00:16:05] Scott Maderer: and

[00:16:05] Dr. Rick Chromey: the dumb generation and the blank generation,

[00:16:09] Scott Maderer: which by the way, is true.

[00:16:11] Every generation is called that by the generation that went before them.

[00:16:15] Dr. Rick Chromey: The diff the differences, Scott, unlike the boomers, and unlike the millennials, we made time magazine

[00:16:22] Scott Maderer: cover with that particular label. And we were defined and framed

[00:16:27] Dr. Rick Chromey: seriously as the blank generation. And it's interesting that our music reflected that you think about the fashions of gen X being grunge and the the hip hop

[00:16:38] Scott Maderer: Culture and how that really impacted who we are, the tattoos

[00:16:43] Dr. Rick Chromey: piercing,

[00:16:44] Scott Maderer: the cartoons of gen X today.

[00:16:46] And it's and by cartoons memes and ideas it's gen Y or millennials are fighting with the. The boomers and gen X is standing in the corner with the martini, just watching the fight or [00:17:00] whatever. Exactly. Exactly. Because we're the Jan

[00:17:04] Dr. Rick Chromey: Brady generation. I'll use a Brady bunch.

[00:17:07] Marsha, that's the boomer. They're the Marshall generation, and that the precocious Cindy that's the millennials and we're stuck in the mud. We've been stuck in the middle all the way through, but back to these millennials, what happened in 1980 was, and partly because the gen Xers, we're starting now to have babies.

[00:17:29] There was a reaction to the way we were raised and we went over protected. Our generation started to be more protective of the

[00:17:38] Scott Maderer: young ones. And so we put little things on the back of our vehicle, same baby on board just so you're aware there's

[00:17:44] Dr. Rick Chromey: a baby on board. This is when McDonald's recognizing the cultural shifting put, play lands into the.

[00:17:51] There are restaurants and they became a kind of a family destination for gen X families and millennial kids. We [00:18:00] started put airbags into cars. We started to put coverings over our electrical

[00:18:04] Scott Maderer: sockets.

[00:18:05] Dr. Rick Chromey: We started to put caps on our medicines. Medicine boxes and such to keep out the kids.

[00:18:12] And it's also, when we shifted to an area of sports, we

[00:18:16] Scott Maderer: shifted to more about eligible watched let's get these kids in the sports and we

[00:18:20] Dr. Rick Chromey: will watch them celebrate it, but they're not going to go out and play. The millennials didn't go out and play. Those of us who grew up gen X did.

[00:18:28] And even the boomers, they were very watched. That's the first w the second w is that they were a wa wanting to generation or excuse me, I want a

[00:18:36] Scott Maderer: generation. And then there were also watched, they were wanted

[00:18:40] Dr. Rick Chromey: We were gen X by contracts was the most aborted January. In American

[00:18:46] Scott Maderer: history. It's hard to

[00:18:49] tell,

[00:18:49] Dr. Rick Chromey: but we were also latched keyed in daycare and spats, and even the boomers had they were wanted they were a post-World war II generation, but the millennials were really [00:19:00] wanted.

[00:19:00] And we w we, we changed a

[00:19:03] Scott Maderer: lot of how we interacted and worked

[00:19:05] Dr. Rick Chromey: with the millennials as a result. We created children's ministries and youth ministries in the church because boomers were coming with. With their children. And they wanted to be in places where their kids felt wanted, and then the last w is worthy and we often get stuck on this one a bit because it's, it can be a little bit of a negative, but basically the millennial generation was validated. From the very beginning, but particularly really young as being a blessed of knowing a generation. You saw that on time magazine you saw that on Newsweek magazine these

[00:19:39] Scott Maderer: major media magazines, and you saw them in the media, how they were blessed and anointed the

[00:19:45] Dr. Rick Chromey: movies that they had were like a spy kids.

[00:19:48] They were kids who would go out and change the world. They were angels in the outfield. They were they were the type of kids that could hit pitch a, a world series game and such. [00:20:00] And so they were just given a different thing. And of course, in the area of broader culture it was someone's idea along the line, but became a national idea that w we're not going to give you a trophy for.

