The passing of a generation

I'm currently reading The Multigenerational Congregation: meeting the leadership challenge, which focuses on the "watershed" generational difference between the GI generation and the consumer-oriented generations that follow.

Major markers of this difference:

1.  Deferred pleasure vs. instant gratification
2.  Group vs. individual orientation
3.  Assumptions of sameness vs. difference
4.  Spirituality of place vs. spirituality of pilgrimage

And much of the book is about how to navigate those different value systems and how they play out in the congregation.

But how many of the GI generation are left in leadership in our congregations?  With the passing away of my own grandparents last week, I'm particularly sensitive to the fact that this is a generation leaving us.  And if the watershed moment was post GI, then what are the generational differences we are living with now?

And there were some important strengths and values expressed in the GI generational value system - do we lose that too as we lose our elders?