Do you tend to be the type of person who looks back more
than looking forward? Do you find yourself often pining away for things to
return to the way they once were or are you eyes looking ahead…straining to see
what might be over the next hill or around the bend?
(being culturally relevant) but also about where we are going. Many of us would
love to be compared to David’s famous sect of fighting men…the Sons of
Issachar. We can read the verse in 1 Chronicles 12:32 where it states that the
men of Issachar “understood the times and knew what Israel should do."
to be just that type of person—someone that understood their culture and knew
what to do or what to say. I think to really be a futurist (I’m not talking
about a prophet…necessarily) we need to have a clear understanding of where we
are now as well as where we are headed.
Andrew Zolli’s recent article in March’s issue of Fast Company. Mr. Zolli
foresees several interesting trends in the coming decades. One of the most
interesting is his concept of the population pyramid.
population and stacked them up by age, putting all the infants at the bottom
and all the centenarians up top. For most stable , peacetime societies, the
resulting figure would look like a pyramid, with the youngest people at the
base and the oldest people up at the tip.
Now, here’s where it gets
interesting. If you were to place, for instance, India’s population in the
pyramid…that’s exactly what you’d get—a broad base of infants…tiny tip of older
adults. But the U.S. "pyramid" has a huge bulge in the middle…the giant population of baby boomers.
decade that bulge will slim down considerably and we’ll be left with an
hourglass, with the largest number of
older people in our society’s history, the quasi-retired baby boomers, up top,
and the largest generation of young people since the boomers—the millennials,
or echo boomers—at the bottom. The beleaguered generation-Xers will form the
‘pinched waist’ in the middle.
population shift? Whether you run a business or a national ministry or a local
church…these numbers will affect you and you should be planning ahead.
Zolli sees on the horizon…
population will be growing faster than the population as a whole in each of the
50 states.
· Right now, Hispanics
number one in every seven Americans. By 2016, they will be one in four.
· The national
population center of gravity will be moving south and west.
· A woman born after
1980 is likely to take care of her mother longer than she cares for her own
children.
possibilities. True…they are just predictions and can be off. But what if Zolli
is right? Are you ready to market or minister to the audiences of tomorrow?
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