[00:20:15] We're going to give you a trophy for participating

[00:20:19] Scott Maderer: And we want you to feel good about yourself. And education really

[00:20:22] Dr. Rick Chromey: shifted around that too, because we looked at these kids as being worthy kids. So www that's the millennial generation, they were watched, they were wanted and they were worthy.

[00:20:33] Scott Maderer: And again, like I said, that was the years I was teaching. Those kids were in my classroom. And I can remember a lot of the changes that you're talking about, how. In school and then their parents coming in and both being very engaged, but then the grandparents having things where they would talk almost against it [00:21:00] they were mad about the participation trophies and whatnot.

[00:21:03] So how does that kind of threat try generational interface before we look at the, even the next generation that's coming along, that everyone seems to have forgotten about as well. How does that kind of historical tri generation effect That's a great

[00:21:19] question because there's a number of ways that it plays out.

[00:21:22] Dr. Rick Chromey: Obviously in the communication between

[00:21:25] Scott Maderer: generations, it can produce some rather negative type of of thoughts the boom generation some of their comments about the millennials being snowflakes and and just being fragile and always

[00:21:43] Dr. Rick Chromey: overall pledged, privileged and entitled, and those types of and let's be fair.

[00:21:50] They

[00:21:50] Scott Maderer: have had more privileged, they've had more cultural

[00:21:53] Dr. Rick Chromey: entitlement but calling them out on that to my millennial friends [00:22:00] listening right now. Let me tell you, I live in snow. I know what snowflakes are. Snowflakes are one of God's greatest creations because everyone is distinct and unique and you better watch out when they stick together.

[00:22:14] That's all I'm going to say. No flakes

[00:22:16] Scott Maderer: can create a lot of beauty in the woods when they stick together. And so I like to celebrate, Hey, take that moniker on and be proud of it, yeah. They're fragile, but that doesn't mean you ha you can't do something great with that thought.

[00:22:31] Dr. Rick Chromey: The millennials have come back and certain

[00:22:35] Scott Maderer: elements in the last few years with this okay. Boomer making fun

[00:22:39] Dr. Rick Chromey: of the boomers and let's also be. And I realized this in my own career that you turn 45

[00:22:47] Scott Maderer: in our culture. I don't care whether you were a boomer or an X-er or anything else.

[00:22:52] You can turn 45

[00:22:53] Dr. Rick Chromey: in the millennials will soon experience this because they're getting close to that. They're

[00:22:56] Scott Maderer: going to say they're there. We'll forget that the front end [00:23:00] of them is 40 they're five years away from 45. And let me tell you at 45 culture starts looking at you differently.

[00:23:08] You get a little snow in the beard and little, a

[00:23:10] Dr. Rick Chromey: little balding on the top of

[00:23:12] Scott Maderer: the head, and then you get a little flabby and right down the middle and culture starts to

[00:23:16] Dr. Rick Chromey: look at you differently. And it's sad to watch how quickly we erase the wisdom of the old. That's what I tell the millennials and my gen Z and the younger audiences I work with older people have a lot of wisdom now.

[00:23:32] They're not always right. But they have a lot of wisdom. If you just patiently sit through it and take what you hear. And with my older audiences, I say, you have to understand the younger audience have a lot of passion. They have a lot of energy, and they're amazing in that way. And what we'd need to do is bring these generations together.

[00:23:51] And I think that's part of my message with Gentek is let's get outside the labels let's let the technology. [00:24:00]

[00:24:00] Scott Maderer: Tell us who we are and that, because

[00:24:02] Dr. Rick Chromey: it was it makes more sense. But in the end, let's get rid of gen Z and gen Y and gen X and millennials and all these labels that put us into boxes.

[00:24:12] And let's be, let's just be people let's be human.

[00:24:18] Scott Maderer: And one of the earlier I referenced about how every generation complains about the generation behind them. And of course my wife always points out. The irony of that is, is it means the people that raised the kids are complaining about the kids and it's huh, maybe you should look in the mirror.

[00:24:35] Maybe you did some of that created that if you're going to your play

[00:24:41] Dr. Rick Chromey: That's very true. It was interesting in my book I go all the way back to the year

[00:24:46] 1900. Because there's been more technological change since

[00:24:50] Scott Maderer: 1900 in the entire history of the world. So I started in

[00:24:53] Dr. Rick Chromey: 1900 and I'm dealing with just

[00:24:55] Scott Maderer: the American story.

