Pay Attention to Your Generativity, Two Examples

Scripture — Psalm 71:17-18 (NRSV)

O God, from my youth you have taught me,
and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
So even to old age and gray hairs,
O God, do not forsake me,
until I proclaim your might
to all the generations to come.

Devotion

In yesterday’s devotion, I wrote about the importance of paying attention to your generativity if you want to live with purpose in life. As you may recall, generativity is “a need to nurture and guide younger people and contribute to the next generation,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. We find a prime example of generativity in Psalm 71, where the psalm writer seeks to proclaim God’s might “to all the generations to come.” Caring about the next generations is the heart of generativity.

In today’s devotion, I want to share with you a couple of specific ways in which many people are expressing their generativity. Perhaps one of these ways will be intriguing to you, maybe even a possibility for your life.

Serving in Schools

In increasing numbers, people in the second and third thirds of life are exercising their generativity by serving in schools, especially underserved elementary and middle schools. Marc Freedman’s wonderful book, How to Live Forever: The Enduring Power of Connecting the Generations, tells many stories of older adults volunteering in schools through the Experience Corps program. He chronicles the difference this has made for the students and for the grown-ups who serve them. For students, learning improves, test scores go up, and behavior problems plummet. The older adult volunteers also had higher test scores, not in math and science, but on tests of physical and mental health. Freedman summarizes some of these findings in this way:

[Most] volunteers who spent six months in the program dramatically improved their ability to solve complex problems. What’s more, these Experience Corps members “showed new activation in areas of the brain involved with complex problem-solving, compared with a control group with a similar level of education who did not participate.” (p. 72, quoting Linda Fried)

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Karen Pearson, the President of Kids Hope USA. This organization leads a mentoring program that connects adults—often folks in the third third of life but also younger adults as well—with elementary and middle-school students. One-on-one relationships with mentors help students form values, establish self-esteem, and acquire academic skills. Part of the genius of Kids Hope USA is its vision for connecting churches with their neighborhood schools. Congregations are enabled to serve their local communities, students benefit from mentoring relationships, and mentors have the opportunity to express their generativity in meaningful ways.

If you find the mission of Kids Hope USA to be intriguing, I encourage you to check out their website and, if it seems right, reach out to them directly.

Mentoring

People often express their generativity through mentoring. This can happen in a wide variety of settings: in workplaces and churches, in families and neighborhoods, in schools and non-profits. What is mentoring? At the De Pree Center, we define mentoring as “a relationship in which one person intentionally comes alongside another for the purpose of helping them flourish.” Mentoring doesn’t have to be intergenerational, but usually, a mentor is at least a few years older than the person being mentored. (One person I’m mentoring these days is less than half my age. And, let me note, I learn a lot from him about the things in which he is an expert. Mentoring is a two-way street.)

If you’d like to learn more about being a mentor, the De Pree Center has many helpful resources. Let me encourage you to check out Alongside Mentor Training, an online individual course from the De Pree Center.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Midlife Identity Development.