Flutterby™! :

Over on Farcebook, Larry posted a link to The Gospel Side: David Kinnaman is wrong: How the church really lost the millennials & what we can do to keep the next generation. I wanted to copy my comments from there over here and expand on 'em a bit.

I've been sucked into the scheduling committee of our square dancing club. It's currently dominated by a bunch of advanced dancers who are questioning how we're catering to slower learners. I think there's a parallel here in trying to figure out an institutional identity that scales, rather than providing discrete steps where we're essentially catering to a different demographic and personal need at each level.

Also interesting: This weekend I spent an hour or two talking with the former long-time (ie: decade+) president of a local square dancing club that failed. They had a bunch of teens involved right up until the very end, and one of his observations was that it was great to be passing along a passion to the next generation, but... they were a net economic drain on the club, which is fine, except that they also disappear come college, and given the normal cycle of college, early career, have kids, and then have time for a hobby some time mid-life, subsidizing them was subsidizing square dancing a decade or two in the future, not growing the club over the next few years.