[00:24:56] So keep that in mind. But

[00:24:58] Dr. Rick Chromey: as I studied out young [00:25:00] people, as they're emerging in the 1910s in the 1920s, they were the flapper generation. Adults were going nuts in the 1920s with these kids, the sexual promiscuity, they were showing their legs out at the swimming pool. It was unbelievable. And then you get into the 1930s.

[00:25:21] Of course, that's the depression era, but the 1940s with the Frank Sinatra January. And they were just, the older adults were just absolutely stunned at Frankston. Natron what he was causing these young girls to do. And it wasn't long before Elvis came along and did it, and then the Beatles came along.

[00:25:39] We did it. And then all the rock artists

[00:25:41] Scott Maderer: of the, yes, it was ruining the young people. Yeah. I actually had a list that I had cobbled together when I was teaching and I don't, unfortunately don't have it anymore, but it was quotes from. Basically complaining about how the younger generation was going to destroy the world and the [00:26:00] world was coming to an end because of this younger generation.

[00:26:03] And I put them in chronological order and I could, I trace them all the way back to Aristotle. Like the oldest one I had was Aristotle complaining about the next generation. I know which linear, I know which one you're talking. Aristotle, basically these

[00:26:17] Dr. Rick Chromey: kids disrespect their parents and

[00:26:19] Scott Maderer: respect their elders and won't listen to anybody.

[00:26:22] It's yo, we've been saying that for a long time and we're still around. So maybe it's not quite as bad as we make it out to me because I think too, as you pointed out earlier, I think sometimes there is generational things, but then there's also within our, the arc of our own life. We go through different phases of what I call in my coaching lamp, which is launch acquisition maturity, and then pre retirement, you know where your own life you when you're launching, you're doing certain things.

[00:26:53] When you're in acquisition mode, you're doing certain things. You acquire a spouse, you acquire a dog, you acquire a house, you acquire [00:27:00] you're building and then there's maturity. About that 45 age that you're talking about is when you start usually transitioning into that. And then there of course there's pre retirement and retirement too, towards the other end.

[00:27:12] And there's characteristics to our own life generational phases as well. I think sometimes we forget that part of it.

[00:27:22] Dr. Rick Chromey: Yeah. And

[00:27:23] Scott Maderer: that's, we all have different needs at different times in our lives. I I think I, in fact, I was writing on this today. I didn't post on

[00:27:29] Facebook because I was smart enough not to do that, but I like to write stuff every day

[00:27:34] Dr. Rick Chromey: just to be introspective.

[00:27:36] And today I was talking

[00:27:37] Scott Maderer: about in my twenties, what I really hunted and what I really pursued was relationships.

[00:27:43] Dr. Rick Chromey: I wanted people just to to like me and to love

[00:27:47] Scott Maderer: me and to include me and whether it was a job finding your first job or finding your mate those

[00:27:53] Dr. Rick Chromey: type of things.

[00:27:54] And then in the thirties, it was about

[00:27:56] Scott Maderer: Really trying to

[00:27:57] Dr. Rick Chromey: establish myself, being recognized. [00:28:00] Okay. And in the forties it became more about

[00:28:03] Scott Maderer: Using the word

[00:28:05] Dr. Rick Chromey: stewardship here. It is, it was more about trying to take what I had accomplished and it became more about achieving let's let me have some achievements here before I finished this thing out.

[00:28:16] And in the last I'm 58 right now. So the last 10 years the last eight years, I've noticed a real shift and it's been more of just wanting to be valid. And I think in your fifties, you just want to be validated. And we do that by getting asked to be on boards and, or on

[00:28:34] Scott Maderer: podcasts with guys like you Scott, to share our

[00:28:38] Dr. Rick Chromey: crazy ideas about why books we write books.

[00:28:42] Exactly. And I haven't figured out the what's going to happen in the next

[00:28:46] Scott Maderer: decade because I haven't gotten there yet. I'll let your older listeners more mature listeners. Maybe give me some thoughts on that, but. I love life. Life has different chapters all the way along. And if we know what people want, what they're [00:29:00] looking for you think

[00:29:01] Dr. Rick Chromey: about those young people.

