Initially, when I was putting together this series, I was thinking in terms of the question, "How do people who are 50, 60, or 70 years different get along?" Great question. Even people who are 20 years different can sometimes have a tough time getting along because the times in which each grew up are so different. With different music styles, thought patterns, relationship to technology and basic assumptions, how can everyone in the church grow?
Oftentimes, for churches the answer is homogeneity. When I was in seminary, the trend was church growth. The experts would say if you want your church to grow then what you need to do is find your target audience and tailor everything toward that target. If that means you only get 20-somethings, then so be it. In fact, that would be preferable, because then church is easy for everyone. They get to be with people who are like them and worship to their style of music.
But is this really the goal of the Christian life. Sure we would love our churches to grow. But there is great value on not working for a homogenous church experience. In fact, if the essence of spiritual growth is learning to get over yourself, what better place to grow, than in a church where you can't always get your way?
So, with that being said, how do you run a multi-generational church? What style of music do you do? What are the classes you teach? Do you do Sunday School or small groups? Who gets their way? I think at least a partial answer presents itself when you ask the question of why the church is here. Does God want us just to get along and wait for Christ to come? I don't think so. I think the answer becomes a little clearer when we understand that the job of the church is to pass along the faith to future generations. When we don't have unity of taste and styles, we need to find unity of purpose.
The church is an active, not a passive organization. We have a calling and a purpose and it's not just to sit around and wait until Jesus comes. The purpose is to make disciples. So we find our unity in that.
In Ephesians 2, Paul describes the church as a building with Christ as the cornerstone and the Apostles as the foundation. As we continue to build, each successive generation is another row of bricks built right on top of the previous generations. If that's the case, then what we find is the older generations carry the greater weight of the responsibility. More is expected of mature believers. More is expected of those who have seen trends come and go.
As we grow together, styles of music and modes of communication change. The gospel does not. The older generations are in a unique position to be able to sort out the heart of the gospel from the medium by which it's presented. The key is passing on the faith, not just particular cultural forms of it. So while I grew up singing hymns with organ and piano in church, I'm not one of those that would say, "It's a shame these kids don't know the old songs." I do think there's some value in them. They're meaningful to me, but they don't have to be meaningful to everyone. As long as the they maintain the heart of the faith, how people express it is a much smaller issue.
The real danger in making younger generations conform to peripheral things is that even if they stay in the church (which studies show younger generations leaving in droves), their faith may be only a shell, just a copy of the faith of earlier generations, not a faith that penetrates deep into the heart of the younger generation.
At the same time, as I mentioned earlier, discipleship doesn't happen when you give people what they want. So I'm not advocating that a church that has all the generations become a rock show spectacular no matter what the older generation says. I'm not saying the young people should just have their way and the older generation has to deal with it. Part of the discipleship process is knowing you can do something, but choosing not to for the sake of others.
While I do believe the older generations have more to give, I also believe that it's necessary for the younger generations to trust and value the older. Sometimes we have a tendency to dismiss things we don't understand. Sometimes we can be history snobs, thinking our era is the best and people in the past weren't as wise as we are. We can learn a lot from previous generations and we are wise to pay attention to them.
So there's the heart of our "Generations" series. Come check it out and learn the unique gifts each of our generations brings us.
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