"Church just isn't wnat it used to be!" the older folks are saying nowadays. And they are absolutely right!

A Senior Christian’s New Vision
by
Ann S. Gray

Our hymnals sit idly in their racks. Our favorite old songs of worship, songs like “In The Garden” and “The Old Rugged Cross” seldom are sung anymore.

Elderly Christians in churches of numerous denominations are fussing and fuming. Many of us find it difficult to sing the new upbeat, untraditional Praise Choruses being raised in our community churches. Yet they are being sung more often than our own reverent choices.

Conflicts are arising between elder generations and younger generations on just how our worship services should be conducted. Even the traditional form of church leadership is being challenged and some churches are changing radically with the dismissal of Elders and Deacons.

What is going on?

“It’s the new way,” the young religious luminaries are saying.

“New way?” our aging Elders and Deacons are asking. “What ‘new way’ does the Bible endorse?”

And the young ministers answer: “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.” (1 Timothy 4:12 New International Version).

These are the voices of our Christian leaders of the future. But, patience, elderly Christian friends, before you counter with Biblical verses of our choice, consider: In order to grow and prosper, all churches must appreciate and encourage the attendance of young people.

Young families today are attuned to life at a different, faster pace than that of their parents and grandparents. Progressive churches allow young people their up-beat Christian choruses and present God's Word in an atmosphere they understand, and they are responding within those churches in ever-growing numbers. Churches that move with the times grow.

Before most successful church leaders recognized and conceded to that truth, young Christians considered their parents’ church services stodgy and unexciting. Even now in traditional churches, many young people decline attending when granted their own wishes; many more attend only under parental direction.

Perhaps such evolving consequences have been duly noted and rewarded within the more popular, growing churches because God hears their young voices “loud and clear” while we, their elders, stubbornly refuse to listen. To enthusiastic young Christians, in churches where they are welcome, their praise choruses "Make a JOYFUL noise unto the Lord" as the Bible encourages.

Religious music has taken on a new life. It has surpassed every other music choice available on CDs, on tapes, in concerts, and over the airwaves. Even before the 2001 catastrophic events of the attack on our country and the crumbling World Trade Center twin towers, our country had begun to awaken to the importance of religion as a necessary basic of life. That episode of evil has only embedded more deeply into our consciousness the need for strength and guidance from a power greater than ourselves.

Those of us who are old enough to remember World War II, can still picture in our mind’s eye the new depth in our loved ones’ eyes when they came home again, safe and unharmed. They has survived where many of their comrades-in-arms had not. Their eyes were somehow different from when they had gone away. They reflected knowledge they then possessed concerning the importance of spiritual reinforcement under wartime conditions. We were then and have remained a seriously reverent and patriotic generation, unmoved by any suggestion that might portray spirituality in less than serious regard. Therefore, in the face of the upsurge in untraditional church services we, the oldest generation have migrated to a few churches that maintain the traditional status quo where we have always been and are still comfortable.

Perhaps, we should try within our own families to explain the differences between our post WWII generation’s spiritual position and our children’s and grandchildren’s newly formed ones so that they might, in turn, look upon us with less jaundiced eyes and might understand our self-possessed and uncompromising stance against their “new way” of religious worship.

So, our young Christian people today attend church services wearing extreme attire by our generation’s standards. They choose hair styles, wild and outrageous, adorn themselves with rings and gems in shocking places. In church, they raise their voices with clapping and dancing to up-beat modern Praise Choruses accompanied by resounding drums, guitars, and brass. All, religious activities offensive to our reverent, ancient ears.

But, dear readers, are you aware of how many new Christian young people are finding their way into churches that welcome them “as is”? There, many are becoming active and contributing members, whereas more traditional churches have rejected and scorned them because they are different. Some are progeny of families where parents never attended church regularly or attended only occasionally. These faithful young Christians who abide the clicking of our critical tongues when we look upon them are the future of our religion.

After we senior Christians are all gone, today’s Christian youth will continue to bring God's Word in the language of the era in which they live. No matter how desperately our generation struggles to preserve our revered, past traditions, such rigidly structured churches without the support of the young, will eventually die out from loss of membership. Youth will continue to create its own traditions.

The sad but undeniable fact is that most elderly church leaders, dedicated to traditional worship all their lives, adamantly refuse to read the handwriting on the wall. Instead of being resolutely resistant to “change” in our churches, forward looking elders should welcome “change” just as electricity was gladly received to replace lanterns, automobiles to succeed horses and carriages; telephones and later computers to bring instant communications into almost every home. We accept, without question, all the medical miracles God provides through modern research; surely, no one would choose to go back to the days before penicillin.

Therefore, when individual traditional church bodies reach a point where they become stagnant from lack of growth, yet remain self-satisfied and resolutely inflexible, hard as it may be for senior Christians to admit, we are the ones who must, ultimately, alter both our individual and collective attitudes. Christian youth will inevitably take over and lead our churches onward, with or without us.
--Published in Mature Years Magazine,
Winter, 2002-03