[00:29:02] If they're looking for relationship, the last thing we should be doing is busting those relationships and breaking them

[00:29:08] Scott Maderer: down and calling them names and

[00:29:10] Dr. Rick Chromey: And such that's not productive. And it's actually destructive and same thing with young people. If they realize that those 50 year old people you're working with all, they want us to be validated.

[00:29:21] I just want to be validated. They want to know that the work that they've done makes a difference in that Navy matters. Just maybe they know how to do it. Now you've made the younger person may have a more creative way of doing it. And it may actually prove to be a better way of doing it then the old guy.

[00:29:37] Sure. But you don't come up to those guys and say, we're going to do it my way or the highway. That just doesn't work

[00:29:44] Scott Maderer: well. And before we move into a few questions that I like to ask everybody, I do want to talk about I, again, I still think it's interesting cause I I work with a lot of companies and a lot of other folks and often churches is a great example of this and they're [00:30:00] still often focused on the millennials and talking about the millennials as if they're the kids of today.

[00:30:05] But we just pointed out earlier, the millennials are turning they're in their forties, early forties now at least at one end of the millennial generation. So what about the generation that kind of comes after the millennials? The the iTech kids those kids growing up from there that what can you say about them and what we need to do to be able to recognize and pay attention and come.

[00:30:31] With them as organizations and people. Yeah. Yeah, it was it's

[00:30:38] Dr. Rick Chromey: interesting to me that we're talking about a

[00:30:40] Scott Maderer: gen Z now another

[00:30:42] Dr. Rick Chromey: very lazy label,

[00:30:44] Scott Maderer: which is probably why I wrote the book. I got ticked at that label. Come on. Can't we be a little bit more creative

[00:30:50] Dr. Rick Chromey: and then I found out

[00:30:51] Scott Maderer: how we got the label gen Z.

[00:30:52] It was a market

[00:30:54] Dr. Rick Chromey: from, I think in Australia that created it. It wasn't even a, it wasn't even a, it was [00:31:00] just let's pick our ABCs. It's just not, it's not a good way, not productive, but when I look at those born since the year 2000 and those born between, and the book, I talk about those born between the years,

[00:31:12] Scott Maderer: 2020 20, the last 20 year period

[00:31:15] Dr. Rick Chromey: I call them the iTechs.

[00:31:17] You mentioned that, and I actually think that's a more productive name for them. There's there's a gal

[00:31:23] Scott Maderer: who her name's Jean down there in the park. I can't think of her last name. Now

[00:31:28] Dr. Rick Chromey: it's escaping me but she. She does a lot of work in gen Z. She calls them the I gen generation, which I think is only

[00:31:36] Scott Maderer: redundant.

[00:31:37] Dr. Rick Chromey: I like that, but it's redundant. I gen generation it's redundant, but I tech speaks to their eye technologies. What was it that these kids grew up on? They grew up on iTunes,

[00:31:48] Scott Maderer: iPods, iPads, I phone. I watch it they grew up with clouds and streams

[00:31:57] Dr. Rick Chromey: and so that's a different type of [00:32:00] technological generation.

[00:32:01] The those born since 2010. I call them the robo generation. There are America's youngest generation and they're growing up on and we'll be growing up on the next, in the next 25

[00:32:14] Scott Maderer: years as they come of age on

[00:32:16] Dr. Rick Chromey: hair technologies. Now I said that because I'm totally bald. No, that's not true.

[00:32:21] They're growing up on hair technologies. It's another acronym I love acronyms for memory sake, but H is holograms AI. Artificial intelligence and our robotics, those three technologies they're popping right now. If you have your ear to the floor, you can hear it popping all robots in particular. But so it's going to say it.

[00:32:42] Scott Maderer: If you don't have your ear to the Fort, just go look up Boston dynamics on YouTube and watch a few videos. But anyway, go on. There you go. Yes.

[00:32:52] Dr. Rick Chromey: In fact, I just saw it was released just in a day, if there's an brand new robot that is so small, that will literally go [00:33:00] into the bloodstream of a human being.

[00:33:02] And the whole idea is eventually, someday those robots will be able to go in and do surgery, even in places where we normally have to open somebody up, a robot can actually be ingested in or be shot into the bloodstream. However you want to get it in there and it would go in and it would do the repair.

