[00:00:02] Speaker A: You guys seen that, everybody? Oh, sorry, John.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: That's okay. We can. Ray can clip this part.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Ray, clip this out.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: This is why we pay you the big bucks, Ray. Thank you.
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Spark Dialogue, a generation Spark podcast, where our mission is to bridge the generational gap in churches all across North America. My name is John Simon, and I'm here with my good friend.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Ron. Yes, I'm here. How are you? I was waiting for the intro, John, but that's okay.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Sorry, man. I'm a little rusty. I'm a little rusty.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: We haven't gathered for a little while, so we're really comfortable with the quiet. Pause for a moment. Rhonda Vries here with my good friend, John. Good to see you. Good to be with you.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Good to be seen. And we actually have a guest with us today. We have Hannah Evans here. Hi.
[00:00:59] Speaker C: Hi. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Of course. Hannah is from Springtide Research Institute, where they engage the power of social science to learn from young people ages 13 to 25. And I didn't just read that. I just got it off the dome. Just got it off the dome.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: You are so right there, man. That's awesome.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
But, Hannah, we're super excited. We've. At Generation Spark, our team's kind of been able to connect with some of the good people at Springtide, and we're really excited to just chat more about what you guys do. But thanks.
[00:01:30] Speaker C: Just.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Thanks for being on with us today.
[00:01:33] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm really excited to be here and be a part of this conversation. And it sounds like you know a lot about springtide already, so maybe you should just read off the website about springtime.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: I'm gonna let you share a little bit, but before that, we have to break the ice a little bit. And I've been looking forward to this. To this conversation topic as soon as I thought of it a few weeks ago. And, Hannah, I hope I'm not putting you out of your elements here. I kind of assume that superhero stuff is just, like, culturally universal, but, you know, some people aren't, and I want to be mindful of that. But the icebreaker question for this week is, if you could recruit a member of the Avengers to work with you in your organization. So, Hannah, that would be springtide. For Ron and I, that'd be generation spark. Who would you pick and why?
Ron, do you want to kick us off?
[00:02:24] Speaker A: I would love to. This is my jam. You know that, John. So I was thinking through the roster of the Avengers, and, of course, there's been teammates that have come in, they've gone out. They were introduced for a moment, and then they were gone. And then, of course, we've had them some around since the beginning of time, while Marvel universe time. And so with that known, I think the one person that I would love to recruit on my team is the black Widow, and here's why.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Natasha. Right? So here's Natasha's story. I don't know if you ever watched the movie Black Widow, but there's a real turbulent life experience that she's gone through that was fascinating to me. I had no idea until I started watching that movie and then starting to hear some of the interactions with Hawkeye along the way. But really, there was this sense of desired community in her life and the importance of not just each other rallying together for the other, because if you watched Endgame or.
Yeah, the last movie endgame, you realize that. Yeah. So there was this time where she was alone. She was trying to rationalize, why do we exist? Why are we here? And was deeply, deeply mourning the loss of those who had left. And so there is this real sense of, uh, community, of life together, uh, this real sense of. Of caring for the other. Even though she had destroyed many, many bad people, uh, there was this sense of. Of really loving and caring the team that was around her. So I would love to have somebody like that on our team. I do think we have people like that. Like you, John. You're. You're just a caring, compassionate individual. You exhibit black widowish kind of things. Uh, but to have her on the team, that would be really, really cool. So that would be my choice. As I read the question, I thought there was a couple that might, but black widow is the one that jumps out to me.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Interesting. Okay. All right.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Does that surprise you?
[00:04:30] Speaker B: That really surprised me, I'll be honest. Yeah, there were a few, like, there were a few, like, low hanging fruit that I thought of, and I didn't think you would, because you're. You're not a low hanging fruit kind of guy, especially when it comes to marvel.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Total.
[00:04:42] Speaker C: Um.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: You're going to get deep. You're going to get in there so deep.
Hannah, what do you think now?
[00:04:47] Speaker C: I'm really worried that mine is gonna be one of the low hanging fruit.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: No, that's totally fine. There's no judgment here.
