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.