[00:33:18] It would do the surgery. That's amazing to me, but our youngest generation that's going to be normal to them. It's television is to you and I, so here's the thing, the three characteristics about the last 20 years. When you think about the iTechs and the robo generation, you got to think through.

[00:33:36] Scott Maderer: Now, we're talking through a D first of all,

[00:33:38] Dr. Rick Chromey: they are a digital generation, wholly digital, and they carry their books on their back in their laptop. Everything

[00:33:47] Scott Maderer: is digital for them. They are a diverse generation. This, they are probably the most diverse American generation. In fact, in some parts of America California is one, there [00:34:00] are more Hispanics

[00:34:01] than

[00:34:01] Scott Maderer: there are white people in our Caucasian,

[00:34:04] Dr. Rick Chromey: in California.

[00:34:06] It is growing that

[00:34:07] Scott Maderer: That greatly we hear a lot about the black

[00:34:10] Dr. Rick Chromey: population in America right now, but the reality

[00:34:13] Scott Maderer: is Scott Hispanics are actually going to double the black population

[00:34:17] Dr. Rick Chromey: in the next 10 to 15. Black populations, only 13% of American

[00:34:22] Scott Maderer: population. But whites are right now hovering around 75.

[00:34:27] 70 74, 70 5%.

[00:34:29] Dr. Rick Chromey: But we are going to decrease and what's happening is in some parts, the, in general, 75% are

[00:34:36] Scott Maderer: white, but by,

[00:34:37] Dr. Rick Chromey: by the next 25, 30, 50 years even in the middle of America, it's going to be very diverse. And the last thing is that they're decentralized. And what I mean by decentralized is when you look at their authority, when you look at them, they're the youth, the YouTube generation.

[00:34:56] But there are the YouTube creators, some of the most [00:35:00] fantastic. Some of the most profound, some of the most accomplished some of the most rich. People on YouTube are under 10 years of age. I don't know if you knew

[00:35:11] Scott Maderer: that or not

[00:35:13] Dr. Rick Chromey: what they produce. And under 20 years of age, they're just producing these amazing, they're making careers out of YouTube.

[00:35:20] It's why employers right now are going well. We can't find people to work well. Why would you work when you can go and create a podcast and that makes money, or you can go in and create a YouTube channel. That's going to make. These young kids are they're entrepreneurs. They're not going to work at Starbucks or they're not going to work at Be at a restaurant change, sloughing food for 13 bucks an hour.

[00:35:43] Even if you can get that type of a job. They're gonna, they're gonna make serious money and they're doing it now. So those are the three DS they're digital, are they diverse and they're decentralized.

[00:35:56] Scott Maderer: And by decentralized, you mean that they don't they're not [00:36:00] following the gatekeepers or the typical way of doing things.

[00:36:03] They're going out and creating their own way.

[00:36:07] Dr. Rick Chromey: Think about how we do travel. Travel has been decentralized. It used to be, if you wanted to Nick, make a trip, you had to go get a travel agent to book all those flights for you to book the whole tour. Now you don't have to do that.

[00:36:21] You can research it out yourself. You can book your own flights, you can rent your own cars. Everything can be done for you. You do it, your stuff. That's what I mean by decentralized the internet, the cell phone, even television has decentralized our culture as a whole. It is the major flattening of culture.

[00:36:39] Scott Maderer: Yeah. And that, and that even, I think of the generation before for instance the information what w basically used to information was hard to do. And tended to be one sided. So for instance, shopping for a car, the whole reason that buying [00:37:00] a car has that negative connotation of they're going to rip me off.

[00:37:03] And all of this is because there was an information vacuum. They knew all the information about the car, how much it was worth, how much they could afford to sell it for you knew nothing. With the invent of, I have been of the internet. All of a sudden you could find out all of that information and you could walk into a color car dealership, pre armed with information, and it created a completely different dynamic.

[00:37:24] And you still see that shaking out in the world today. Yeah. And this is for a little while too. So that was for personal

[00:37:33] Dr. Rick Chromey: life. It's Scott. It's why the middles are collapsing, right? When you think about all you think about

[00:37:39] Scott Maderer: things that are

[00:37:40] Dr. Rick Chromey: mainstream or middle in the middle management is going away.