[00:04:52] Speaker C: John and I do not to pick. Okay.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Yeah. No, there's no such thing. Yeah.
[00:04:57] Speaker C: To me, there seemed like an obvious choice. One, because he's my favorite, and two, because part of what we do, springtide is we have an ambassador program for young people who are ages 13 and 25 in our age group that we study. And part of their role is, like, speaking to the work that we do and how we do it. And Peter Parker is a young person age 13 to 25. And so I gotta go with Spider Man. I know he's a classic and obviously an easy choice then, as a result, but seems like a genuinely good fit for what we do at springtide and would be like, I think, a valuable asset to understanding young people and potentially their superpowers.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: So, hey, with great power comes great responsibility, right?
[00:05:43] Speaker C: That's right. Yeah, that's right.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Totally, totally. Hearing that and seeing that. Yeah.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: There's a lot of churches who could use that just as a. As a reminder that great power, great responsibility.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: John, did I ever tell you I preached on that once in a church?
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Did you really?
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Went over.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Yeah, the kids remembered. The kids remembered.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
All right, well, I. I really wanted to think outside of the box here. Um, I wasn't thinking Black Panther. I was slightly leaning towards Spider man, because it just makes sense. I think it's a great pick, Hannah. I'm going to go with King T'Challa, the Black Panther. And I'll tell you why. I think that for one, little diversity never hurts. He's not going to offer us the north american perspective. He's going to give us more of kind of a global view. But also, King T'Challa is a very well connected, very well resourced guy. He's, of course, got, you know, Shuri, his, his younger sister, who is kind of more of the connection to the youth. But I think even just the cultural background of Wakanda, there's a lot of, like, reverence and respect, respect for the elders, I think just, he'd have a really interesting voice kind of contributing to that. And. And I love Black Panther. And rest in peace to Chad Boseman, because I really miss him. But, yeah, I'm going to go Black Panther. That's my, that's my, that's my option.
[00:07:03] Speaker C: I love your strong pick.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: Very strong pick. I love that. You know, it's interesting, as I'm listening to the two of you describe the reasons for your pick, and then I'm thinking about the reason for my pick, too. There's something really telling the life story that these individuals had or have within the Avengers space, but also in their own identity crisis or the realities of who they are connected to those generations around them, that's really telling to me about the importance of not just the work that we're doing, but the importance of the stories to be told around some of these engagements and some of the importances around intergenerational ministry. I know I'm creating a bridge here, and that wasn't the intention right now because we wanted to have some fun. But as I was listening to you, I thought I just needed to point that out, because I think it's really important to recognize that even in culture, people are looking at those spaces as ways to tell a story, a meaningful story of connection and belonging.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: No, that was. That was a killer bridge, Ron. I loved it. That was really good. Yeah. And so that is always a good reminder that if you're listening to our podcast for the first time, that our main focus is always going to be here at Spark dialogue and as an extension of generations, spark to connect life, to connect ministry theorizer and practitioner into an intergenerational conversation. That's kind of our little tagline that we like to remind everybody of. But, Hannah, you're kind of the guest. You're under the spotlight today.
Why don't you just start off by telling us a little bit about springtide, a little bit about yourself, just however much you'd like to share, and that'll kind of kick us off.
[00:08:46] Speaker C: Yeah, sure.
So I am a research associate at Springtide Research Institute. We are a social science research institute studying young people, ages 13 to 25. And really, the hope for studying young people is to center their voices, give them a platform, include them in conversations about them, and to really honor their perspectives when we think about and talk about young people in spaces intended for young people. But those conversations often happen only among adults, even this conversation. And one of the things that we think about a lot is how to better bring in and center young people's voices in those conversations.
So I got connected with you all through a project we are currently working on called what's working? To engage Gen Z, which is generally about faith based youth serving organizations and what young people want from those organizations and what it looks like on the ground to thrive in caring for young people.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. So we have a lot of questions for you, just as a heads up. I don't feel like you're getting, like, grilled or anything. Not.
[00:10:02] Speaker C: Not in the slightest.
[00:10:03] Speaker B: Any questions back, just to give yourself some breathing room, that's totally fine.
