Darryl's Blog
Faith of My Fathers
One of my biggest regrets is the way that the church has split along generational lines. Worship styles, methodology, missiology, and sometimes just plain sin get in the way.
When churches split by generation, everyone loses. Yet many churches can't seem to find a way to stay together.
That's why when I saw Faith of My Fathers: Conversations with Three Generations of Pastors about Church, Ministry, and Culture, I knew I had to pick it up.
In so many ways, we are radically different from each other, but at the same time we share a deep love and respect for one another that ties us together. If we can love one another, compromise, and choose love over dogma - the rest of the church can do the same...The ache in the church is felt right now in my family. My grandfather was a different kind of pastor from my father, and I am yet a different kind of pastor. We disagree quite passionately, and yet we have no choice but to love and respect each other. We are not strangers who can easily be reduced to enemies and ignored. We are each other's sons, sharing each other's blood, needing each other's affection. And so we stay, and we listen, and we attempt to understand. How I wish for something as beautiful for the church as a whole. Through the blood of Christ, we are each other's sons and daughters as well, and we can't walk away from this responsibility any longer.
Just got started, but I'm liking this book, and the impulse behind it, very much.
Aren't you being closed minded here about the separation of generations? Sometimes Older people just want the conversation of their more sophisticated crowd. Is that wrong? Same for the younger generation. They want to hear a melody that inspires and feels equally enchanting to their souls as some of the other musical competition out there. I attend Capital Christian Center in Sacramento and they have 4 different Sermons. I'm sort of a switch hitter. I enjoy any of them. I can feel the rapture of fire and brimstone one week and the smooth invariable sounds of the youth band and relaxed sermon which always keeps with the exact theme as all the other sermons. Sure it's a lot more work to have four sermons instead of one, but nothing fantastic ever came easy.
"If we can love one another, compromise, and choose love over dogma - the rest of the church can do the same...
Doesn't that depend on the differences?
I think I see more and more how as committed biblical Christians there is only so far you can go with people who also profess to be Christians but who are so way out there in terms of what they actually believe.
I don't know how you compromise on that.
I still maintain one of the biggest reasons why the Church is so messed up in so many places is because of the worldly compromise that goes on. I think that is just so clear. Its also why the Church is so ineffective in being used by God to bring tansformation in the lives of others.
I think I also see more clearly that if we deal with all that compromise and repent and strive to really get back on God's program and do it His way, He blesses that and changed lives are the result. I'm so thankful to be in such a church.
Remember those letters in Revelations? Only two of those churches had it going on, Jesus was kind of ticked with the rest and called them all to repent. We should all take heed.
Austin:
I'm wondering how Paul's teaching in Eph. 4 stacks up against all the kind of 4 separate services scenario you're describing. I'm not saying that sometimes within a church certain needs can't be met through specialization, but if your church services are generationally-driven then what ever happened to the hetereogeneous church that knows no ethnic, social, economic or generational lines? It may be counter-culture, but isn't it worth striving for, so the local church can visibly represent and function as the body of Christ with diversity in unity not uniformity?
its interesting as after that book came out - chris's church left and broke off from the older church they were meeting in as they were having issues. so the younger and older church weren't able to work together.
Wow, some good comments so far.
It boggles my mind that the New Testament church managed to bring Jews and Gentiles together within the same Church. That's a much bigger cultural difference than what we're talking about here.
I think multigenerational churches are desirable - but they are unbelievably hard. It actually seemed to happen in the first church I pastored, but I think the key was that the church was small enough that the relationships held people together despite whatever else happened, kind of like a family.
If nothing else, the book explores how three generations see things very differently.
In a culture that is all about me, I think the ideal of an intergenerational church is more difficult then ever. I think there may have been a time when theological differences could be wrestled with without fighting.
George, I appreciate your comments and I understand them. But I would also quote Paul who says they will know your faith by your love.
I'm not feeling the love in church.
Rob