[00:37:45] You think about even middle-class people are getting richer. People are getting poor, the middle-class classes collapsing everything's in the middle. It used to be that if you wanted to reach people, you had to do mass advertising. Now it's about niche advertising. [00:38:00] Everything. Everything is going to the edges.

[00:38:03] Everything is moving to to the fringe.

[00:38:06] Scott Maderer: And if in fact, if you're on a highway

[00:38:08] Dr. Rick Chromey: and you stand in the middle of it, you're going to get run over. And that's what this culture will do to you. You will not see. And churches are famous for that, by the way, you probably know that as well. Churches, what they want to do is reach as many people as possible when the reality is scratch your niche, find that one target population.

[00:38:28] And I would encourage you do the biblical thing and it's in your neighborhood. So reach your neighborhood. What's your neighborhood. A lot of churches are closing because they can't reach their neighborhood.

[00:38:38] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. Yeah. And yeah as a member, who's an active member in a rural church, in the middle of a very split community.

[00:38:51] And what I mean by that is it's a bedroom community for a major metropolitan area. So there's a lot of people that live out here that have good money that [00:39:00] have big houses and all of that and drive in. Does they do. They're shopping. They're working their church. Everything is in the big city, but they live, but they sleep out here.

[00:39:11] So it's a veteran community. And then at the other end is what I would call working poor. So it's they're not lazy people. They're not just not doing anything, but. They're working nine to five jobs, barely making ends meet and dealing with that. And so it's a very diverse community that the church is located in so less.

[00:39:37] Yeah. There is no metal for this community for the most. Yeah.

[00:39:41] Dr. Rick Chromey: Yeah, that's fascinating.

[00:39:42] Scott Maderer: And that's, what's going to be our

[00:39:44] Dr. Rick Chromey: greatest, I think, issue here moving forward

[00:39:47] Scott Maderer: In America, especially in the In our cultural populations, it's more than just ethnic differences. It's going to be

[00:39:56] economic data for.

[00:39:58] And where is the church and [00:40:00] all this. Stewardship is what you're all about. That's a question for you. I should be the podcast host now

[00:40:05] Dr. Rick Chromey: should play into that role, and I'll not, I don't want to go to two hours on that, but I think one of the things is the church has to stop learning to be a.

[00:40:23] Scott Maderer: All right. Stop acting in a way that basically boils down to we have some money. We have no how let us come in and save you and show you how to do it. And be much more like missionaries are trained to do, which is. No let's work beside the community. That's there and work in conjunct with the community.

[00:40:46] That's there and recognize the fact that the communities that they, there probably has a lot of knowledge and skill that we don't have cause I think so often we come in with the rescuers mindset when we really should have a partnership mindset [00:41:00] and yeah. That's my 2 cents. So what's going to be, what's going to be interesting on that is we're probably 20 years away in America from potentially being a hostile formal a faith that it's hostile that, and there'll be hostilities.

[00:41:17] And I'll tell you what if the government ever decides to pull nonprofit or. Taxes, you have to pay property taxes on your churches. We're going to be in trouble. Yeah,

[00:41:30] Dr. Rick Chromey: that's going to be huge.

[00:41:32] Scott Maderer: So speaking of stewardship one of the questions that I try to ask all of my guests I've learned over the years, that word, even for Christians has a lot of different connotations, a lot of different meanings.

[00:41:43] What does the word stewardship mean to you, Rick? And what does its impact been on your own?

[00:41:49] Dr. Rick Chromey: Yeah it's a great

[00:41:51] Scott Maderer: question. And like I said, I imagine there are a lot of different answers for me. I look at it more

[00:41:56] Dr. Rick Chromey: organically. Scott. I think that stewardship [00:42:00] is like tending a

[00:42:01] Scott Maderer: gardens. It's I think Adam and Eve were the first nurturer.

[00:42:06] They're the first stewards

[00:42:07] Dr. Rick Chromey: of the garden and their job to be as something as simple as

[00:42:11] Scott Maderer: naming the animals all the way to making sure that the plants and the. Proper food is distributed and everything whatever that means. I know I have a garden out in my backyard and it means fertilizing the ground.