But, yeah, I mean, I just. I love asking questions. It's. I like it so much better than answering questions.
You ready to keep going?
[00:10:17] Speaker C: I am.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Can I just jump in here for a minute, John, because I love this, your connection to springtide. How did you get involved in this work? I mean, to me, I love those kind of stories, and it just doesn't happen. Right. There seems to be maybe a momentum that drives us to that place. How did you get involved in this work?
[00:10:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that question. So I was raised in intergenerational ministry, so my mom was our children's ministry director at the church I grew up in for about a decade, and I began volunteering in youth ministry in the baby classroom when I was seven years old.
I really loved spending time with kids. I was also a kid, but I was spending time with younger kids. And as I got older, I just kept doing it. So I served in every age from infants up through fifth grade, and then I served as a junior high small group leader in high school.
And when I went to college, I originally thought I was going to be studying English, but I was really interested in what makes society work, how does our society work? And understanding the big picture of that and really interested in social issues and connecting that to young people seemed like a really natural choice for me as somebody who was always really interested in young people and really passionate about young people of all ages, kids, teens, college students. And college was incredibly formative for me. And so my dissertation actually focuses on 18 to 25 year olds. But I really love kids of all ages. And so working at Springtide was a natural fit for me. I, all of my teen and college years, all of my jobs were serving young people, serving teenagers and kids. So, yeah, that's beautiful.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Thanks for sharing that. That's awesome. Yeah, that is definitely.
I love. I mean, like, I feel like you would have to kind of have that, that love that interest for you to want to step into this kind of field, but it's also just such a plus to be like, no, I love this. Like, I'm not just a numbers gal, even though you might also be a big numbers fan, which is great.
[00:12:33] Speaker C: You know, I was not a huge numbers person. And I got to grad school. I hadn't taken a math class since I was in high school because I had clipped out of all my math courses in college. And when I got to grad school, I was like, I haven't done math in five years, and now I have to re remember how to add.
But I thankfully picked it up again pretty quickly.
But, yeah, one of the things I really love about what Springtide does is it subverts the power dynamics that exist in terms of the, one of the challenges, and I'm really curious how you all think about this, too. But one of the challenges that I see as a sociologist in relationships that are intergenerational is older adults have more structural power in those relationships and therefore have the ability to make more of the decisions, shape more of the processes than the young people do. And one of the things I love about what Springtide does is it flips that a little bit and is like, we're going to center young people and their voices and have their perspective guide what we do and have them guide what stories we tell. And I love that. And I think that was part of what really got me excited about the work springtide does. And so I'm curious, like, what you guys, how, how you navigate that at the interactional level in terms of teaching people to think critically about the power dynamics in their intergenerational relationships.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: That's a really good question.
So with Generation Spark, one of the things that we constantly have to remind congregations who are learning about this and the importance of why, because one of the things we do is introduce them to, here's the scriptural basis for this, here's the research and the experiential basis for this. But when we enter into that space relationally, we always have to remind them, this is a reciprocal relationship. This is not a power dynamic. This is not a hierarchical space. This is about learning together, taking a 55 year old and a 1617 year old working on a problem and saying, my way isn't right, and we're going to try to figure this out together. This is about. And so we try to quellenne that power structure right from the get go because we realize that's not helpful. In fact, one of the things in our denomination, in the Christian Reformed Church, we've been following kind of four milestones.
I'm guiding one of them, and one of them is about listening to the voices of all the generations shaping us from ministry together. And one of the things I try to remind our churches about is it's such a necessary part of our work that we spend time intentionally listening, not lording over, not overpowering, but spending time genuinely, intentionally listening. And so for that, we actually have to say, this is what it looks like to listen. Here are some things that you need to pay attention to about how we listen and then how we respond together. And so those are critical, critical pieces of the work that we at Generation Spark really want to encourage churches to one learn and implement as they set up their mentoring pairs and so on.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Yeah, Ron, that's a great segue into my next question for Hannah. So one thing that your website says, Hannah, on your guys website, it says serving young people starts with knowing who and where they are. And I think that the where is kind of what stands out to me in that, which is really interesting.
