Every weekly meeting at Rotary is like Forest Gump’s mama said ‘like a box of chocolates you never know what you’re gonna get.’ Well last week at the Rotary Club of San Marino was one of those sweet caramel nugget moments. The speaker for the day was Dr. Bob Duke, a former Ambassadorial Scholar who is a professor at Azusa Pacific University and new member of the Rotary Club of Azusa. He is also a lot younger than the average Rotarian.
I listened in as a member of my club told Dr. Bob how refreshing it was to see someone with his youth as a new member of Rotary coupled with an inquiry on how our club could find more young professionals like him to join us. Dr. Bob gave a very interesting response; he noted that upon being invited to speak to the Rotary Club of San Marino he set out to learn something about his audience. His Facebook search found no reference to The Rotary Club of San Marino, does that mean we don’t exist.
So the young people of our world communicate with each other through electronic media like Facebook and the tenured and experienced members of our organization acclaim, ‘we don’t do Facebook. Then we wonder why those same young people aren’t beating a path to our well hidden door. Either we force them to learn to communicate the way we want or we adapt to communicate the way they do; or we can put a going out of business sale sign on the door to the weekly Rotary Club meeting.