[00:42:27] Dr. Rick Chromey: It means digging out the weeds that can take the energy from the roots of the real plants. It means.

[00:42:34] Scott Maderer: Making sure water is on them. When w cause we live in a dry climate, it means

[00:42:39] Dr. Rick Chromey: properly harvesting at the right time. So it's more organic. And I, for years I always thought stewardship was more organizational.

[00:42:48] It was more mechanical. It was more principle. It was about principles. For

[00:42:52] example, if you do this and you do this, you're going to get that. It was more of an equation, a mathematical thing. [00:43:00] And I don't believe that anymore. For me is giving obviously, but it's giving not just my money.

[00:43:08] It's giving my time. It's giving my talent. It's giving 'em who I am as a person. My, the wisdom that God has blessed me with. It's doing all those things that stewardship.

[00:43:23] Scott Maderer: So Rick, if I could invent a magic machine and I could pluck you from the chair where you sit right now today and travel into the future, maybe a hundred to 150 years and magically, you're able to look back on your whole life and see all of the impacts, all of the ripples, all of the things that you've left behind that legacy that you've left behind.

[00:43:47] What impact do you hope you've had on the way?

[00:43:49] Yeah. That's again, that's a very deep deep question. I think we all want to, we have a hope that we want to leave the world a better place.[00:44:00] And we hope that the legacy is there. I hope that when

[00:44:04] Dr. Rick Chromey: people in a hundred years that my writings

[00:44:08] Scott Maderer: still exist. I actually have a lot of writings.

[00:44:12] I have a lot of things that I put down that have never made it to the light of. And it's partly because it's just not the right place. I wrote a book here a few years ago called sermons

[00:44:24] Dr. Rick Chromey: re-imagined and it was probably one of my most advanced works as far as looking into the future and really trying to say, Hey, we have to reimagine how we even communicate on Sunday morning.

[00:44:34] And it was a dismal failure by my

[00:44:38] Scott Maderer: publisher standards. And he was right. The sales

[00:44:40] Dr. Rick Chromey: weren't there it wasn't as

[00:44:42] Scott Maderer: sexy as some of the other

[00:44:44] Dr. Rick Chromey: types of titles that they had. And but the truth is people who read it. Whoa, this guy's ahead of his time.

[00:44:51] Scott Maderer: And I feel in many ways I attend to be a guy ahead of my time.

[00:44:55] I always have been. And I look

[00:44:57] Dr. Rick Chromey: at the profits of the old Testament and [00:45:00] how, when they spoke into the future, often they got.

[00:45:04] Scott Maderer: They got a very difficult end in swift into their life, even it can be, it's a hard life to be a prophet, and I don't even want it to be a prophet to be a prophet as a mantle.

[00:45:14] That's often put upon you, but I'm a cultural prophet Scott. I've been highly trained in looking in and into the future, looking

[00:45:22] Dr. Rick Chromey: back into the past and seeing the patterns of history

[00:45:25] Scott Maderer: and how they play out. So I think that would be part of, is that my writings

[00:45:30] Dr. Rick Chromey: My contributions would find some.

[00:45:33] The future much the way that John

[00:45:35] Scott Maderer: Locke did by the way

[00:45:36] Dr. Rick Chromey: John Locke was was largely stuck in in a very unique part of his world until some Americans

[00:45:45] Scott Maderer: found his writings and started to put them into,

[00:45:49] Dr. Rick Chromey: oh the writings they were creating, like the constitution of the United States, the declaration of independence to many of the constitutions of the state state constitutions

[00:45:58] Scott Maderer: as well.

[00:45:59] [00:46:00] John Locke

[00:46:00] Dr. Rick Chromey: was. He was more famous

[00:46:03] Scott Maderer: after he was dead than he was before and such. But in the end I hope that people see that I was just real I'm just a real person and I I'm good. And I hope that I leave the world a little bit better than the way I found it.

[00:46:23] So what's coming next for you as you continue on this journey and what's on the roadmap.

[00:46:28] Dr. Rick Chromey: I've been doing a lot with this Gentek book, and we're hoping

[00:46:32] Scott Maderer: that when COVID releases and finally allows me to travel more freely, that I'll be able to get into more venues and speak.