What do you think is just, like, a common misunderstanding about the youth, whether it's in church circles or maybe just, like, what are characteristically young things that people don't maybe really grasp quite yet. What do you think?
[00:16:30] Speaker C: Yeah, one of the first things that comes to mind right away. And actually, we did a survey last year where we surveyed adults who work in faith based youth serving organizations, and then we surveyed young people who said they participated in faith based youth serving organizations and ask them about, like, what do you want from your organizations? And then we also ask them things like, what do you think young people are struggling with stereotypes about young people, things like that. And some of the really interesting things that stuck out to me, one was that young people are more spiritual than we think of them as.
About two thirds or three quarters of young people say that they're spiritual in some capacity.
And about two thirds of young people say that they're religious in some capacity. That may only be slightly religious, but they're not saying they're not religious at all. And what that religiosity looks like is, I think, much broader and more complex than the way that we as adults often think about things like, young people may nowadays be very religious but still not go to church, or they may go to church because they feel like they have to, but their relationship to orthodox Christianity or mainstream Christianity is more complicated.
And I think the increasing pluralization, even within Christianity is something that we see a lot in our conversations with young people that I think older adults struggle maybe to understand or see clearly, as well as things like young people's relationships to phones and technology are a lot more nuanced and complex than adults think of them as. It's not only good or only bad, but it's so much about how you use it and where you use it. And are you in relationship with your parents, talking about how you're using it? And all of these different dynamics that shape young people's relationships to their phones, to social media, to all kinds of issues. So I think, in general, just across the board, when we think about, like, stereotypes about young people, they're almost always more complicated when we actually talk to the young people and how they think about that experience.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: Can I just do a follow up. John.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: You're familiar with some of the work that Christian Smith and Melinda Denton did with look. Yeah. And so there's some really, really good research that's been, I wrote my dissertation.
[00:19:03] Speaker C: About.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: And it's still a living, breathing space in our ministry, in our church context. And so when you were describing some of the challenges or the misunderstandings with youth, I was immediately drawn to that deism phrase that they came up with, moralistic, therapeutic deism as a new religiosity in North America. And I say North America, including Canada and the US, because I think it's prevalent in both contexts. I had the privilege to speak in Europe in May and brought that up to a church there in the Netherlands. And they said, this is real here, too. So I don't think it's just a North America phenomenon. I think it's a reality in most.
Yes, a lot of the countries in the world that follow Christianity. But I find that interesting. And so your comment on technology really sticks out to me because I think Jeffrey Arnett talks about the church of one and this idea that our young adults, or emerging adults who were formerly youth, that's a reality that seems for them something we've never really understood as an older generation that could happen. So for good or bad, that's what's happening. And so do you have any thoughts on that? Because I think a lot of our church leaders right now are hoping to gather back to gather the young people and the young adults together, but some of them are worshiping on their podcast and tucking in and consuming spirituality in very, very different ways.
So how did those, the moralistic, therapeutic deism in the church of one, kind of play to that same issue of walking away from the church? Or are you seeing actually something happening in that space that we think we need to seriously think about the world in which our young people are living in, because we just may not get it and we need to think differently about how we do church.
[00:21:14] Speaker C: Well, first of all, I just want to say you have done your homework, and I am very impressed. Those are both books and works that I cited in my dissertation, and so I'm really excited to hear you name them because I rarely ever talk to people who've read them.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Well, I love that work. So thank you for doing that. That's so good.
[00:21:31] Speaker C: I'm so excited. One of the chapters of my dissertation actually was about religious individualism and essentially arguing that religious individualism, at least in the United States, is racialized. So the way that we think about religious individualism, as well as cultural individualism being very entwined in american culture, and cultural individualism being about, you know, the self, as opposed to a responsibility for a collective, is very racialized in America. So when you think about, like, immigrants to the United States, there's a lot of responsibility that first generation college students feel about returning to their communities, reinvesting in their communities. You see really similar things for young black Americans who are maybe first generation college students.
There's a book about young people in faith in America by Brad Christerson and Richard Florey. You might be interested in reading it if you haven't read it. And they have a whole chapter about how race shapes faith in adolescence. And one of the things they talk about is that for black families and for Latinx families, they're talking to their parents way more frequently about their religious experiences and their spiritual beliefs. And it's a family project, whereas less so for white families, where white young people really want to be able to break out on their own, independent of their parents and their faith exploration. And so they were seeing some racial differences in, especially in the teen years and how young people, what they want from their faith development at that moment in time.
And as we've spoken with organizations, we've spoken with some organizations that focus on particular minoritized populations, and we spoke to an organization called Feeda. Really cool organization. I highly recommend you check them out. But one of the things that their executive director spoke about with us, Washington, just how important it is that their work be intergenerational, because Latinx young people is the population that they serve. And for them, like all of their faith identity, faith development happens intergenerationally. So there's no way to speak directly to young people without including older generations, older members of their family in that process. So they're really reimagining faith formation in their tradition as a familial project, not merely only focusing, focusing on young people, which is very similar to what you guys do.
So, yeah, so I would say, like, having, having done some of that research and been thinking a lot about this question, a lot of the individualistic dynamics, I think especially, and when you look at them globally, too, looking at, like, more european, predominantly white countries as opposed to the global south, you see that there's definitely a different orientation toward individualism generally. And I think that that permeates into how they're conceptualizing their faith.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Wow, there's a lot of good stuff. Yeah. I'll just share this real quick. So a little bit about my story is that I grew up first, like, ten or so years of my life, my family did not go to church. My dad started to feel like, I gotta. We gotta get. We gotta get back on the horse here. So he started taking my sister and I to church. And so for the first probably ten years of my church experience, I was going to a predominantly african american, kind of gospel singing church here in Tucson, where Tucson has a very, very small african american population, probably between three and 5% of our population.
When I got around 18 or 19, I started to make some friends who were going to other churches. And so I eventually kind of left and went to a very small, very old, predominantly white church. And it was like, such a cultural, like, whiplash. It was so interesting, like. Like, because I think everything you said was correct, like, the way that individuals resonate within the family unit, resonate within the larger church as a community. And then you compare that, like, across cultural lines. It's so, so distinct. And there were some times when it was just like, oh, this is so weird. Like, this is how your church does things. Like, it's not just the singing that's different. Like, there's a lot of how those differences exist.
[00:26:11] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: I think it's really, really crucial to understand that youth in America, even in the church, is not a monolith. Like, it does exist in different kind of subcategories based on cultural influences. So that's a fantastic point. Thank you for talking about that.
[00:26:28] Speaker C: Yeah, and I want to highlight the point that you made, John, about how racial differences aren't just in worship, it's in the very structure of the church and the theology and the way of thinking even about what going to church is for, I think is fundamentally contested in different cultural communities. And so I went to a christian liberal arts college for my undergraduate degree, and they would do these diverse chapel services, which really just meant they would sing different music. That's what they meant. But it wasn't fundamentally different theology informed by an understanding of racial diversity or cultural diversity. It was really just, we're going to rotate what kind of music we sing at the beginning of the service. And I think that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the ways that communities function, have different relationships to faith. And I completely agree. Young people, the young generation coming up is the most racially diverse generation in America that we've ever had. Only half of Gen alpha is white, and the other half is all racial groups that are non white. Like, I think also thinking about what it means to better expand and diversify our churches for a more racially and intellectually diverse group of young people than we've ever had in the United States.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, that's really good.
All right, I want to turn a little bit here. What surprised you, in your storied history of research on young adults and youth, what is something that you still reflect on? You're like, wow, that is so different from what I would have expected or what I did expect coming into this.
[00:28:17] Speaker C: I actually think that some of the things that are hardest for me is swallowing when a stereotype that young people have internalized it or that young people think something is true because adults have told them that it's true about themselves.
When I was in graduate school, I taught intro to sociology for about two years. And so I was regularly teaching 18, mainly 18 year olds.
And they. So many of them would come into my classes and really have, like, a very negative self image about their generation and about young people.