[00:46:40] And if any of your listeners are looking for a speaker, a keynote speaker or workshop person you'll keep me in mind. I'd love to come to your conference, your

[00:46:49] Dr. Rick Chromey: convention what, whatever it is. The other thing is I really feel

[00:46:54] Scott Maderer: a calling to.

[00:46:55] Dr. Rick Chromey: What I do is I

[00:46:57] Scott Maderer: interpret history, Scott and I navigate [00:47:00] culture.

[00:47:00] Those are my two primary areas and also explore

[00:47:03] Dr. Rick Chromey: faith. But interpreting history I think is becoming more and more important. And I'm actually thinking about creating a series that I call the inconvenience series.

[00:47:12] Scott Maderer: It will be a a kind of looking

[00:47:16] Dr. Rick Chromey: at it as a. Demonstration or presentation for Christian schools for even public schools depending on, on, on the content.

[00:47:25] But it would

[00:47:26] Scott Maderer: actually show how we've gotten some of these facts wrong. I

[00:47:30] Dr. Rick Chromey: was, I was surprised today. I was in a conversation on Facebook with somebody who actually said George Washington was not even a good Christian. And it was like, have you actually read what historians and I'm talking about the people in the early 18 hundreds believed

[00:47:48] Scott Maderer: about this guy he was an amazing Christian.

[00:47:52] Dr. Rick Chromey: He was so we, we've actually

[00:47:54] got people out there including good Christians who believe that George Washington was. Bad [00:48:00] person. And it's because the reading, the history of historians that have been writing since the 1940s, rather than reading the historians that wrote about Washington in the 1840s,

[00:48:10] Scott Maderer: which is where I go to the

[00:48:12] Dr. Rick Chromey: original sources.

[00:48:13] And so I think there's some new stories of the media need to be told.

[00:48:17] Scott Maderer: Okay. Yeah. I saw a post the other day. It actually, I thought it was a really neat. Creating a website where you would put in what year you were born and it would list off for you, facts that you probably learned in school that have since been proven.

[00:48:34] Wow. And I'm like, that would actually be really cool if you could invent it, that would actually be a really cool way of doing it, because I do think that there's things that we learn that we assume because we learn them that they're right. And yet later they're shown to be wrong and we don't necessarily.

[00:48:53] Revise our frame of the world, because we're not exposed to it. So anyway. Yeah. We forget, we

[00:48:59] Dr. Rick Chromey: [00:49:00] forget with history that people have agendas. Oh, of course.

[00:49:03] Scott Maderer: And with agendas, we can

[00:49:04] Dr. Rick Chromey: leave out certain things. Most people don't even think about the fact that our calling. Our United States colonies were actually created for the propagation of the Christian gospel.

[00:49:17] When the pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, they actually set out to create a Christian community, but their whole point was to evangelize the. And that as they put it, they wanted it to they wanted it to be, they were missionaries and those things get missed when we talk about

[00:49:34] Scott Maderer: the compact the charters and stuff.

[00:49:37] And today in our public schools, because we can't have God in the mix. And I think that's another part of my work is to remind people that

[00:49:46] Dr. Rick Chromey: God was in the mix from the beginning in this nation. And we better not forget that.

[00:49:50] Scott Maderer: So you can find out more about Rick on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook is Dr. Rick Cromey that's spelled C H R O [00:50:00] M E Y. Or you can find out more about his services and the book and book him to speak or come to your event@rickcromey.com. Rick, is there anything else you'd like to share with us? I just

[00:50:13] A lot of people ask me, what do you think about all this stuff that's going on?

[00:50:16] As far as the future and technology and robots. And the one thing I would say is just, again, be real

[00:50:23] Dr. Rick Chromey: authenticity with one thing, a robot can't do and won't do

[00:50:26] Scott Maderer: them. I'll never do is be a motive.

[00:50:29] Dr. Rick Chromey: We are a motive. Beings created unique and

[00:50:32] Scott Maderer: distinct by God's own hand. And so just be real.

[00:50:36] That

[00:50:37] Dr. Rick Chromey: is the secret to interacting

[00:50:39] Scott Maderer: and being a human being in our very plastic fake culture that we have.

[00:50:46] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard [00:51:00] and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/.

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