And there's so much, like, undoing even of the way that they think about young people, their own age and their generation and what they have to offer the world that I felt like I was. Was having to, like, be uphill a little bit and, like, pushing them to, like, think differently about why they are, the way that they are or why they're really, you know, especially, I feel like when it comes to phone use and technology, they've heard their whole lives, like, being on your phone is bad. And to some extent, that can be true. Right.
But I think, like, it's my job as a sociologist to always complicate the narrative. So I'm always like, you know, what do we use our phones for? Like, how are you I using your phone? What do you do on your phone? How is it shaping your relationship to yourself? Could it be that the things that make us feel bad about ourselves online are things about society that make us feel bad about ourselves? And not not only unique to your phone, but unique to, like, part of living in our culture. And those things are the hardest, I think, to, like, and that maybe not surprising, but, like, the most difficult for me in terms of figuring out how to contextualize for them, because it's really hard to speak to a group of people that is the group that you're studying and try to try to change the narrative they have about themselves. I think that is really complex and also trying to validate their experience of themselves. So looking to inform them while also treating their experience as inherently valid, I think that balance can be really tricky.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Ron?
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I just want to offer a follow up I've been working with people serving in youth ministry for over 30 years, and one of the things that I've found really insightful, and I have no idea if this is your experience as well, and I'd love to hear it, you sound like you're an academic who studied deeply these things.
Has some of your thoughts changed or been confirmed now that you have your own child?
[00:31:03] Speaker B: That's a good one, Ron, because I love that question.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: I do sense that there's a shift that happens. It's really easy to look at the academic or the theoretical around a topic, but when it's your childhood, like, so what I think I'm doing here is trying to address the parents a little bit. What are some of the learnings that you had or the discoveries of prizes that you think, oh, I kind of wondering about this, or I'm affirming this.
[00:31:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
I've said before to friends and stuff that I think being a sociologist has made me a better mother, and being a mother has made me a better sociologist, in that I do feel like they're in conversation with one another, and that I do think that when I allow them to talk to each other, that it makes my research better, and hopefully it makes my parenting better. You'll have to call my daughter in, like, 20 years and find out. But I would say that the thing I was most cognizant of as a sociologist was the power dynamic, like, we've already talked about between myself as a parent and between, and my daughter, who's only three and a half. So not a ton of power at this moment in time, both at school and at home.
But it's something that I'm constantly thinking about in terms of, in what ways can I structure the environment to give her as much agency as possible at any given moment in time, so that I have to say no, as little as possible, but more importantly, so that she feels like all the choices are available to her and that all of the choices are okay for her to make. You know, obviously, it's my job to say, like, this isn't safe. I can't let you do that.
But I want to give her as many options as possible. And so we've had times, like, as an example, we were potty training, as parents do at the stage.
And I just. I felt like I was constantly in a battle with her about getting her to sit on the potty before she went to bed at night. She didn't want to, or she was tired or bored, didn't want to do it without me, I just, like, we just physically moved where all of her, like, getting ready for bed stuff was to the bathroom. So that then her options were, okay, well, we have to be in the bathroom now, so do you want to sit on the potty or do you want me just to put a pull up on and to give her. But then the context then shaped which options were available to her and what decisions she was free to make. And so I'm constantly trying to do that lateral thinking of, like, how can we change the environment so that her options are different and also just like, being really open, open to hearing and getting feedback from her as much as possible. To me, it's a huge honor when she, at three, can say, I was angry because you said this or you did this.
And I treasure that kind of feedback. I try as much as possible to cultivate an environment where she feels as comfortable as possible in making that kind of feedback so that she can grow up thinking, my mom cares what I have to say. She cares about my experience of this relationship. She cares about my experience of this family. And so I'm constantly thinking about the structural conditions and the interpersonal ways that I can shift the power dynamics that she has as much agency as is possible at her age, but so that she feels like she's an equal participant in the relationship.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: Listeners, just so you know, we had no idea we were going to go down a potty conversation row, but I'm glad we did because this was really.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Put up a content warning.
[00:34:57] Speaker C: Yeah, content warning. Potty training.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That could be a trigger for some new Hannah. I loved that. I love how, I mean, I. I love being able to integrate academic or even just like, heady kind of intellectual stuff with just the day to day. I think that makes it so much more human and. And I just think that's really valuable. So I. Yeah, I have a lot of respect for you for that answer that you gave, and that was wonderful.
[00:35:25] Speaker C: Thank you. And it's something I think about a lot. Like, to me, the academic is deeply personal, and then the personal is also academic.
So I'm always thinking about things that I've experienced interpersonally in an academic way. And then thinking about the academic in the personal context, I think, is something I think about a lot.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool.
When you were talking about the cell phones earlier, it reminded me I read a study or some factoid or something like that, but it was something like the amount of technological change that exists within just a few years, like in past generations would have taken, like, centuries. You think most of human history, an older generation was not looking at a younger generation and being like, I can't understand you because of what you have available to you that I do not personally resonate with. And one of my jobs I work with, I work in a retirement community just south of Tucson where I do some chaplaincy work. And it's almost funny just how. How, like, the older members of our community are just like, yeah, these kids, I just, I don't get them. Like, I don't understand. And these are people with, like, you know, the. The stereotype of the big iPhone brightness all the way up, you know, size 64 font and crazy loud ringtones that go off, and they're not, they're not aware of half of the things that, a fraction of the things that their phones are capable of. And then, you know, you go down to their grandchildren and they're like, yeah, I'm using this to learn how to play the guitar, or I'm practicing a language, or I'm doing my homework on my phone, and they just don't, they just don't understand that. And so it's so interesting to me how this development of technology can pose such a threat of distancing generations and that if there's not that communication, that there's just a lot of obstacles, a lot of variables that make this very complicated, I think, is what I kind of took away from that.
[00:37:34] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. And I was actually listening to a podcast where they interviewed a historian of technology. Fascinating. I'm not a historian. I have so much respect for historians. And one of the things he spoke about was, like, we've, like, you know, the hand wringing panic that older generations feel happened about when they installed telephones in 1930. Like, there's all kinds of stuff, like articles written in newspapers at the time that were like, this is going to permanently change relationships forever. And it did, right? Like, like, in some ways, it did. Like, people can now live far away and still talk to their families every day. Like, and that. But that was very scary at the time, was like, oh, this is going to fundamentally change everything. And I think it's hard for people to accept, like, yeah, it will, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Like, every, every technological advancement comes with its own great things and its own challenges at the same time.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
Hannah, I'm going to close this out with a question. Actually, that's not true because I forgot that we have a line that says closing question. So I'm going to give us a penultimate question real quick.
So, at generation spark, we really value some of these themes, such as, I mean, and we've honestly been talking about them just inadvertently today. Themes like empathy, storytelling, establishing a sense of belonging for building strong relationships, and kind of achieving this goal of crossing that generational gap.
How do you feel like these elements have kind of influenced your work and research or just the passion that you have for what you do?
[00:39:15] Speaker C: I'm honored to be asked this question.
For me, a lot of my interest in social science really began when I was in college. I was 19, and I was 19 when the protests in Ferguson were happening around the death of Michael Brown. And that was a really pivotal moment for me. Of for me, I had this moment at 19, which is crazy to me now, where I had the ability to step back and be like, I can either not call myself a Christian anymore or say that being a Christian means, like, validating the perspective of people who I may not understand or have their same lived experience. So I don't really know. I didn't even really know what I believed about, like, what was happening at the time, but I knew that if people said that they were hurting, that that was fundamentally important to me. And to me, that was part of what being a Christian meant. And so that really kick started my entire journey of what I wanted to study, going to graduate, graduate school, everything that came after. And so I really think empathy is so foundational to why I got really interested in the research that I do and how it shapes what I do now. And I really am just so inspired by young people. I spoke just a few days ago with someone who is an organizer at the Hindu Society of Minneapolis, and she's a young person herself who's 21.
She was incredible. She'd been to the White House. Like, she was so incredibly, like, well spoken about her work and what they do at the hindi society and why they do it. And I just am so. I learned so much from talking to young people about what it means to be in relationship.
We do a lot of interviews with young people, and so one of the things we learned from interviewing young people this year for a big report was that most young people don't actually want to give up our relationship, even when there's political disagreement or social disagreement, that the relationship is so important to them. Young people care so much about connection, and I think that's really moving that young people, I think, like, we have so much to learn from young people about what it means to be in a relationship with people, even when we don't always agree and learning how to disagree well. And I think young people really want to learn how to disagree well. And I find that really inspiring. And I don't think it's possible to have belonging without learning how to disagree well. You know, even. Even at the micro level, learning how to disagree about projects and goals and things like that is so important to being in a relationship. And so I think, like, I love learning from young people about what belonging means to them, and I have so much respect for the ways that they are navigating. Being one of probably the hardest parts of your life, like, truly, the teen early college years are incredibly difficult.
And so it's really inspiring to see how they want and pursue authenticity in the midst of those difficulties.
[00:42:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. Ron, you have any follow up questions that are burning at you?
[00:42:37] Speaker A: No, I just really appreciate your answer and your contributions to today.
One of the things that John did bring up was this element of storytelling, and it seems as though that's what we've been doing for the last 45 minutes and really seeing glimpses of Christ centered hope in this conversation. And so for that, I'm deeply grateful to you, Hannah, for sharing your heart and your parts of your life and your work with not just John and I, but for our listeners who are going to be taking this in. So thank you for your good work here.
[00:43:16] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:43:17] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. And just to close us out, if we have any listeners who are just interested and want to learn more about Springtide research institute or they want to know what it has to offer in terms of research. Research. What are some good ways to follow up on that, Hannah?
[00:43:33] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. We have a website, springtideresearch.org dot. That's the main place to go to find everything. There's reports, there's data drops on the blog. There's all kinds of really interesting storytelling happening right now through the what's working project.
There's also an Instagram account are we are springtide that we post all of our most recent up to date stuff. People are always welcome to email me, too, if they have questions or thoughts. My email is
[email protected]. dot.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: Is that Hannah with two h's?
[00:44:09] Speaker C: Yes and yes. Two hs, two ends? Two a's.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: Okay. Hannah's all across the spectrum. I met a Hannah with two a's. One n, one h. How is that possible?
[00:44:20] Speaker C: One n?
[00:44:21] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:44:22] Speaker C: I don't know.
[00:44:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
I'm not sure. But, you know, I want to be respected.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: Oh, total.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: There's no right or wrong way.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: No, no, no, no. But I do think, I do think this leads into another podcast topic at some point, John, on the different names we call our children. That might be kind of fun.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: That's good. That's good. I like that.
Yeah. I mean, I'm John, you're Ron. These are names with a lot of versatility, too.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: Totally, totally.
[00:44:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay.
[00:44:49] Speaker C: Yeah. I didn't have a lot of good nicknames in high school. No, there's not many ways to nickname Hannah, I feel.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: Yddeh no, no, I can see that. I can see that.
[00:44:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, well, Hannah, thank you so much for your time. This has been such a blast.
You're obviously extremely insightful about all this stuff, but we can tell that your passion is really very much there, too. So we wish you all the best with your research and your family and, yeah, thanks again for your, thank you.
[00:45:17] Speaker C: And I love the work generation Spark is doing. When we got off our first discovery call, I turned to my colleague Carrie, who was on the call with us and was just like, I'm so excited, like, about this conversation, about future conversations.
Our first call, Generation Spark is one of the first we did on our project. And it was so, it was so energizing and really exciting to see a glimpse into what our conversations with the organizations where they were going to take us. And so thank you for being such a source of energy for the start of this project and where it's taken us since been.
[00:45:54] Speaker A: It's been our pleasure. It's so, so good.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:57] Speaker A: And thank you again for everything. And we're looking forward to working with you in the future as well. Thanks, Hannah.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Hannah, thanks so much for your time. And thank you, good listener for your ear. Thanks for, thanks for tuning in and for joining us in this conversation and we will chat with you again real soon.
